and then there was a farm

So how did this all begin?

I have lived in a city all my life. When I was growing up, my mom was always the adventurous one. Laws and ordinances were just merely suggestions. We moved to a small suburb in Wisconsin. And mom wanted ducks. So we got ducks. Then mom wanted geese. So we got geese. And then mom wanted guinea hens, and yep we got guinea hens. None of these were allowed in city limits, but like so many people, my mom made it work. The neighbors didn’t care. They didn’t make too much noise. We always had animals growing up.

One of the ducks decided to lay eggs around Thanksgiving. The ducks weren’t broody and we wanted to give those eggs a chance. So my dad reached out to a farmer he knew and sure enough, he had a broody hen named Molly. So we took Molly on loan. She lived in our basement, in my mom’s craft room to be exact. Turned out to be a very bad idea. The Molly story is crazy, I will tell that tale in a future post.

But a single broody hen wasn’t good enough for me. I had chickens on my bucket list. I always wanted chickens. But I was a city guy. And I am less adventurous than my mom was so laws and ordinances mattered. Believe me, if I could have found a loophole in any of my homes I would have had chickens. But I didn’t.

Jump ahead 40 years. I have just moved in to a custom built home. Everything was of my design. The colors, the tiles, the kitchen, the faucets, the door knobs. You get it. A custom home. Everything is just as I wanted it. Building a custom home was also on my bucket list. I could check that box. Done.

But the charm soon wore off as the subdivision filled up. Gone were the open spaces. It was replaced by screaming children and trampolines. Every house had a barking dog. When my dogs bark I bring them in the house. My neighbors would leave them to bark all day long. Too many junk cars parked on the street. The city itself was too congested, too many people moving in without upgrading the infrastructure. So I called my real estate agent. I asked her if it made sense to make a change. It did. So I did.

I sold my beautiful custom home in the suburbs and moved into a farm in the middle of nowhere. The home is far from custom. It is very rural. I have never had a well before. I have never had a septic system. But it came with acres of pasture land and some water shares. Everything I would need.

And then there was the farm …