Zeme

 We love Latvia and, when you love a land so much, you just need to own some of that land. Wait, that came out wrong. When you love a land so much, you want to have a place to come back to, a piece of the earth that gives you a reason to come back, visit again, and work on over the long term. That was our thinking when we made the decision last Fall to buy some land in Latvia. After spending many weekends driving all over Latvia, looking at all kinds of land plots, farms, and forest divisions, we finally found a piece of land that meets our small list of criteria and hopes for the future.  Let's begin with some of the plots we looked at that were contenders...

There was one piece of land that we were very close to going for on the outskirts of Valmiera.
Valmiera is a great small city with a real green movement and great bike trails. The land is bordered by forest and had a creek running through it.  Seemed perfect until our research led us to finding out that a lot of the bordering forest will be logged in about 15 years time.

And, another plot was way out in Drusti. It has two beautiful old farm buildings on it. However, it was a bit far from Riga and the view in the near distance was of a giant, concrete farming complex.

Finally, we found the (nearly) perfect plot in Krimulda County. Just 8 km. from Sigulda, and 1 hour from our place in Jurmala, the location is perfect. It borders Gauja National Park with trails directly from the land into the park and to the Gauja River. Awesome forest bike trails lead to Sigulda. And, we have met both sets of neighbors and they are wonderful! Finally, at 4 hectares, it's a good size -- we can hide out in the back corner and have plenty of room to reforest and farm. The old farmhouse is kind of a convertible at this point so we won't exactly be moving in there any time soon but... the freedom of, over the long term, building our own design is fantastic -- maybe something by the creek that borders the land. Finally, land plots have historical names here and, our name, it's perfect:  Krumini un Varaviksnes. Shrubs and Rainbows.