History Of Our Home and Property

The last few weeks, we had an opportunity to meet a couple of our neighbors.  Unlike living on Cypress, it takes awhile to meet your neighbors out in the country.  Natalie is an older woman who lives in the white ranch house in front of ours.  Her parents once owned all of the property surrounding our home.  They gave her and her husband a 100x100 foot lot to build their home (that is why her spot is carved out of our 17 acres).  She is very nice and told us the history of the property.

Her family used it as an apple orchard, cherry orchard and grape vineyard.  The had three acres of concord grapes and sold the grapes to Welches in Paw Paw.  They also had many varieties of apple trees.  They sold the land to Dr. Kihm, an orthopedic surgeon, in 1975 and he built his A frame house of top of the hill (Natalie said that her mother always wanted to have a home up on the hill).

Dr. Kihm kept the vineyard and orchards going until 1980 but they have been neglected since then. Dr. Kihm also sold the farm house and barns (directly in front of our home to his daughter and son-in-law Bill and Carrie Teutsch).  Eric and Jayma Teutsch (Bill's brother-in-law) bought the home from Dr. Kihm in 1999.  Eric knew Dr. Kihm since Eric was the head of joints for Stryker Corporation and worked with Dr. Kihm.   Eric and Jayma began doing extensive remodeling - the sports barn was built in 2000 and the large addition was added in 2009.

We have also met our neighbors to the north, Mic and Lil.  They have the beautiful Italian home up on the hill.  Their land is adjacent to ours and is very similar with grapes and apple trees.  They also have a man who raises bees on their property.  Mic and Lil are very friendly and we can hike on their land anytime.  They bought their property from Mic's uncle and he has becoming out to the land since the 1950's.  They built their home in 2003.

We were told that Dr. Kihm use to have very large grape harvesting parties at our home and that the Teutschs had an enormous 4th of July fireworks show.  Hard acts to follow!  We were able to buy the house because Eric Teutsch was suddenly transferred by Stryker to Philadelphia.  Eric and Jayma had been remodeling the home to be their retirement home.

This month marks our first year here at 1700 North 5th Street.  We could not be happier with our purchase!!

Our grape harvest

Our neighbor Mic

Our neighbor Lil

The apple harvest