Moving in Six Weeks..... Ready or Not!

It's hard to believe and also a bit scary to do, but we have set a moving date and in six weeks we move our home to the new farm..... whether or not it's ready.

We know the house won't be ready to live in for some time, and we will be living in the motor-home until it is.  It's not bad, the motor-home is quite comfortable and has all the creature comforts.  The only thing we won't have are utilities.


Until we get our building permit we cannot finish the house, or get the electricity connected.  But we have been managing nicely without it.  Although it was always for just a week or two at a time, then we returned to our "town home".

In six weeks, when we return to the farm it will be for keeps and for the first time in my life, after having lived in so many places I have lost track, I find it a bit unnerving.  It will be the start of a completely new way of life for us in a strange, new place.  A new life for which I have been preparing for and dreaming of since childhood.  But, in truth, I had hoped that it would have happened while I was young, and certainly never imagined it would happen only after I retired.

As I mentioned earlier, I had been dreaming of, and preparing for this all my life.  In childhood I learned all about needlework arts which would dress my family and decorate my home.  I learned to cook and clean, and to garden and preserve as well as to prepare nutritious foods.  I learned how to stretch a dime to amazing lengths and to live well "without" as well as to make the most of what I had.  Now it is time to put all those skills to the test with this new life-style, in this new remote location and without public utilities.

It is a bit scary, but it is also exciting and we are so eager to put this current life behind us.  There won't be any long hot showers for a while, and I can forget about sleeping in our big, comfortable bed for a while too.  But, instead we will no longer fall asleep to the sound of revving engines, loud mufflers, squealing tires and blaring sirens at all hours of the day and night.

It also means building the farm from scratch.  There is no garden, but there are dozens of acres where we grow whatever, or at least some, of what we wish to grow.  There is a lovely big barn constructed of lumber made right there, from the hard wood trees that abound, a hundred years ago.  With a bit of work it will be good as new.

I've always had a fascination with old barns ever since my mother took us kids to visit a pair of her older cousins who lived on the farm they inherited from their parents decades before.  It was wonderful and I can still see the old, wood burning kitchen stove that their mother had used to heat the home and cook meals for her growing family more than a century ago.  Their barn, to a ten year
old, was massive and mysterious.  It seemed to have been full to bursting with much more than just hay.  There were bits of their family's past filling the loft and just about every nook and cranny.

I wish I could revisit that barn now, but like most of the farms in that area, they have long since been converted into residential developments with cookie cutter homes which have eradicated all evidence of the past.


Our "new" barn is empty of physical relics, but there is remains a since of its past and the people that built it and depended upon it to store their supplies.  Once we repair the siding, it will be good as new.  The interior lumber is in beautiful condition with no evidence of age or deterioration at.  Even its metal roof is in surprisingly good condition.  The barn is tucked in at the edge of the woods and near a small pond.  It has been sitting, waiting to be resurrected and will soon be made visible and useful again.

There is also a very run down, small barn for animals.  From the outside it appears the next strong wind may flatten it, but the inside reveals that there is still many years left for it provide shelter for future live-stock.

Yes, we are starting almost from scratch, but it is ours and will be developed following our dreams and our creativity.  When we sit on the porch in the evenings, watching the sunset and looking out at the empty acres, we talk and imagine how it will be sometime in the future, after the work is finished, and the farm is thriving.  The fear of making this move, and of starting over, seems to just fade and we are at peace.  We are more rested and relaxed than we could ever be in town, even after working hard all day building our dream homestead.