We Bought a Farm
Aaron and I were married in 2005. Like many couples our dreams were grand and full of anticipation but for the time being we hunkered down into life as full time college students and both working full time for our jobs. To get out of the rhythm of our day to day life we began taking drives through the country. We’d read about old farmhouses, and old historic homes in general and would oo and awe at their history, their character, the stories that must be housed somewhere within those walls and we’d whisper to each other… Someday…
Fast forward to 2020. We now have three amazing kiddos and were about to have our life halted, paused, and shifted along with the rest of the world due to a global pandemic and the savagery of Covid-19. The early days it was hard to do any dreaming and we just felt so thankful for every day we had as a family. Somewhere in the quiet moments of doing life as our little family we started to talk about the dream of living in the country again, that maybe we could take the leap, that life was so short and wouldn’t we regret if we never tried even if we failed?
These questions complied over the course of about 18 months in a pretty serious manner and before we knew it, we decided to just jump all in, and look for a property with our realtor. As it goes with house hunting in today’s housing market, it wasn’t easy. Most things that were fitting to the “dream” we’d created in our minds and on paper of necessities were either out of our price range, or we wouldn’t qualify for, simply because we needed something that would accept a contingent offer with the sale of our current home.
One day, I saw a listing pop up on Redfin. Within 10 minutes I had a text and email from our realtor sending the same property with a note of “Hey, I think we ought to check this place out.” I immediately felt a draw to it all… the historic brick home built 120 years ago, the white historic barn, a pasture, 4.5 acres (just big enough for our dreams but not so big we couldn’t manage it), and reducing Aaron’s commute to his full time job by over half the time. I told Aaron when he came home that night that this “just might be the one.”
The rest is now history. We saw it, we loved it. There were a lot of cosmetic details to the home we knew we could change to fill more like us but the bones were solid and the foundation looked great. The access to our local highway felt a little close for comfort at first but once we started to dream about what it might mean for our farm goals and business plan going forward, we realized it was an asset we could utilize instead of feeling stifled by.
So here we are. We bought a farm. There are goals and dreams we have and are taking risks to see if they pan out. Our children are excited for the experience of the many seasons to come and love being outside, creating forts, and exploring uninhibited letting their imaginations fly. It took us 17 years to get ourselves here and it already feels like it was meant to be this way all along.
