A History of Our Homestead - Part 3

In September 2021, my realtor best friend, Laurie, texted me a link to a house that had just come back on the market, after a considerable amount of time already on/off the market. The house was less than half the size of what we were currently in…teeny tiny and old, and of course, something we could make our own. But the property. The property was to die for. 40+ acres with a creek and a literal working fruit orchard. Hundreds of fruit trees. A barn and an existing goat pen. Plenty of room for kids to run around. And it was right in our budget. 

We went to see it the DAY she sent it to me. Our house wasn’t even on the market and we hadn’t been seriously considering putting it up for sale. But I HAD to see this house. Nathan dropped everything and left work early. And once we saw it, we weren’t really sure how we’d stuff our family inside of it (IYKYK) but we were determined to make it ours.

So, we put together an offer. Of course, contingent upon our house (which wasn’t even on the market yet) selling. We submitted the offer, hoping that there were no other crazy people out there, just dying to live where there was little cell service and a gazillion peach trees to tend to. But before our offer was even submitted, we learned that a cash offer had been placed and accepted.

It’s a weird thing, to go from being completely ambivalent about moving to being completely devastated about losing a house because we weren’t positioned to buy it right when it was available. What made it more difficult is that the kids all saw the house/property and were equally invested in the excitement for moving as we had become.

So we went ahead and put our house on the market…because once Laurie ran comps, and with the market as favorable as it was, we learned that we had the potential to land ourselves free of the majority of our debt. And if the right house came along in the process, we might be able to get something that would be more friendly to our homesteading dreams. Debt free and homesteading? Yes, please. 

But we were still pretty sad about that first property we lost out on. The bar had been set PRETTY high with that one.