So we have decided....

We've decided after much discussion with relatives and friends that we are firing our banker dude working on our home loan.  What does that mean?  It means that we are either going to wait until spring to build or we are going to find an existing home with acreage and divide projects between both lots.  There are actually 3 homes in our searches that would be a good place to start looking so probably after the new year we'll start our search for existing homes and put building on the back burner for now. 

We may come back to the idea to build and we are going to leave our deposit with the builder we've selected for now.  As it stands we wouldn't be moving in until spring or summer anyhow once the house would be built so a few months of clarity would be good for us.  We DO still plan to get chickens and goats in the spring despite the fact that we won't have a house out there.  I've seen some really nice igloo style goat housing, movable fencing and I think the addition of a milk stand and an "instant" canvas garage might get us started.  For chickens we will build a chicken tractor to keep them safe and contained.  We only live about 10 minutes away right now so we will be transporting water and spending a lot of time out there gardening so I think it will work.

The nice thing is that we own the land we planned to build on and I think with some creativity we will still make it a farm, even if we are farming from another location too.  Ideally if we find an existing home to purchase it will have land of its own.  One of the ones on our short list includes 12 acres...so in that purchase we will go from 9 acres to 21 total acres!  Holy cow(s)!  We may have to start raising grass fed beef to keep that managed.  Darn!  I "hate" having such high quality problems. :D

I'm reading Joel Salatin's book right now, You Can Farm, and its providing me with some inspiration about farming remotely since in this book he's adamant that you don't even have to own the land you farm on (too late for that one). 

I'll keep y'alls posted on what happens next.  Wish us luck!

Contemplating a change of course

We are at a point where we are considering other alternatives to our original plan.  One option is to keep with what we are trying to do, build the house on our land starting sometime hopefully soon with the banker we can't stand.  The second option is to find an existing home with land and farm it or both locations.  The third option is to stop where we are with this lender, regroup and find a new lender in the spring with a fresh face- this may or may not include keeping the current builder.  If we don't keep this builder I have a mind to revert back to one I interviewed before that we were pretty impressed with and our original smaller cape cod style plan.

The builder has really gone out of their way to try to make this work, its not their fault.   I'm not even sure if the fault lies on the bank themselves.  The banker that we are dealing with though is about to make me go off.  Its been since the end of August since we signed on.  They approved our loan back in early october.  Our appraisal has been done for nearly a month and now they are saying its a bad appraisal, that the house out front is/was a problem, etc, etc....it just goes on and on!  I think we've just about had it though. 

If any of y'alls have been here, have any advice or whatever...we'll take it!  So far our families think we should walk from this bank.  We are pretty much in agreement.

In other news (see I'm not all gloomy), I met with a survivalist group today.  Lots of great people with good ideas and skills, some of which we've not yet dabbled in yet.  Its good to have folks to ask when starting something new :)  If I get the ok from them I'll try to post a link sometime soon.

Next week maybe?

I spoke to both the bank dude and the builder today and it sounds like the problem is the appraisal.  Remember that 10k in improvements, well apparently that means to one party something different than it means to the others.  To the appraiser, its the lot improvements such as to be done well, sewer, drive, etc.  To the bank, it meant improvements we had already completed.  To us, it means more money at closing...but they can't yet say how much that will be.  Both the builder and the banker agree that the goal currently is to close by Friday the 10th and by Dec 15th at the latest.  

On a cheerier note, we are getting snow and if it actually will stick long enough to get a picture of it I'll have to put a pre-construction snow picture up under pictures soon. 

Last day of the month

...and I have nothing to report :(

The walkout with Jack

So this is approximate the home site.

Neil is about at the front left corner of it.

Neil at front left corner, Jack at rear left corner

Jack is at the front right corner of the garage.

I don't know if you can see it but the upside down hammer Jack is walking away from would be the garage entrance.

view from front porch

facing out the front door

approximate view from living room window minus a truck

approx. view from office window

builder's sign

Its cold! I want to go home!

Walk out scheduled

We have more progress!  On Friday, we will be meeting with the builder to do what they call a walk out (and I keep wanting to call a stake out- sounds so much more elusive doesn't it) where we go to the property and mark with stakes where the house will sit.  Pictures to come with the stakes in place :)

Small, but big stuff happening

I just got off the phone with our bank dude, Tony, he has officially locked in our interest rate.  He says the goal is to have our loan closed by the end of the month.  All goes well that means the build will begin in December.  Fingers crossed! 

How it looks right now

So this is our 9.4 acre field as it looks today.  Nothing too exciting yet.  I decided to take this picture as I pulled in on my way to drop off compost from our kitchen and I thought this would be a good time to take a picture like this.  I'm really hoping in a few weeks I can show you a similar picture but with a scurry of excavators and workers trying to erect the framework of a house.  The tire treads you see now will be the driveway and we plan to make it 400 feet long for privacy and well, if you have this much space why not?  We go all the way back to the tree lines on either side and the houses in the very back.  If you looked to the left you'd see the Christmas tree we planted the first year we bought the land and just after that our nearest neighbor's house.  We have a little additional land on the other side of her house too. 

Speaking of that tree line, thought I'd show you my husband's latest project: Removal of extra, broken, diseased trees in the windbreak.  Boy, he took on the task.  This picture (below) is either a Bradford or Cleveland pear that was broken in a storm recently.  Fun huh?  Still lots to do.

Hoping to have more soon!

Slowly moving along, but we have progress!

Ok so now we have the appraisal back....its good!  They appraised the land and house at about 20k higher than the cost.  The only possible problem at this point is that the land itself appraised at 50k which is about 7k less than it did 2 years ago.  The upside is the appraiser made a note that we had made about 10k in land improvements so fingers crossed that those count toward our down payment.  It sounds like we might get started next month if the weather holds but I'm still not ready to declare it as a done deal.  More to come soon I hope!

The stars!

So tonight my husband and I picked up some unwanted limbs and firewood and drug them back to our property to burn tonight.  They finally lifted the burn ban in our area so my husband has been just itching to start a fire.  We left him to it.  So I called around 9pm wondering if he was camping out...nope...just needed some water to put out the remaining embers.  I drove out to the property to meet him with a 5 gallon bucket of water and looked up into the sky on the way there and didn't see any stars so I assumed it was cloudy.   Once I arrived at the property I realized I was wrong, yes it was partly cloudy, but our city has a good deal of light pollution in town that prevents you from seeing those lovely stars.  Out on the property, you can see a lovely sky full of small white twinkles and only a few wispy clouds. 

This is one of many reasons why we love this property!

I'm told it won't be to much longer now

 I'm told by both TK and by Tony the bank dude (yes, that is how I have him listed in my cell phone) that we should hear something from the appraisal soon...as in the next couple of days.  This is so unnerving.  I'm mostly worried that the appraisal will be too low and we will be back to square one (or two since we already own the land).

I did have the pleasure of visiting the old house I grew up in since its in foreclosure now and I have to say that I thought I might be more interested in buying it at one time but in reality its just too much work.  It was a little sad to visit memory lane, after all I did get married there, had my sweet sixteen birthday there and so much more.  The house is in some disrepair but not unlivable or impossible to make nice.  Its also going for a bargain so I REALLY hope that someone who buys it will fix it up and really love it.  Houses that old really deserve to be well loved.

I did get some pruning done in the last few days.  All of the fruit trees have now been fall pruned and the trees on the back acre have been relieved of their water sprouts and dead limbs.  By fall pruned I mean pruned to restrict growth.  I'm really hoping to properly train our fruit trees to be a manageable size and highly productive.  I'm also really hoping we actually get a few pieces of homegrown fruit next year.  We still need to fortify and possibly move our blueberries, plant the new honeyberries and goji fruits I just received yesterday and move the surviving raspberries into our windbreak.  Lots to get done before winter :)  Oh and we have more orchard trees (1 each apricot, apple, nectarine and asian pear) on the way and 3 additional blueberries.  Some year we should have a crazy amount of produce from our own land...I can't wait.

Still waiting on the bank

Well, title says it all.  We are still waiting for a response from the bank.  We know it went over to appraisals because they finally cashed our check.  I'm making a basic assumption that they would have ran our finances before it went to appraisals so we should be nearing the end of the process of the bank part.  Either they will say yes or no.


I've contact two Indiana goat breeders to let them know we would be trying to obtain dairy goats in the spring.  I was thinking on getting two, I figure at just under a gallon a day, two would allow me to have milk to make ice cream, cheese, store some and have plenty to drink too.  Also in the plans are some broilers and layers.

I'll be glad once we get going on all this stuff, its stressful around here right now with the way things are around the apartment.  We're pretty squished and just lots going on.

anticlimatic

There is nothing going on right now.  We hired the builder, we are waiting for the financing and the garden has slowed WAY down. 
I've been dreaming.  I still have lots of that going on.

Yay! we are moving forward!!!

Ok we are onboard for building this fall.  Sounds like after talking to the finance guy that we should be approved (not worried) and able to get started.  Trying to wrap my head around it.  Its this plan
The Raleigh

A

Moving forward?

Moving forward is more of an inquiry than a statement today.  Tomorrow we speak with a builder about beginning a build.  Its very exciting but I have some concerns related to financing that hopefully won't amount to anything. 

The hay has been rained on now many times and I'm sure is only good for cows.  We've had a couple of people call on it but they never seem to follow through with the call back and pick up.  Not exactly sure what's going on there.

The garden is fading fast with the exception of a few plants; okra, popcorn, cowpeas, pintos, chard and kohlrabi.  I'm actually a bit eager for the end of this years garden.