Here’s a little update on what we’ve been up to in regards to our move, and the story on how we got our little piece of heaven.

We sold our suburban home and bought 13 acres in the rural countryside. The land couldn’t be more beautiful and unique; and it’s so perfect for us. The perimeter of the land is in the shape of an “L” and about half of the 13 acres is flat, the other half is a mix of hill with some variable flat areas. Our house is located on the highest point of the land and has breathtaking 360° views. The flat area is a mix of meadow and woodlands with native grasses, oaks, cottonwoods and numerous other native plants and flowers. The meadow and woodland is surrounded by small seasonal creeks on each side. As I write this… I’m thinking “this is so magical, too good to be true.” But it is true, and I feel beyond blessed that God has led us to and entrusted with this small piece of His Creation.

Our new land is so wonderful and perfect, but the process to get here sure wasn’t. Best described as an emotional roller-coaster, the process of getting land has been long and frustrating, filled with so many doubts and anxieties, but rewarding in the end.

In the beginning of 2014 we started plans for raised garden-beds in our suburban backyard. Shortly after we got three cute little chicks from our local feed store so we could have our own fresh eggs. We tended to our new garden and cared for the chicks all spring and summer. We reaped our harvests in summer through fall, and got our first eggs around that same time. That’s when it happened… we got the bug, the homesteading bug that is! That was the point of no return; we were hooked on this new homesteading lifestyle. From there on we constantly thought about all the ways we could become more self-sustainable, get more out of our suburban backyard, and really get more out of life in general. We wanted to live a more meaningful and intentional life. Go back to the basics, live simpler, healthier, closer with nature and our Creator. By the end of that first summer we acquired our meat rabbit breeders, and that next spring expanded our backyard garden three-fold.

Towards the later part of 2014, we were hard-core dreaming about buying land; acreage in the countryside. But as most of us know, land is expensive, very expensive, especially in southern California. We started doing internet searches for land in other states, because it was so much cheaper. What started as for fun mostly, turned into a real possibility. Texas kept popping up and we loved what we could get for our money there. We started to seriously consider moving to Texas, we even took a trip in the fall to look around and get a feel for the area we were most interested in. Our trip was amazing, and by the time we got back, all we wanted to do was move to Texas, buy some land and start a farm; it was all that consumed our thoughts! But the more we thought about having to move away from all our family, we started to question it. Most of our family lives in California, and we didn’t know anyone Texas. We still love the idea of moving to Texas, as Nic says “I left a part of my heart there.” But at this point in our life it’s off the table, maybe someday in the future when we retire or something.

By that next spring we started to consider moving up to the central coast of California, where my grandparents and numerous other relatives live. I have the fondest memories at my grandparents and have always loved the area. It’s even more expensive than where we lived at the time, but we still wanted to try and make it work. However, towards the end of the summer of 2015, Nic got really great career opportunity near where we already lived in southern California. We were so torn because we wanted to move, but couldn’t turn down this great opportunity. So we stayed, but started to feel kind of trapped and hopeless. We had this burning feeling inside of us to do something more. We pretty much already maxed out the gardening and animal-raising we could do in our backyard. All we could think about is homesteading on a larger scale and starting a farm in the future. We felt that God was leading us into this lifestyle, but at the same time felt completely lost as to where to go from here.

That fall we started looking into land in our area, there was a few… not as large or beautiful as we dreamed, but we figured any start is better than no start. We packed up about half our belongings and got the house ready to sell. Almost immediately we fell in love with a 5 acre property with a complete fixer-upper house, but it was close to the city. We put in an offer with selling our house as a contingency, our offer was accepted and we listed our house for sale. Within a few days we accepted an offer on our house and opened escrow on both properties the same day. Everything seemed to be going so well, it must be meant to be! That weekend we did the home inspection, the house had a lot of problems, which we were ok with (Nic being a great handyman and all). That Monday the appraiser came out to do his inspection, we anxiously waited (for what seemed like forever) for the result. On Christmas Eve the appraisal came back low and the seller wasn’t willing to work with us at all. My heart sank; the world felt like it was over, really over. We fell so deeply in love with this property; we didn’t think we would find anything else as nice. For a short amount of time, we considered giving up; but we already had buyers for our house lined up, waiting for us to find something else.

We started to look again, finding others we liked, put in offers, all rejected. We again continued to look more, stumbling on one that was pretty far out in the country, but was cheaper than we were expecting, so it we figured it could be worth it, even with the extra commute. Our offer was accepted and we went into escrow towards the beginning of 2016. Later in the day after opening escrow, we come to find out the property’s well is actually a shared well (the seller suspiciously left this information out until after opening escrow). I dug pretty deep into the shared well agreement, internet searches, and even made a call into one of the board members of the so-called “water association.” And unfortunately this so-called water association wasn’t really legit, had some legal problems in the past, and was run on vague bylaws and by sketchy board members. We ran away from this one quick, which brought us back to square one again!…

At this point we were seriously thinking about giving up on this whole homestead and farming dream. It seemed like everything was going against us. We felt this dream was God’s calling for us, but why was it so difficult and heart-wrenching!? We probably asked ourselves that question hundreds of times. We prayed constantly and decided that we could try one more week for something to work out, and if it didn’t, we would take a break for a while. That weekend we went to look at a three more properties. The first two weren’t going to work with what we wanted, and the last we loved! We couldn’t wait to put an offer in, but we were offering quite a bit lower than asking, and the property had been on the market for a while, so we assumed the seller was holding out for a good offer… we doubted our offer would even be accepted.

After countering back and forth with the seller a few times, we were able to compromise on a price! We were over our first hurdle. But because of the low appraisal on the first property we wanted, we were really afraid that this one could come in low too, especially with how difficult it is to appraise rural areas and acreage. We did our property inspection, with nothing major at all coming up; over another hurdle. The appraisal came in a few days later, and it was right on, phew! Now the only other hurdles left were the well and septic inspections, and any other escrow related issues that could arise. We were so relieved when the well and septic reports came back good a few days later. Now we were really starting to think that we might actually get this property! The rest of escrow went through without a hitch, and towards the end of March 2016, the property was ours!

I look back on that first property that we loved so much (and thought the world was ending when it fell out of escrow), and now see why it wasn’t part of God’s plan for us. The house was going to need a lot of work, time that Nic would have to spend working on it rather than getting our little farmstead going, and talk about a lot of money too! Our house now doesn’t need any work, maybe some updating eventually, but nothing major or anything that needs to be done soon. So we can focus solely on getting our farmstead up and going. Also, the land we have is significantly more amazing than that first property. Its biggest downside is that its way further out in the country, which means longer commutes and other “rural living related headaches”, but it’s also the thing we love most about it! It still has its native untouched land, meadows, rocks, woods, streams, trees and wildlife. It’s very quiet other than occasional the gun shots, birds chirping, and frogs serenading us to sleep at night. The sunsets are miraculous and it’s so dark at night that you can see the whole night sky. This is definitely where God wanted us, and we can so clearly see why now. Those emotional and stressful roller-coasters were all just part of the journey, we learned a lot, and we were able to experience God’s love for us through the trust we had to have in Him through it all. It was so worth the sleepless nights and the constant prayers. I am glad that we continued to trust God and look to Him for direction. We are forever blessed.

So what now? Well, it’s all just now barely starting to feel real… and we’ve been living here for just over 2 weeks now. We really love the land, especially going on nature walks together when we get home from work. But now we have a lot of work ahead of us, mostly getting the land ready and logistics arranged so we can eventually turn our property into a farm. We just got 15 chicks, and we have lots more new and exciting things coming. We would love for you to follow along with us while we start into this crazy new adventure!

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