Our journey to become homesteaders...
I am sorry for not posting for so long, but the most exciting thing has happened! My husband and I have purchased a homestead! We finally found the perfect place for us! Dreams do come true, you just have to be patient and plan.
We are finally going to live the life that I have been preparing for! Grow our own food! Raise our own meat! Have a lovely pond teaming with fish and most of all to have land! No more looking out my kitchen window to the lovely sight of the side of my neighbor's house. No more sitting on my front porch only to see a house on either side and more houses lined up across the street. The longer I stay here, the more I feel like I am choking on sheer weight of all the houses and people and noise that is my life where I live now.
We are finally going to live the life that I have been preparing for! Grow our own food! Raise our own meat! Have a lovely pond teaming with fish and most of all to have land! No more looking out my kitchen window to the lovely sight of the side of my neighbor's house. No more sitting on my front porch only to see a house on either side and more houses lined up across the street. The longer I stay here, the more I feel like I am choking on sheer weight of all the houses and people and noise that is my life where I live now.
Don't get me wrong, I loved the house that I live in......when I bought it 23 years ago. I was very happy here for many years. At that time I thought that was simply what one did. Buy a house in a subdivision and then maybe down the road, buy a nicer or larger house. In a subdivision. But about 4 years ago, I started to feel that this was not the life that I wanted to live. I ran across an article on homesteading and I knew that I had found the answer. A life in the country with land and animals and gardening. This is what I wanted to do.
Time to talk to the hubby...
I approached my husband about the idea of moving to the country. I was so afraid that he would not want that kind of life! I was lucky, he was all for it right away. I think my mentioning something about "a large pole barn where you could have a workshop" and "a fish pond so you could fish whenever you want" may have had something to do with it. But regardless, he was as enthusiastic about the idea as I was!
View of our pond from the backyard
So we started to look into it. First we contacted our financial advisor to find out the monetary feasibility of doing it. Around this time I was lucky enough to meet a real estate agent in one of the Homesteading Facebook groups I belonged to. He lived right in the area that we wanted to move to, so we contracted with him and started looking. This was in late 2014. Little did we know that finding what we wanted would be so much more difficult that we ever thought.
The search for a homestead begins...
Finding property is not a problem. There is property all over the place, with nothing on it. However, building a house on land that has never had a house on it is more complicated than you would believe. AND more expensive! You have to have surveys and engineer's reports as to if the land is suitable to build a structure on. You must determine if it is higher or lower than surrounding land so it does not flood when it rains. You have to dig a well, which is $9,000 to $15,000 whether they hit water or not!!!! If they do hit water, you have to worry if there is enough pressure to run a house and if there isn't, you have to pay a ton of money for a tank system to take care of the low pressure. You have to determine if the water is drinkable, or if it has too many minerals or salts and will corrode your pipes. Depending on the answer you may have to have a water filtration system (around $10,000) installed to make the water usable.
All that is just the beginning. Then you have to have a septic field installed to handle waste and that is no telling how much, by then I realized that building a house from scratch was not going to be the way were were going to go. Especially since on top of all the aforementioned items, you also have to pay a fortune to have electric run from the road to your new house. Ditto with cable, if it is even available, and if either of these is on the other side of the road from your property, get ready for some real expense in having to dig under the road to get the wires to your property. Last but not least, you have to put in a driveway from the road onto your land with a culvert so the water can run under it.
So you see why we decided not to build. We began looking at property with houses. We looked, and looked.......and looked and looked and looked. All the houses on property fall into two categories (excluding those we could not afford)
 | Old farm houses - as charming as this sounds, the reality is not good. Old electrical and plumbing. Awkward floor layouts because of bathrooms being added after the house was built. Stairways that are deathtraps because they were built before code. Possible termite damage that is not visible. Ants and rodents could also be a major problem. There is also the |
possibility of asbestos siding which if you want to remove you have to have done by a government certified asbestos removal company.....possibly as much as $10,000. These are just a few things that you can run into in buying a house that is 100+ years old.
Cheaply made modular houses - these are even more horrible as they are so cheaply made that you really cannot even gut and remodel them. They look like mobile homes that someone slapped cheap siding and a roof on. No thanks!
Cheaply made modular houses - these are even more horrible as they are so cheaply made that you really cannot even gut and remodel them. They look like mobile homes that someone slapped cheap siding and a roof on. No thanks!
We looked for a year and a half. I was convinced we would never find a decent homestead that we could afford.
Finally we got lucky...
Twice we found houses that we liked, only to have them be snatched out from under us by someone outbidding us, or the house being sold before we could even put in a bid. We finally got wise that if something decent came on the market, you have to move QUICK!!
On a Wednesday, my agent texted me to look at a property that he had emailed me, and to get back to him immediately. I liked what I saw and when I contacted him he said that he had managed to secure a promise from the selling agent not to accept any offers till close of business the next day, so we could see it and make an offer if we liked it. We were lucky, as there were 8 showings of the property that day (the first day it was for sale) and more the next day.
My husband was able to get off work to go with me to see the house the next day and we loved it. We made an offer OVER the selling price. I heard later we were not the only one that made an offer that was over. The next day we were told that our offer was accepted.
We were ecstatic!
On a Wednesday, my agent texted me to look at a property that he had emailed me, and to get back to him immediately. I liked what I saw and when I contacted him he said that he had managed to secure a promise from the selling agent not to accept any offers till close of business the next day, so we could see it and make an offer if we liked it. We were lucky, as there were 8 showings of the property that day (the first day it was for sale) and more the next day.
My husband was able to get off work to go with me to see the house the next day and we loved it. We made an offer OVER the selling price. I heard later we were not the only one that made an offer that was over. The next day we were told that our offer was accepted.
We were ecstatic!
So here we are.....now the real journey begins! I will be sharing with you what happens and all the bumps and bruises that I am sure we will go through in learning how to raise chickens, rabbits and goats. It should be interesting to say the least. We have to sell our own house and we close on the farm on May 25th. I will keep posting as often as I can, but it may be less than usual for the next couple months. After that you will be kept entertained by the mistakes of the city folks going country!
Jade :)
Jade :)
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