About Solace
looking out back in the winter
Solace is our little homestead in Cripple Creek, VA. It’s 2.25 acres, about half wooded hillside, bordering the Jefferson National Forest/Mount Rogers National Recreation Area. It’s got a lovely old 1600 SF house, built in 1928, complete with 10 foot ceilings, transoms above the interior doors, and wavy, warped, horsehaired plaster walls. Out back is an old two-bay shed, and a new, but rustic-looking, cottage that Grandpa uses for studying, painting, or eating crackers and listening to his old LP records. There are seven hens out back, with a henhouse built into part of the old shed, seven Caifornian rabbits (meat rabbits) in another part of the shed, two beehives next to the house in the back yard, a gigantified chocolate lab named Gibson, two main garden plots, a really old grape vine, and two baby apple trees. There are also several bird feeders and several bird nesting boxes.
Cripple Creek is a town-like aggregation of houses with an old-time country store in the middle. It used to be a pretty booming place around 1900, when the iron mining was active. That’s all gone now, and it’s just a nice little place to live close to the source.
Up on the National forest land, looking toward Cripple Creek