A Year Of Searching

The idea of finding land seemed overly simple to me when faced with dozens of potential properties popping up online every day. I'm not sure if it came from a place of naivety or my natural instincts to just plow through challenges. What I do know is that when looking back at the year of searching for our little plot of paradise, I don't know how I mentally survived it.

Almost every month, sometimes every other weekend, we were loading up the dogs and taking off. We'd drive from Pennsylvania to Maryland and then down into Virginia over and over and over again, looking at anywhere between 3 and 6 properties. We only stayed overnight once, and that was at the tail end.

If you've ever looked at raw land in rural areas, it's surprisingly difficult to find. Most don't have clear property lines. Many didn't have addresses or even real estate signs out front. Google maps and cell service were spotty at the best of times.

We'd drive for hours, hopefully find the place, pray there would be a driveway or something for us to park on and then chop through pricker bushes like maniacs wielding machetes. If you think I'm exaggerating, I am not, we had machetes and they were used, often.

It didn't matter if it was freezing cold or 100 degrees outside, we were there, knowing we had a tiny window before prices went up and our opportunity got priced out.

At the time we had Sailor and Prudence. A motley crew of the sweetest and most tolerant dogs. I remember one time we went to a beautiful property in Java, Va and got COVERED in ticks. All of us, including the poor dogs. They had no idea what we were doing, but they were there for it. We were so blessed to have those experiences with them both. Unfortunately they'd both pass within a year of us purchasing our farmstead.

I can say that this was both the most stressful and wonderful year I've had to-date. Spending sometimes 20 hours in the car with your partner can be trying, but we also grew so much closer. We'd listen to podcasts or enjoy the scenery in silence. We talked about pretty much anything two people can talk about and it was lovely. We got to explore these states and see areas we'd never knew existed. We even found a family graveyard.

Requirements for our land were added, deleted and modified. We learned what would work, what we could make work and what we wouldn't want to deal with, like wetlands and the army core of engineers. We figured out that we weren't mountain people. We played with the idea of living on the coast. We got to bask in the glory of the James River and even made an offer on a property nearby. We learned about ground water, soil scientists and the different types of zoning. We became educated on codes and weighed out the pros and cons of planned developments.

For a year, we did this. We loaded up the dogs and took off. And every time I'd go back online and look for more potential properties. This is when I reintroduced power points. Andrew needs to see and compare. So I'd look in a region, propose properties via power point and then map our path to check them out as quickly as possible.

After our first attempted land purchase fell through due to title issues, I started to feel the burnout. We'd gotten off track. Somehow the goal of finding an affordable piece of land around 10 acres turned into a laundry list of "must haves" that were impossible to fit into our tiny budget box.

For my own mental health I had to draw the line. "I have one more tip in me. We need to decide on a handful of properties and work our way through them in one round trip. If we don't find it this time, I need to take some time off." I said, with the full knowledge that time off meant the probable end of our dream.

So I did what any self respecting wife would do, I snuck in what I thought would be a perfect property that Andrew had kept turning down. I sold him on the teaching of a homesteading couple out of Tn. They're number one piece of homesteading advice is "Buy Ugly, buy cheap." Ugly land can be made beautiful. It was the fact that our parcel had recently been logged that turned Andrew off. He wanted woods and a forest, but those cost a lot of money. So entertain me, I said. Let's just go and look at this while we're in the area.

One of the reasons that Andrew and I work well together is that I like to see the potential in things. I see what it is today and what it can become with a little work or support. I do it with all types of things, salvaged items, rescue dogs, abandoned properties, people and apparently raw land. And Andrew gets excited to help grow that potential, but he has to be shown it. So that's what I did, and the second he stepped foot onto the property that would eventually become ours, he fell in love.

The problem was, I did not. It wasn't what I pictured or wanted at all. It was too remote, removed from everything. I wanted community and maybe a little coffee shop nearby. Hell, I would have settled for a library. Simply put, I wanted a place where I could make friends. So how did we end up buying that property? Well I'll tell you about it in my next post.

TTFN,

P