I’ve been holding off posting this update because it really is of a fairly personal nature. However, as much as I try to keep business and personal life separate, because we are a family business, and I deal with each of you on a one on one basis, I feel as though the business is in some ways, a part of this family. You all have been almost as much a part of what I am going to share as anyone else in our lives. It is for this reason, that I am sharing this here, on our business blog, where not only our family and friends can read it, but our customers as well.
Those of you who have followed us along in the last while know our family has had our humble homestead up for sale for quite some time. When we first purchased this property we never dreamed we’d ever be able to afford land, so to purchase 5 acres was a dream come true. To have it though, meant sacrificing our 5 bedroom, 2600 square foot home with the nice manicured front yard with pretty flower beds that I had added flowering bulbs to each year with the beautiful fenced in back yard with the playhouse for the kids and the small raised garden we had worked so hard on. We lived within walking distance to the park and the library. What more could one ask for? Well we wanted more, we wanted land, and possibly some horses, maybe some chickens and rabbits too. We never thought we’d be able to afford it until one day we happened upon this five acre property nearby.
So we put that big house with the great big living room, separate dinning room and huge family room for the kids to play in on those cool wet and rainy winter days, on the market and it sold within 6 weeks and in it’s place, we bought an over grown, rundown five acre parcel that no one else wanted because of all the work that was involved in fixing it up.
We moved from a 5 bedroom house, to a 2 bedroom house. We moved from a house that wasn’t just big, it was huge, 14 rooms in all. To a house that was teeny tiny, a whole whopping FOUR rooms, plus two small bathrooms. We now had one fairly good sized masterbedroom and a tiny kids room (which was a weird shape so we couldn’t put the queen bed in there!) a kitchen and an open concept living room/dinning room.
The walls were painted a gaudy orange and the industrial carpet was blue. The appliances were ALL falling apart and you could see the stove had been used for more then just cooking food, if you know what I mean…
However, we had FIVE acres! We had a barn, even though it was completely falling apart. You think I joke? Ha ha. I have proof:
But the fences were decent and it was a roof over the heads of our first two horses. My Raiah, and our son Joshua’s Bandit. As you can see in the photo, Joshua began to learn VERY quickly, all sorts of carpentry skills. I’m quite certain that what my husband has taught our son over the past five years of fixing up this property far FAR outweighs anything I have ever taught him these past 12 years of homeschooling him! Some pay money for an education like that. We paid in blood, sweat and believe me, we also paid in tears.
When we bought this place, we spent three full weeks just removing scrap metal, garbage and debris from the property. We filled up one fifteen foot steel scrap bin, and two 10 foot industrial garbage bins. And that was just the beginning. We also had to trim down EVERY.THING. Even in the photo above, a bit of work had already been done to the barn just to make it at least usable. Some of the boards had been replaced to make due until we could rebuild the whole thing. It had to be stabilized and leaks fixed.
Once we were able to tame the yard, we were left with this;
Sorry it’s so small, but this is the first photo I have of our home.
And once we removed all the scrap metal, garbage and debris, we were also left with this;
In the far back you can see a mobile home that had been without hot water for years. Someone had actually still been living in it before we purchased the property. It was so full of mold we had to tear it down.
The ‘cabin’ and work shop to the right in the photo were a total disaster. EVERY.THING that had been done, had to be redone from the roof, to the electrical wiring (COMPLETELY) to the outside, to the entire inside. ALL of it.
But we did it all, and we did it all happily, because we now had land. We were beginning to live our dream…
Over the years we have had hens, we now have five horses, we have raised our own chicken for the freezer and even our own pork.
Oh boy were our kids small then! They have grown SO much! They were SO excited to get their first hens. They are still excited. Farm life has never become less exciting for us.
Once we lived here for a while, we realized that we really enjoyed this homesteading thing! We wondered if maybe we shouldn’t consider getting MORE land. So we began to search around and see if this would be possible. By then, we had three horses and our kids were getting a bit older and wanted even more horses. We realized if we continued to work real hard, and fix up our property to it’s fullest potential, we could possibly sell the property for a decent profit and buy WAY more land where land was cheaper and in more abundance!
So began our journey in search of a larger, “real” farm.
We put every thing we had into this property. Our time, our energy and every single extra cent, (and sometimes there was no extra cents and we went without things to create those extra needed cents!) everything we had was put into this property because our family had a dream. A dream of one day owning a “real” farm where our now growing herd of five horses could run through pastures, we could raise meat cows and maybe even some sheep and/or alpacas for wool! Our family was VERY excited and we remained VERY excited at the possibility… and remained excited… and continued to remain excited for over 3 years of having our home on the market in hopes of selling to move to where the land was cheaper and in more abundance.
Over those years we continued to work away at the property. We added flower beds and more landscaping. We did some more work in the house and the cabin/workshop. We turned the cabin from what you see above to how it looks now from the same view point;
We changed the house from the way it looked when we first moved in, from an unwanted, unloved home, to this;
That barn that was falling apart, became this;
None of it came easy, as I’m sure just about anyone can imagine. But it’s been worth it. We took a 5 acre property that no one wanted, and turned it into what we have now.
However, some how it has still not been enough.
We’ve had so many people come through our home and say the same thing over and over, “the house is just TOO small”.
We’ve redone the entire inside of the house and cabin too! Hardwood flooring downstairs, ceramic tile in the kitchen and both bathrooms! You all saw our upstairs bath reno we shared on facebook a while back. We did EVERYTHING top notch, all the best we could possibly afford even if it meant eating cheap meals to save money and becoming a one vehicle family for over two years.
But, it seems no matter how much time, energy and money we put into this five acre property, no one is willing to put up with a small home the way our family has been willing to put up with it.
This actually amuses me to no end. The majority of people who have come to view our property over the years have been people who claim to be looking for ‘simple living’. They are looking to ‘down-size’. Most have been couples or single people with no children. I’ve often wondered if it’s too small for them, what on earth were we thinking? lol
I believe to say that you want simple living and want to downsize your home, and to actually do it in reality, are obviously two very different things.
Or… maybe we’ve just never been meant to move? I guess we’ll never know for sure.
However, we do know that with the increase in stipulations through the banks on mortgages for those who are self employed (which my husband and I both are), we can no longer move away from this area or my husband’s self employed income will be looked upon as non-existent. Que sera sera…
All this to say, the news is, we’re not moving away from here, off this island, after all. We would still like to move if possible, because we are still living in a house that’s too small for our family of 7, and we’d still love more land if it’s at all possible. We can’t afford to add onto the size of the house any time soon. With five growing kids to raise and five horses, we just can’t afford more. We’d honestly even just love 5 additional acres of pasture land. However, in the meantime, we’ve also been looking at how to make our land right here more usable if we must stay right where we are. Right now I’m researching cow/calf pairs and we’re considering getting some more pigs very soon. I’ve started putting in garden vegetables and we added some ducklings to our family which you’ve seen here on the blog. We’ll deal with the small space, as we have been for the past five years we’ve been here. It may not be ideal, but the property is beautiful and we’re certainly not ‘suffering’ for it. I’m about to the point now where I’m thinking if people don’t want this property, they don’t deserve it anyways and we’ll keep it for ourselves. It really is truly beautiful and simply becomes more so with every next step we take in creating even more potential here. As I share on my etsy shop tag line, “Time is my only limit, my creativity is endless…” If it weren’t for things like additions being costly, the sky would be the ONLY limit besides our time!
I always used to say that I didn’t want to stay here on this island because I worry our kids will all have to move away due to the high cost of living here. Then we would be here on this island with no kids nearby, and… my all time worry, no grandkids nearby! But I can not put our lives in a box and decide what can and can not happen in our children’s futures.
Yes, a hundred acres with a great big barn would have been nice, really REALLY nice, especially with almost no mortgage and no debt… if only things had turned out as we had planned & hoped. But… our lives will be what they will be and as much as it honestly brings me to tears to think of our dream never becoming a reality, I’ll deal with it. Our family will deal with it.
We ARE dealing with it.
So the plan right now is to keep the house on the market with hopes that even though our dream of 100 acres and a great big barn are now over, maybe we can still have a little more? On the other hand though, I’m not sure how long we’ll be able to keep this up. We’ve had our home listed for sale on and off (taking breaks over Christmas/winter) for over three years now. It’s grown tiresome and in some ways we are just ready to be done with it all.
There’s a lot of life to be lived and having our home on the market just isn’t helping. I guess we’re just holding out that last bit of hope that maybe… just maybe… there’s some other property out there just large enough to at least be able to fit in most of our dreams, even if it’s in miniature size. 🙂
