Shortly after Jim and Anita married, they moved to a small thirty-acre primitive plot in Parke County, Indiana, known as the Covered Bridge Capital of America.

To gain entrance to this property, you had to pass through the only structure on the property, a black wooded farm gate. It was beyond this black gate that Jim and Anita started their journey in life.

This journey was like many other folks, experiences filled with hopes, dreams, and abounding love to accomplish through hard work, the challenges that life gives you to deal with.

Their life beyond the gate became a happy and fruitful life with many happy memories. It also gave Anita the inspiration to write a manuscript Beyond the Black Gate.

She never lost sight and continued to build upon this endeavor. Anita liked to express life in poetry and short essays, so this is what this book has become. Through these words our life, dreams, and inspiration are revealed.

In 2008, Jim and Anita retired to Cleburne County, Arkansas, on the family farm. Anita's roots beyond the black gate went with them.

After many years as Anita and I finished our labor of love, developing our little farm into a paradise, to us anyhow, we had an Amish neighbor, Amos King, to build a gate of steel, which was mounted by the old wood black gate. This new black gate came with us to Cleburne County, Arkansas, as a moment and continuation action of our lives beyond the black gate. New dreams and developments were continued on this old Sutherland and fam until Anita went to rest.