Weeding, Weeding, Weeding.

A funny thing happens to a 5 acre property with a lot of garden beds and pasture when it has been vacant for over a year. Weeds grow. A lot of weeds. They grow tall and in abundance.

When not working on fencing (ie. mostly before the fencing project started full tilt; before buying a horse), and mostly during outside play time with Junior, I have spent a lot of my time weeding, thinking about weeds, imagining weeds magically gone, imagining weed genocide, and all sorts of odd weed related things.

Professionally, I am a Landscape Architect. Thusly, I HATE WEEDS. They are just not something that I tolerate in my daily life, work or personal. So the weeds all had to go! I would have simply let 100 goats go to town on the property the day we moved in, but alas, our HOA doesn't allow goats (or pigs). So instead I've been breaking my back (literally) and pulling them all by hand. Bonus, I've lost 3 pounds!

I took a million photos of weeds, and almost posted them all. But then realized that NO ONE wants to see that many photos of weeds. So I picked a few of the more pertinent ones.

Vegetable Garden #1. Note weeds also growing around the outside of the garden.

I already weeded about half of this garden bed when I took the photo. It is now fully weed free! I was shocked to discover raspberries and asparagus growing amongst the 5' tall weeds (basically all Canada Thistle).

Vegetable Garden #2: prior to weeding

This garden will actually be converted to lawn, as there is no way that I will ever have time to tend to two gardens worth of vegetables. Right now it is about half way weeded. It is my last remaining weeding project. I am getting there...slowly.

Vegetable Garden #2: prior to weeding

The only treat this garden housed, other than weeds, is a Northstar Pie Cherry Tree. The birds got to all of them this year, but as it is still small, I am hoping that the tree will survive relocation and continue to yield fruit in the years to come.

Between the Gardens - More weeds, but of course!

I am mostly done. One by one, I have been pulling up and stacking the weeds in a giant burn pile. I have weeded all the flower beds around the property and really only have the second vegetable garden left to finish. Once finished, I will share some before and after pics. I would have finished it by now if it weren't for the fencing project. But trust me, it will be done before the snow sticks. Oh yes, it will!

That or I will have to buy 100 sheep costumes for 100 weed eating goats...halloween is just around the corner after all.

Tomato Ripening Update

Two Weeks Ago.

We were out of town for the weekend, and when we got back I decided to check on my tomatoes hanging in the pantry. To my delight, they have begun to ripen! I see a lot of tomatoes on the dinner plates this week. Hurray!

This past Sunday.

Earwig Decimation

One of the few bugs that really gross me out are earwigs. I have absolutely no good reason for this, and blame it entirely on childhood fears. As a "grown-up" I certainly know that all those old stories we passed around about the little pinching bugs is false. Ear wigs like ears of corn, not people ears. Nonetheless I retain a hatred for the little buggers. For the most part, if they stay away from me and my house I can live just fine with some around my property. That is where this particular nest of earwigs did me wrong.

To my horror, as I went to water my (previously beautiful and now massively munched on) flowers in my large whisky barrel planters, I saw one of the critters run from my foot. It ran right under the planter. I suddenly realized what was eating my flowers, not ants, but earwigs. I set down the hose and summoned all my might to tip up the planter and investigate. Sure enough there was a nest of the nasty little buggers living under my planter.

I quickly set it back down and debated rushing to the farm store for insecticide the moment Junior awoke from his nap. But, I didn't want to wait that long. These earwigs wronged me, and therefore needed to come to a timely end, immediately. I did a quick internet search for how to kill earwigs with household items. Most of those items were either not in my house (yes, I was looking for household items) or the methods were complicated.

Then I saw it.

Someone said to use spray and wash. I quickly ran to my laundry room and sorted through miscellaneous bottles until I found a bottle of Shout. I was dubious that something which would remove stains would instantly kill earwigs, but I figured heck I'd give it a try.

I tipped my planter back up on it's side and started spraying. To my shock, it actually worked. The shout very quickly killed all of the earwigs. They died faster than they could scurry away.

The next day, still dead. Just checking.

Although I was happy that the Shout killed the bugs and it was an easy and immediate means to an end, I am now quite concerned as to what the heck is in Shout, and I am now rethinking my laundry stain removing process.

Hay Baling!

After returning home this afternoon, from a morning of toddler gymnastics and coffee with a dear old friend, I quickly got Junior down for his nap and headed to the barn to finish my current nap-time project of de-cob webbing the barn and tack room. To my delight, as I headed out the door I saw our hay guy park his truck in our driveway and head up to his bailer!

Moments later he was doing this:

Baling the hay!

I smiled, as I realized that I could stop worrying and we would finally have the rest of our hay for the year. I was really curious to see just how much hay we would get. As it turns out, we got 88 bales, which at about 50lbs each comes to about 2-tons. That is from about three acres of non-irrigated pasture, most of which is (some type of) bromegrass. 

Hubs happened to be working from home for the day, so once he wrapped up his work we hitched up the flatbed trailer and started collecting bales.

Post-nap, Junior watching the action.
He has become obsessed with tractors.

Bales ready to be collected.

Hubs, bucking the bales onto the trailer.

View from the cab as I drove the truck & trailer.
The dog was...helpful?

Even Gentry wanted in on the action.

We managed to pick up and stack all the hay, without any additional help, in two hours. Since Hubs did all the heavy lifting picking the bales from the field, Junior and I drove the truck and trailer. Well, I drove, Junior provide hilarious commentary. I even managed to back the trailer into the barn twice without running into anything! So proud.

Overall, I am pleased with the hay outcome. Although we have been getting dew in the mornings and the hay did get rained/sprinkled on twice during this week, it seemed pretty darn dry this afternoon when it got bailed. Hay guy was of the opinion that it has the perfect amount of dryness without being too dry and not enough moisture to risk combustion. Although I'd love to just trust an old timer's experience, I still think I may head on down to the farm store tomorrow and pick up a moisture sensor, just in case. I really don't want my barn burning down (no horses live in our barn, fyi), especially not after all the hard work of stacking 7-tons of hay!

Hay Cutting at Last!

I have been anxiously awaiting our hay getting cut. Yes, because I would like to have it all neatly stacked in our barn with the other 5 ton. Yes, because I am curious just how much hay we will get from our field. Yes, because I've never had a hay field to cut before. Yes, because I am curious to see if we have gofers before I put a horse in that field.

However, mostly it is because I want the hawks and owls to rid our property of the over abundance of voles and field mice!

At long last our hay guy finally fired up his swather and cut our hay yesterday. Now it needs to dry out for a few days (fingers crossed no rain), and then it will get bailed up and stacked in the barn. Since it was the first time I've ever seen my own hay field get cut, I thought it was photo worthy. Behold, the hay guy and his ancient and highly problematic (from what I've witnessed) yet functional swather.

Swather cutting the hay.

Swather close up.

Pulling Up Tomato Plants Before Hard Freeze

I live in Montana. Unexpected cold weather is just something you take with all of the glorious sunshine, clean air, and mountain views. Random cold snaps are just a way of life. If you can't deal with that, then you don't live here. Most transplants figure out within a couple of winters if they have what it takes to stick it out or not. If not, they return to warmer more populous regions. Though the cold snaps can derail my plans and through me for a loop, I don't mind them. I always revel in any excuse to don a nice big warm sweater and drink lots of hot chocolate.

On Tuesday morning we woke up to this:

I was ready for it though. On Monday I decided to believe the weather forecast and pull up my tomato plants. If it was just one night of cold weather, I might have been able to leave them in the ground, however the forecast was for several night of temps in the 20's. So much for a September killing frost, lets just skip over fall altogether and jump start winter with a hard freeze, shall we? Mother nature is humorous in these parts. For once though, I got a jumpstart on her.

I haven't ever grown tomatoes before, let alone in Montana. In my imagination they would have all ripened by August. Not still be on the vine and green in September. I planted this particular plant in late April for goodness sake! Due to my lack of personal tomato harvesting knowledge, I decided to do a little research and found that there are about as many ways to ripen tomatoes as there fish in the sea. What method should I use? I decided to try the simplest, and pull the plant up by the roots and hang it upside down in my pantry/root seller. Below are a few before and after photos.

Tomato plant, happily growing in it's container.

Just hung up to dry and ripen.

Four days later, leaves are drying and tomatoes slowly ripening.

So far, one of the tomatoes is orange (hidden in the back), and the others are still hard, shiny, and plump. A few dark orange tomatoes fell off in the process of pulling up the plant, and those are finishing ripening in my kitchen. I am curious to see how this method works. It would be nice if they all slowly ripened at different intervals so that I will have fresh tomatoes well into fall.

Pasture Fencing

Part II of the fencing project.

Now that we have all the failed post replaced, it is time to sort out what to do about the wire/rail situation. The drylot will entirely be post and rail. That was easy. It's a small area and already mostly wood. So we only had a bit more to add to it.

However, our existing 3-acre pasture fence line consists of about 1500 linear feet of old posts on approximately 16' spacing, and six strand high tensile wire. I would LOVE to replace it all with good old 8' post and rail fencing, however if I want hardwood floors instead of 90's shag carpet, that can't happen right now. So, what is another safe, sturdy, and affordable option?

Existing Fencing

After much discussion, I believe we have settled on using EquiFence. It is touted as "permanent" electric fence, as opposed to the thin and flimsy electric fencing that most of us think of. You know, the kind that Rose got all tangled up in when she was three. I've been uneasy about that kind of fencing ever since. Here is what EquiFence looks like installed and a close up.

Photo from http://www.gallagherusa.com

Photo from http://www.gallagherusa.com

The wire has a "core of 12.5 Gauge, medium-tensile galvanized wire with a unique, electrically conductive polymer allowing use as an electric fence wire." - GallaherUSA.

The polymer around the wire is what makes it much safer. It is very visible and far less likely to cut up a leg. Also, you only need three strands, not 6 like we currently have. The top and bottom wires are hot, the middle is grounded. This coupled with a top notch AC electric charger, should do a good job of keeping the horses in and safe. From a cost standpoint post spacing can be 20', so our current 16' spacing will suffice and we won't have to add additional posts to the pasture. 

The big question: Cost?

I'm not sure exactly what it will cost yet, as I haven't ordered it from our local supplier yet, but their website states that it is $225 per 1000'. For three strands we will need 4500', which come to just about $1,000 for the wire. A good charger will be about $200, and then of course we will need the insulators and gate attachments which I guessing will come in around $100-200 more. So all in all we are looking at about $1400 to wire a three acre paddock. We've already replaced about 25 posts, coming in at $200 (if we had to start from scratch with 20' post spacing it would have been $600 for all the posts). That is a grand total of $1,600 for a functioning pasture fence line. Not bad compared to $15,000 for post and rail fencing!

So, I'm curious. Has anyone else used this product? Our fencing guy DR loves it, but I'd like to hear other opinions as well.

Fence Posts!

We have all sorts of projects started around the house/farm. Many of which can easily be completed once the snow has fallen, and thusly can wait a bit. I am excited to share them all with you, and I will, one at a time. However, the "biggest" project at the moment, which must happen before things freeze, is the fencing. Tonight, Part 1 of the fencing project commenced.

We have about 30 posts that have failed. I am guessing these are mostly all original posts, and probably 20-30 years old. One of Hub's best friends just so happens to own a fencing business. His parent's also happen to be moving to our town and have hired Hubs (who is an Architect) to design what will be one friggin' beautiful huge home. So, old friend DR and his folks were in town today to look at their new acreage and discuss design stuff with Hubs. Since everyone was in town and it's a friday evening, Hubs was able to sweet talk DR into bringing his post driver with him and replace our failed posts, and add new additional ones to the dry lot. DR is my hero right now!

Removing an old post.

Driving a new post.

Honestly, this machine is one of the coolest things I've ever seen. It pounds a 5" diameter driver post into the ground in about 30 seconds! In my imagination, we were going to be out there for months (MONTHS!) with a stupid post hole digger and a post pounder replacing posts. This thing rocks. Also the fact that they are doing this in the pouring rain, really makes me appreciate the awesome boys in my life even more.

New "driver" posts. Untreated. Doh. Apparently, despite my concern for horses ingesting treated wood, DR informed us that we still should have ordered treated posts. I guess untreated will only last about 5 years vs. 20 for treated. Live and learn. Oh, well. All future posts will be treated.

Rails for the dry lot. It's hard not to picture them as jump poles. Where is my paint?

Incase you can't tell (I couldn't):
I was informed by Junior that dump truck is pulling the horse trailer!

One very wet and happy english shepherd.

New fence posts.

So stinking cute...Insisting that Daddy drive the post driver.

Junior had a great time watching, and kept insisting that "Daddy drive it"! I guess he's used to Hubs doing the driving around these parts. Junior was not satisfied that DR was doing the driving. Such cuteness.

So, that's about it for the evening. It got dark before the boys finished up, so there are a few posts left to do in the morning. For now we are enjoying drying off, a yummy warm meal, and good company. Have a great weekend everyone!

Salvaging Fallen Tomatoes

Earlier this season, aware that we may sell our house and move this summer, I planted a tomato plant along with some mint, basil, thyme, and chives, in a cedar barrel container garden. As the season continued, the tomato grew, began flowering and producing fruit. I was excited! This is the first tomato I've ever grown that actually would produce fruit. Then we sold our house and would be homeless for a couple weeks. What on earth would I do with my plant? Luckily, a good friend offered to plant sit until we moved into our new house. What a relief!

Tomato container garden in early June.

Last Sunday we took my horse trailer across town to pick up the plants and move them home. They looked great and I was stunned to see how big my tomato plant had gotten, and just how many tomatoes were on it!

Tomato container garden in early August.

We carefully loaded them up and took them home to the new house. Upon unloading the tomato plant however, I was dismayed to see half a dozen tomatoes rolling about on the rubber mat floor of the trailer.

Fallen green tomatoes (and one ripe one...it didn't last long)

Surely these could be salvaged? I figured, at the very least, I could fry up some green tomatoes if they didn't ripen. Not to worry though, four days sitting on the kitchen window sill, all but the small immature tomatoes (which I ended up tossing) are turning orange!

Four days later, fallen tomatoes ripening in the window sill!

While I have been waiting for those tomatoes to ripen of the vine, a couple more have ripened on the vine. They are delicious. I am so happy and proud of my first ever successful fruit producing tomato plant. The secret I finally discovered after all these years is to fertilize them every three weeks (the herbs like it too). Now that I have a big garden area I am looking forward to planting several tomatoes next year and having an even greater harvest.

Moved In!

I just can't get over waking up to this view!

View from the living room

I have so much to share and so many topics to cover. I am very excited to really start blogging about our little farm and all the upcoming renovation projects. For not though, I just got my internet connected (that took me five days to get around to). Regardless of the delay, the first thing I was itching to do was to log on and share the good news. More to come...

Inspections

While Junior and I have been playing in the sun on the lakeshore, Hubs has remained home to wrap up the closing on the house we sold and also to be present for the inspections at the farm we are buying.

Before you think I am some sort of self centered lazeabout, let me explain my current state off relaxation. Normally I wouldn't take off for paradise and leave Hubs alone at home to do all the remaining grunt work, but this trip was planned last winter before we sold our house.  I would have cancelled but there were two other families involved and without me they couldn't have come. The timing just basically sucks. Plus, Hubs is getting his first ever baby free week, so in a way he's in paradise himself.

About the inspections.  Yes, plural.  On Monday we had the four fireplaces and the irrigation system inspected.  Then on Wednesday we had the regular house inspection done.  As to be expected with a twenty nine year old house, there are lots of little maintenance things to deal with,  but nothing big.

Great news!

Since all is well,  we are now trying to move up our closing date to shorten up our current state off homelessness. Very exciting stuff!

Below: Me, Junior & Hubs.  Last day at the old golf course house! Our dog Bourke was in the photo until he chose that moment to "clean" himself. Cropped!

Not much of anything

After all the crazy packing moving stress I am very happy to report that (while I'm temporarily homeless) I'm not doing much more than this...

Garlic!

I have harvested and braided my first ever garlic crop! My yield is small compared to what most "real" gardeners grow. That is mostly because I had to plant mine in containers, and I planted several different varieties. Some of which didn't grow at all.

My grand total was 12 garlic bulbs. 12 whole bulbs. That should last me a couple month's before I run out. I am not totally sure it was worth the effort, but I have learned a lot, and plan on putting that experience toward next years harvest.

Originally I had grand visions that every single garlic clove I planted would develop into a bulb and I would have garlic to spare so that I could replant said spare garlic cloves. Given my small yield though, I think I will just cook with them and purchase some more to plant once we have moved into our new home.

Here is what I did:
Purchased "seed garlic" last August - September. I decided to try out a couple hardneck varieties as well as softneck garlic. I planted porcelain hardneck, chesnok red harneck, and a softneck garlic (not sure what the variety was). Because I knew we were going to be listing our house for sale the coming spring, I decided to try planting them in containers instead of the ground. So, that september I planted them all in cloth containers pots with about 6" soil. I planted the garlic 2" deep and then put about 2" compost mulch over the top. I proceeded to ignore them for the winter.

In April (still winter here) I was delighted to see greens sprouting, despite the snow. Come spring/summer I watered them when the soil got dry.

Garlic in the back and on the left, everything else is onions or shallots.

I waited anxiously for scapes to appear. Apparently, it required that I go out of town for a week for this to happen. I was ecstatic upon my return. Then I gleefully harvested them and added them to salads and soup for the next week.

Garlic next to 2 year old for scale, right before cutting the scapes.
I was really surprised by how tall the plants get.

Garlic scapes! Crazy little buggers.

Then of course we sold our house, so I had to harvest the garlic about 1 - 1.5 weeks early.

Harvested garlic bulbs. Ready to dry out for a week.

Despite the early harvest, I got decent sized bulbs. Of the three varieties I planted, the porcelain harneck did the best. Almost all of those cloves grew into bulbs. I got a few cloves of the chesnok red, and only two tiny pathetic softneck garlic bulbs. They were so tiny, that they weren't even capable of being added to the braid.

Hardneck garlic, braided.

Because I like braiding things, and because I don't currently have a horse to pointlessly torture braid, I decided to ignore the naysayers of the internet and farmers markets and go ahead and braid my hardneck garlic. Guess what? They braid just fine. I now see no reason to ever try and grow softneck garlic again!

Garlic success!

Well Tests

One aspect of living on a farm (or any land outside of city limits) is that your water comes from an aquifer somewhere below your land as opposed to a treated city water plant. It turns out that there is a lot more to a well than just how many gallons per minute it produces. We already know that the well is 180 ft deep and that it gets more than 15 GPM, from the official well log.

So what are we testing for exactly and why? Because the water is isn't coming from a treatment facility, it could be better than typical city water, or worse. Before "buying the farm" one should test the well water quality during the due diligence phase. Indeed, one should regularly test their well every few years because these levels can change depending on what is happening underground. The yummy things tested for are nitrates (bad stuff...ie. blue-baby syndrome), e-coli, chloroform, and fluoride. Our dentist told us to test for the fluoride. Apparently it is naturally occurring in groundwater, and sometimes there is too much, which can be bad, especially for babies.

Armed with my sample jars that I picked up last Friday, we headed out to the property early Sunday morning to do the well test (and also to poke around some more and take room measurements for flooring quotes). To get my well samples I took the screen thingy off the kitchen faucet, bleached the heck out of it, ran the water for 10 minutes, and then filled up the little jars. The next morning we dropped them off first thing (they must be tested within 30-hours for the chloroform test). Lickity split, they ran the test, and emailed us results today.

Cost of nitrate test $28.
Cost of chloroform & e-coli test $28.
Cost of fluoride test $28.
Peace of mind that my baby won't turn blue or develop brown spotted adult teeth...priceless!

Indeed, all is well with the well!

Organizing all The Things

I have been furiously getting all of the things new farm sale related organized. Today's short list included confirming inspection appointment, getting closing date moved due to later inspection date (sucky), taking Junior on a "field trip" to pick up well water test kits from local SCARY BACTERIA LAB TESTING PLACE, and scoping out different reclaimed hardwood flooring samples at multiple different retail locations. Before I did all that, I put in a good 4 hours of actual income earning workload. Thank goodness for my nanny!

I digress. Buying a farm has a lot of unknowns, and of course you want to cross every t and dot every i before you actually "by the farm". I am sure that saying exists for a good reason. Regardless, we are feeling very positive about everything thus far. Hubs even spoke to the president of the HOA board today and got "warm fuzzies". I never thought I'd ever hear that come out of his mouth in the same sentence as HOA in my life. There is a first for everything I guess.

So, what's next? On Sunday we are meeting at the property with our realtor so that we can do the well testing and also to measure the rooms in the house, so we can get actual quotes on material for flooring changes. Then we will actually put in a preliminary order for materials, so that we can get the new flooring in ASAP once we take possession of the property.

Yep. It was installed in 1985, no joke.

Because, yeah...those carpets have to go (especially in the bathrooms)!

About the Property

I thought it was time I told you a bit about the property that we have under contract!

First off, a side note about buying instead of building:
I am sad that we aren't building from scratch. However, I am also happy that we aren't building. Those sentences are oxymoronic in nature, I know, but the reality is it would have been a HUGE stressor to build. Especially right now, with Junior at the age he is. I have been involved in the building of a house before, and even under the best of circumstances, everything suffers for it. I was prepared for that, and we would have gotten through it. However, life has just recently gotten somewhat easy again, now that Junior is two. For instance, I now shower at least 4 days a week in private and use words like oxymoron again instead of just staring blankly at people due to a sleep deprived haze. I don't need nor want things to get hard again. So it is a mixed blessing that we found this farm when we did. Now fingers crossed everything goes well with the inspection process.

House, Garage/Shop, Barn viewed from the pasture.
Snow covered Spanish Peaks in the background.

About the farm:
It consists of 5 acres, 30-minutes from downtown Bozeman (but closer to skiing), with beautiful 360º views of the Spanish Peaks Mountain Range, various foothills, and Ted Turner's Buffalo Ranch. There is an existing 3000 sf house (dated, but clean and turn key), very large 6 car sized man cave garage/shop, 1500 sf pole barn with insulated & heated tack room, and smooth wire fencing that is in pretty good shape but needs top rails, hot wire, and some TLC. The landscaping is also very dated but irrigated, and there are some existing fenced vegetable garden beds that I can't wait to clean up. At the barn/drylot area there is an existing automatic horse waterer that I hope still works, and room for a 100x200 arena in a couple different locations as well as a 66' round pen.

If that all wasn't just awesome enough, it gets better. It turns out, I may not need to build an arena because the subdivision has an outdoor arena in the 15 acre community park, 1/2 mile down a gravel road from the farm's driveway! There are also riding trails and a creek in the park. Once I get bored with all of that, it is a short drive/haul to Forest Service Land. Shockingly enough, we didn't even know about the park/arena until after we had made an offer on the place. Happy accident indeed!

The Counter

The seller's of the farm we found last week made a counteroffer, which we expected to happen. It just took them the entire weekend to get back to us. I guess the date/time limit on these contracts is more of a "grey" area than I realized. Anyway...what we didn't expect to happen was for their offer price to be the exact total we were hoping that we would be able to negotiate to, which we needed it to be in order to actually buy the farm. Please humor me while I let the 13 year old horse obsessed little girl out for one second...

OMG! Sqee! I am so friggin' excited!

Alrighty, now that I got that out of my system, back to adult reality. Given that the number is where we needed it to be we have decided to omit further haggling and have accepted their counteroffer. Now we are moving onto the exciting area of inspections and due diligence. After that is all done the property is all our and we close on August 7th. Woo Hoo!

I will have more juicy details, and finally some photos later this week. But for now, my 13 year old self will leave you with...OMG! OMG! OMG!

Just Maybe...

We really liked one of the properties we looked at yesterday and have decided to make an offer. I don't want to give any details about it just yet, so as to not jinx it. Once we are under contract I promise to share all the juicy details. Anyway, the next 24 hours should provide us with a lot of excruciating torture while we wait on the response from the seller. Wish us luck!

Smooth Sailing

We just got news today that the appraisal on our house came in and was all good. I'm sure it appraised higher than the selling price, as I've mentioned before. However, we will never know.

The seller generally only sees the appraisal if it comes in too low and the buyer (their bank) uses that to re-negotiate the price. We ran into that issue when we sold my old condo a few years ago. I think we had PTSD over it (we lost a lot of money on that condo...thanks to the great recession) as we've been really paranoid about it happening again. Not this time however. Smooth sailing. Yea for the buyers, but an eternal lifetime of wondering for us. Well not really, I'm sure once we've moved and start building the new house we will forget all about it. But for dramatics sake I give you...

WE WILL NEVER KNOW!!!

Now the buyers just have to have all of their financing approved by/on Friday. Then after that there really isn't anything aside from an act of Mother Nature that can kill the deal. It's all really exciting. But more exciting is that we are looking at a couple pieces of property with our realtor tomorrow afternoon. Yup, it's all happening!

Frustrating

Shopping for land is frustrating.

Well, at least on a limited budget it is. It seems like every time we find something that we like, there is some major hurdle that kills it (like $50k to run electricity down a road) or someone else has just snatched it up. The latter is the one that has me the most frustrated. I could go on and on about this, but I won't. It is just really frustrating, and at times it seems like we will never find land. I remind myself that something will eventually come along. The problem I have with that is the eventually part. Just how long is eventually?

Getting Closer to Closing

We were away last week for vacation. That is kind of an amazing statement for me to make. Vacations haven't really happened much since having Junior. It was a nice time away, especially now that Junior reliably sleeps all the time. However, Hubs still had to work most of the time. Definitely a perk (lots of vacation whenever you want) and a drawback (having to work on said vacation) of being self employed. So the week away was nice, but it has taken me all week (4 days) to catch up from being gone. Ugh.

At any rate, the vacation worked out to be very well timed. While we were away the house got inspected and appraised. Luckily we were smart enough to go to the extra trouble of making it show ready before we left. Of course a few fiddly things came back on the inspection report, but nothing big and deal-breaker worthy. We've yet to hear anything back from the appraisal, so we are hoping that means all is well. I wouldn't be shocked if our house appraised much higher than the sales price we agreed too. It is a rather nice house and the market is on fire right now. But, that's all part of the real estate guessing game.

Now that we are feeling pretty good and secure about the house sale, we are starting to seriously shop for land. Tomorrow we will be driving around a bit looking at a few different 5 acre parcels that we've been keeping an eye on. Stay tuned!

Forming a more solid plan

After much debate about "roughing" it in the future garage, we've come to the conclusion that we will just rent until the house is built. For one thing, we don't yet have land to build on, and we don't want to rush that process. Even if we did, we would still need to live somewhere before the garage got built, and finding a month/month lease is even harder than a six month lease. So, renting it is. In times like these, I miss the easy care free days pre-kid. If we were doing this back then, we would totally just be camping until winter hit. It would be an "adventure". We would drink a lot of wine and find ways to stay warm and join a gym in order to take showers. But, with a two year old running around, it doesn't sound so much like an adventure than my own personal stay at home mom version of hell. No thank you.

So, renting it is. That however brings us back to the fact that it is EXPENSIVE to rent here (with a dog). No dog, no problem. It would be easy to find a reasonably priced place. But the dog is here, and here to stay. So, what can we do? Move to the next town over while we build, which has significantly less expensive rentals. Cons? It means a 20-30 minute commute for Hubs to his office (which is conveniently located 1/2 mile from our current home) and to the future build site. So that is a bummer, but otherwise, Junior isn't in school yet and I work from home, so we won't really be impacted that much, aside from living in a smaller house. No biggy there. Vacuuming a 3000 sf house is very overrated. Bring on 1500 sf of less cleaning please!

That's where we are at now. Now if only I could get a craigslist rental response from someone not residing in nigeria, that would be terrific!

Complications

So far the house sale is marching forward just fine, but that is where things start getting complicated.

First, the fun stuff! We have been furiously designing the house (Hubs is an Architect) and putting together a cost estimate for the build out. The latter might sound droll, but I have a sick obsession/love for spreadsheets, so I am actually loving that part. Not to mention, it is fun picking out theoretical appliances And finishes when I need to fill in a line item. When it comes time to actually pick them out it will be more complicated of course, as Hubs will likely want to have some input. For now though, its all just fun daydream land.

Now for the complicated. Where are we going to live for the next 6 to 12 months while we build? Renting is an option, but around here, if you can find a 2br that allows a dog you are lucky if it costs less than $1250/mo. Bozeman is easily one of the most expensive towns to live in Montana due to the university and tourism. The reality is there aren't 2br apartments, so we would probably end up with a 3br, which start at $1250 and go to $1500. Over the course of a year, that is a lot of money in someone elses pocket that could otherwise pay for things such as fencing. So, we aren't wild about renting.

Staying with family is not an option, as we have no family in town. Camping, even in an RV would work through September, however it is not an option with a toddler and Montana winters. Just the thought makes me cringe from the potential stir crazy cabin fever. So, what is another option?

Currently we are debating very quickly building the garage first. It will be a three car detached garage. We would borrow a friend's RV that we would stay in while the garage is being built. Then we would install the wood stove intended for the main house in the garage temporarily, park the RV in the garage so that we still have a kitchen and toilet/shower without having to install plumbing, and set up the garage like a studio apartment. We would likely put up temporary walls so that Junior has a quiet and dark sleeping area.

Thats the current thought. Now we just have to settle on a piece of land so that we have somewhere to park said RV when our house closes. Oh, and of course put everything else in storage I the mean time. If anyone has a suggestion on another live/build option that I haven't mentioned, let me know!

The ball is rolling...

Our house is under contract! The offer came in Sunday night, and then all the expected back and forth wrapped up late Monday night. It was so exciting. I'd be lying if I didn't tell you that we did a shot of patron to celebrate. Well...they were more of a 3/4 shot, it was a Monday night after all.

After that shot though, we looked at each other and realized how much we had to get sorted out in the next 7 weeks! Thank goodness the buyers wanted a later closing date. Just how much do we have to sort out, you might ask? A lot. Here is a list off the top of my head.

Stuff to Sort Out:

1. Decide to buy existing farm or buy land and build. The rest of this list only pertains to the latter.
2. Depending on land covenants of vacant land, find somewhere to rent or an RV to borrow for the next 4-5 months while we build.
3. Design house and master plan the farm/equestrian facilities so that the plans and permit applications are ready to go on the day we close on land.
3. Put almost everything in storage, and sell extra furniture (we will be downsizing from a house that is massively too big for us to something much more reasonable).
4. Move.
5. Build house.
6. Move again.
7. Build rest of farm.
8. Obtain horses & chickens. So friggin' excited about this one.

It will be an adventure, and I simply cannot wait to get started! Hurray!

Introducing Fast Forks Farm!

We were sitting around our dinner table about a month ago, actually having conversation, with guests. I can't believe that happened. Now that Junior is almost two, we are all sleeping and on occasion we leave him with a sitter and actually go out for an evening! Life is starting to resemble something I recognize. It only took two years. Sheesh. But, I digress.

We were sitting around the dinner table, and as usual I finished my dinner before anyone else. One might argue it is because I talk less. However that isn't remotely true. If you ever met me you would agree silence and food are not two things that go together in my company. At any rate, someone remarked that I won the "fast forks award".

That's it. Both Hubs and I agreed instantly that that was the perfect name for our someday farm! So, Fast Forks Farm is born. Now there is just the small matter of selling our house and building the farm. This blog will document that process, as well as be a forum for me to post about all the other farm related things that go on in my life like gardening and canning (these are things I do now...even without a farm) and all the new things that will come with farm life. So stay tuned!