We are back!!!
It finally happened…
One year to the day, we packed up our Kids and chickens and left Missouri.
We have been going back-and-forth between wanting to stay in our "Dreamhouse" or wanting to get more land, which would require us to purchase another house anyways. This back-and-forth thing has gone on for several months.
While our Missouri homestead offered so many things like: our massive garden boxes that brought us and the neighbors plenty of tomatoes year after year, building and rebuilding our first chicken coop, purchasing and preparing for chicks to bringing home our first chickens, trying to figure out what to do with 50lbs of sweet, purple plums (which resulted in new jams and cakes), and what homesteading means to us – we cannot wait to see what our new home(stead) will bring us.
Our Missouri home(stead) was small, within city limits and wouldn't legally allow us to have chickens, but we had great neighbors, amazing friends that supported us and a fresh foods right from the garden each day.
Do you see now why this decision was so hard for us to make?
It all came down to one winter night. One night that made the decision so much easier. That night it got very, very cold. -18 when I remember correctly and my husband was in bad joint pains.
So, that morning we started looking. Looking for a warmer winter climate but still green summers. Looking for a special something. We knew when we found it we would just know!
We searched for a good few months. We didn't really care too much about the area where our new Homestead would be - as long as it wouldn't snow 200 days a year. Well- after checking out 5 different states... we found it. In Texas! In a rural town of 500ish people.
We have have looked at the property several times, but at the time we drove to Texas to check out homes it wasn't available to view. Online didn't show any pictures, so we thought to ourselves it wasn't the one for us and chucked it to the side.
A few weeks later we stumbled on the same property again. So, we called our real estate agent .. what could it hurt? And, the rest is History!
Before we knew it, we were making plans, packing boxes and ordering moving trucks.
Our old homestead had 0.5 Acres. New one - 24 Acres of pasture and wooded land, ponds and a natural spring. Our old home had 5 bedrooms and a nice yard we had adjusted to what we needed. New farm came with an old barn, fenced pastures and a workshop for the hubby EEK! HE HAS ALWAYS WANTED ONE- and yes that requires screaming!
Yes, the new place sounds like a dream, and it is, but it also comes with a LOT of work to be done. A lot. And by a lot - i mean a super-duper-tremendous amount of improvements. But, for those of you that know us we are NOT afraid of hard work. I mean just last night we were up until 2am working on improving the website and planning out the fruit tree orchard to be more sufficient.
And not to mentioned Aaron and I are experts at fixing and redoing things... well okay maybe just Aaron! But I am great at making decisions and planning.
So yea, 365 days ago, we moved a homestead. Moving a regular home- with kids- is exhausting and takes lots of planning, but moving a homestead can pretty much give you the biggest anxiety attack one has ever experienced. We had the dogs, cats, chickens, plants and larger trees to move across state lines, but luckily under 9 hours... well technically unless you are like us and everything that could possible go wrong during a move, would go wrong! So 8 hours turned into 25 hours! But we have survived!!
And survival is what this journey is all about y'all!
Following our dream and moving to this new home(stead) has allowed us to not only start our family farm, but also provide us with so much more land to accomplish our ideas and educate others on growing foods from home. And yes, we plan on selling: eggs, homemade soaps, cheeses, produce and eventually honey. This is our dream, and we finally get to live it!
