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Writer's pictureAshley Long

Chapter One: The Long Venture...

Updated: Sep 19, 2018

Why a Venue? Where Did The Passion Come From?

Camper Life

*DISCLAIMER* I am not a writer nor will I ever claim to be - if for whatever reason I do, someone please gently explain to my husband that he needs to sit me down, hand me a large chocolate malt and proceed to tell me that I have lost all sense of reality and am grossly delusional.


That being said, I have been hesitant to start sharing our full story of our dream of pursuing an event venue; where the passion came from, steps we’ve taken, successes and failures, everything… It’s been hard to know where to even start, I’ve honestly been intimidated by the thought and have been putting it off for the past year and a half - sharing bits and pieces along the way is easy, sure - but truly letting people into the whole process seems like a lot of work! I’m hoping that by doing this it will encourage others to follow their passions as well because it’s worth it. Blah blah blah, okay here we go…


Chapter One: The Long Venture

Where The Passion Came From? Once upon a time, Nathanael and Ashley, despite all odds, miraculously graduated high school. Soon after, we realized we shared an extreme love for music and decided to gig around the area for a year - Nathanael on banjo and me on vocals, guitar, and kick drum. It didn’t take us long to find out 2 major things:


1) We not only loved performing and playing with talented musicians, we loved everything about the entire production even more! The venue, the hosting, the people, the music, the atmosphere created simply by your ideas, everything; and we wanted it for ourselves.

2) We needed a way to afford all of it.. Let's be honest, although we had a heck of a lot of fun gigging, we weren't that awesome at it so it wasn't paying many bills.


Our plan? Well, since neither one of us had any intention of going to college because, like I previously stated, we barely made it out of high school alive, we needed to then start a business that would not only pay the bills but also provide the money needed to pursue our dream of owning our own venue.


So in 2015 we started Long Family Tree Service and had some venue trial runs at Nathanaels parents place via a music festival called "Dawg Days" in March of 2015 and a small event venue called "The ‘88 Estate" in March of 2016. Needless to say we loved it. So on April 17, 2017, Nathanael and I bought 15 acres of our own in New Virginia, IA to cultivate our venue on. No running water, no electricity, nothing… Just weeds, trees, an old barn, and a mucky mud puddle of a pond.


So there's the quick background to get to you up to speed! I started journaling when we first moved onto the land and I'm excited to finally share more about what has happened so far...


Want To Follow Our Venture?

If you’d like to follow our venture I’d love to see you follow our pages @ThePreludeXII on Facebook and Instagram. I hope to encourage people to not deify common sense and to go all in for their passions and purpose and if this only encourages one single person to do that than it's more than worth it!

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