Coming back...

The End of a Dream

 After waiting 8 months for an acreage, the sale fell through. I cried. A lot. My dream of having enough land to create a little homestead where we produced almost everything went flying out the window.

Shattered.

All over. So sad.
 
Well, we don't always get what we want in life, right? Right.

Moving on, we looked at other houses. A LOT of other houses. The house we purchased wasn't anywhere near my requirement list. Unfortunately, we were out of time and needed to move closer to my husband's work.

What's wrong with it?

For one, it's not in the middle of no where. We're in the middle of a small town. As in, the main road goes past our house. *sigh*

We don't have acres. Well, if you're counting quarters, we got one. One. Quarter. There goes my dreams of goats and maybe getting a steer to fatten up. (Add that to being in town and we're completely out of luck.) *double sigh*

The house is orange.

And yellow. And green. So many colors! Not a single one I'd pick for a house besides the white. *triple sigh*

The pretty white fence around the back you can see in the picture above, doesn't circle the back yard. It circles part of the property -dissecting the yard. *quadruple sigh*

After moving in, we discovered that the sidewalk out front gets a lot of foot traffic. Lots. Stranger Danger up the wazoo! There go our dreams of a yard we could let the kids run wild in without thought or worry. *quintuple sigh*

How will I ever make my dream of feeding five people for free? (Not to mention all the other cool stuff I had dreamed.)

The property has a few redeeming qualities. It took me a little while to find all of them, but they are there.

First, the fence around the backyard is bizarre. It cuts the property in the middle making the yard segmented and largely unusable for many of the projects I have in mind. After 2 months of being here, I realized that we don't have to keep the fence! So, we're going to move it to the front yard to separate the house from the foot traffic along the main road.

Second, After sketching the property, I've realized that once I move the fence, I can plant 5 or 6 dwarf fruit trees, have 10 raised beds and LOTS of berry plants. Without the fence, there's plenty of room. Add hoop houses to extend the season as well as a rotational planting, we'll be harvesting from May to November. I'm worried I'll run out of canning jars. What a wonderful problem to have!

Third, I just found out that we are allowed to have hens. Someone told us they weren't allowed in city limits. Thankfully, that's not the case. We even have a shed out back that will be easy to convert into a hen house once the weather warms. Farm fresh eggs, fertilizer and little garbage disposals make me smile -and bring me closer to self-sufficiency.

Fourth, being in a town, it will be easier to attend farmer's markets and such to barter and sell extra produce. Our location right on a main road means I can put out a sign and get plenty of visibility.

The color of the house doesn't really matter, right? I mean, we can always paint. -And trust me, we will.

Just because my plan wasn't the Lord's plan for me, doesn't mean that all is lost. It took me a little while, but I found the silver lining. I have my own place. There are plenty of people who can't say the same. There's plenty of room for us here -much different from how we spent last winter. We're meeting wonderful people in town. Life is good.

Now, here's a picture of Jazzy and Isabella. Just because I found it on the camera and it's cute. :)

 

What monkey wrenches have been thrown in your plans that ended up as blessings in disguise? Tell me about them in the comments.

What's this all about?

I have a crazy goal. I mean a totally off my rocker, insane plan to get my family to the place where we grow and raise all the food we eat.

Part of reaching that goal will come from closing on a house. We made an offer on a house not really understanding what it meant when it said it's a short sale. The good things in life are worth waiting for, right? Well, we could be waiting several more months.

Right now, I'm reading books and planning. The house has over an acre of land. That's enough to plan a large garden, have room for some animals as well as plant fruit trees and eventually, a few bee hives.

The posts will be a little slow as without the land, it will be hard to make updates. We'll have a few container plants as we wait for good news from our real estate agent.