What are y'all up to?

[Oldhat2]

Last but not least 2 more pics of my house/guest house.

It’s a really special place here. I lucked out and picked this place up and the additional 42 acres up just at the right time. In the past 5 years we’ve had a boom. I was 7 miles to the closest gas station…I’ve had 2 new county school systems go in around me and now the county just offered a farmer down the road $30K/acre for 180 acres to put another school system in. We had a new county school k-12 open up this school year and it’s already at max capacity and it’s a huge school(s).

My 60 acres is worth about $40K-$50K/acre now. (without the home, guest house, and other features). I was offered $1.8 million for it all by someone that simply wanted it after they were here dropping off their kid to visit my daughter. I picked up this place during the “great recession”, was setting empty. I bought it all back to life, picked it up for pennies on the dollar. I don’t ever want to leave here but love knowing I could sell it all, move deeper into the woods somewhere and start again and could afford to do whatever I want in transforming it with the proceeds from selling.

Oh. I have a neighbor with 449 acres that borders me for sale…if you buy it all in one parcel you can pick it up for $28K/acre. X mayor’s farm of 600 acres sold a few months ago ($29K/acre), it’s through the woods at the back of my property my about 1/2-3/4 of a mile. They are putting 1900 homes on it…one of you folks should buy the neighboring 499 acres and come join me.

For those that think that price for land is high…Ben will tell you, he and I are slumming it in the Nashville area…whole lotta folks with a whole lotta money live here. I’ve been in enough 10-17K sq ft homes around the area to know how much money is in the area. I hate McMansions. I was even selling off 5 acres at one point, that 5 acres had a contract for $350K. The people buying it were going to spend $2.5 million building their home. I had a chance to get out of the contract after I got to know them and backed out when I had a chance…the wife about crapped when she heard a gun shot a mile away. She’d never fit in around me…heck we shoot at least 20K rounds of ammo/yr around my place All my friends use my range to practice and my son is in the High School trap, skeet, and sporting clays team, he has an auto thrower here and does a lot of practicing. So much that I bought him a reloader and a big ol bucket of black powder for Christmas…buying 8K shotgun shells a year gets expensive.

[Kevin_S]

Looks like paradise Jesse!!! I share your love for hunting/shooting… especially bow hunting. Having your own place to hunt/manage is a huge privilege.

[Oldhat2]

Dave I hardly ever leave here. Only time I do is when I must. It’s hustle and bustle around the Nashville area. When I purchased this place Home Depot took me 15 minutes to get to…now it’s 30-40 minutes and well over an hour during rush hour.

Nashville region has had 80 families per week relocate here every week since 2010 …and it’s not slowing down.

Here’s a pic to show Nashville downtown growth over the past 9-10 years.

Oh, if you are ever in the area the price of admission to use the guest house is an instrument or two in hand…gotta pick a few tunes.

[Oldhat2]

Kevin I was raised on 85 acres of woods in the hills of S. Ohio. My parents property backed up to 15K acres of National Forest. I started bow hunting in 1980. Would you believe that back then I only ran into a single other bow hunter on all that land in 6-8 years. It was like my playground. Now hunting is so popular that you’ve got to pick your tree out awfully early in the morning.

Tennessee is not Ohio when it comes to deer. The private 600 acres that I am only allowed to bowhunt in Ohio is pretty impressive. When I was hunting a lot I would get from 20-30 different bucks/yr on camera that were Pope & Young or better. Every 2-3 years I’d have a legit Boone and Crockett buck to hunt. Here in TN a 120" deer is a good one. I’ve taken around 110-120 deer with my bow so outside of a doe or two for the freezer I won’t shoot anything under 150". I’ve got deer heads everywhere.

Oh, in this part of TN you are permitted 2 bucks/yr and you can take 3 does per day every day during the roughly 4 month season.

My deer are slamming that pretty green rye and fescue in the fields. That field is surrounded by woods and is right in front of my house. I can see into (down the access road) it from my bedroom window…every evening there will be 20-30 in it grazing. Those grasses are about 6" tall now.

Oh, I got permission to hunt that private 600 acres only because I could play the guitar. Yep, a bluegrass picker owned it. I showed up randomly and asked him to hunt, he came to the door with a mandolin in his hand…next thing I know it’s midnight and I am still at his house picking (his guitar) tunes with him. He told me that he’d let me bow hunt only and that I had to pull a camper onto his land to stay in, show up every evening at his place after I got off the tree stand and pick tunes. He’s still picking. I think he’s almost 80 now. He was a homesteader. He was a “back to the country hippie / Vietnam vet type” from the 60s/early 70s. He lived off his land. He taught me an awfully lot in between sips of PBR and fiddle tunes over a period of 15 years or so.

[Dragonslayer]

Wow Jesse, that property is beautiful, and that’s quite some work you’ve put into it!

A few days ago, one of our good friends (and former babysitter) here in Cape town came by the guest house where we’re staying and gave me an electric guitar! It’s an LP style, short scale but with 24 frets, single humbucker pickup in the bridge position, and the neck feels great. It’s branded one of the products distributed by the company she works for, and they had a couple for publicity gigs. They weren’t really using them, so she told the boss who I was and asked if she could give it to me.
It sounds great, and plays quite well too!

Then a couple days later, we were having lunch at some friends house (some of our oldest friends in Cape town, and Paul was a table mountain guide, so we always go hiking with him) and I find out that Paul used to play violin (because his mom made him) and he still had his violin. So I asked if I could see it, and it was relatively playable, so I played a few tunes on it, and they said I could just keep it. It’s about 40 years old, of Chinese manufacture, and I think it’s a good candidate to keep in alternate tunings.
So that makes two each of electric guitars and fiddles that I’ve been given!

Don’t know about you, but where I come from we call this God’s favor!

[Kevin_S]

Sounds like you’ve got it made.

[D_HRRFan7303]

That’s a beautiful piece of land you’ve got there Jesse!

[MissMaggie]

I started reading your post Jesse and thought it was the lyrics to a bluegrass song I hadn’t yet heard. I even started over once or twice part way in. It should be said that I saw this last post in the series first, so I had no lead up to it.

[Michael_Mark]

Lately I’ve been working through Fisher’s Hornpipe on the mandolin, and thought I would share this incredible version by Jack Dunlap and Gaven Largent with y’all:

[Stuart.Gamble]

The way the weather has been here in 2020, I think I may request @BanjoBen to do a lesson for the song “Rain, Please Go Away”

[BanjoBen]

Gaven is just ridiculous!

[Dragonslayer]

That is awesome! I followed the link to YouTube and then spent the last half hour watching dobro stuff on YouTube

[BanjoBen]

Russ Carson came over and hung out last night, we discussed some potential YouTube collaboration ideas. Y’all have any suggestions? We want to do more than just play a tune, we want to incorporate an adventure

[Michael_Mark]

I’m sure anything you do with Russ is going to be fun… maybe a lesson on banjo backup?

[Archie]

Hi Ben Since Russ is a great Scruggs Style Player how about some up the neck Scruggs Style licks. Since you can’t teach Scruggs tunes due to copyright. I am sure whatever you guys decide it’ll be pretty awesome.

[BanjoBen]

Great idea and we will do something like that, but I’m thinking more along the lines of something outside the cabin, like a trip to go interview someone, etc.

[Stuart.Gamble]

I would be interested to hear how he practices. Also, what is his process for learning something that is added to a show at the last minute. Since I’m a big Ricky Skaggs fan, it would be great to hear some of the things he has learned from playing with people like Skaggs.

[Archie]

Right I see now what you mean by adventure. Ok I have suggested a few names in the past to invite as cabin guests so here is a reminder. Charlie Cushman Cottontown Tennessee, JD Crowe, Jim Mills, Marteka & William Lake.

Other things to consider

Earl Scruggs Museum http://earlscruggscenter.org/

Jeff Stelling. A trip to his banjo workshop to see how Stelling Banjos are made.

If your thinking more of a jam session how about a road trip to The Crooked Road

The Crooked Road

Or a trip to Dollywood maybe do some pickin with Dolly. Find out how she is able to pick with those long nails.

I am sure that should spur along a few ideas

[Michael_Mark]

Maybe a quick interview with each of the KT guys?

[Dragonslayer]

Find some banjoist that y’all both look up to, and then go stalk them until they notice you. Then interview them, and get some video of all three of you jamming. Justin Moses might be a good choice