Skip to main content

House search!

Wow, been a busy couple of weeks.  We had a couple of decisions to make about the homestead.  While our main goal of building a house on our 40 acres has not changed we needed to decide if we do it right away after retirement when we feel we need to rush it or of we be patient and wait a bit.    The more we looked at what we needed to do the more we realized that it would be very difficult to do most of it before we actually retired and that would have basically cost us the first year of retirement and it would have been very difficult to get started on the aspects of the homestead I was most looking forward to, the livestock. 

At that point, after some feedback form the in-laws we decided to start looking for some properties with a house already on it that was relatively close to our property.  We soon found one about a mile from the property, it was a 3 bedroom, 1 bath with a great looking barn.  The house itself was pretty small but it did sit on 6 acres.  The issue, the house was ok, but the amount they wanted for the house was just so far out of reality to what we felt the property was worth.  The price was high enough we would need to take out a mortgage and we just were not willing to do that for that house.  It was by far the most convenient house but it was overpriced by about 70k!!

  We then looked at a second property, it was a little further away but had a bunch of great out buildings already including a great looking red barn!  The house was a two story house and pretty nice looking but I really did not like the kitchen on the second floor.  I also did not like the shape of the property, while it had decent acreage it was not really set up for efficient use and would have had a lot of wasted space.  The current owner had only had it one year and after looking at the purchase records it was priced close to what he paid for it, after he would have had to play closing cost I do not think there was more room for a deal and I was not willing to pay that price for a house again I was not in love with.  The garage was a couple hundred feet away from the house and I really want not looking forward to making that trek in the Minnesota Winter!

The third and last house we looked at was way more house then we needed, including the unfinished basement over 4,000 square feet!  But the land was almost perfect for what I was looking for.  It sat on a little more than 8 acers with multiple out building, including a heated workshop, a two horse barn (that will work well for a goat house, or large chicken coop), a small chicken coop, a 20X24 building that is currently being used for storage and a large equipment barn (that does leak!).  The property was already fenced off into a couple of large pastures, one of which included a small pond.  The house had a very awkward layout, but it did have a large spacious kitchen we were looking for.  We also preferred a main floor master bedroom and the master in this one was on the second floor.    It was also the only house with a full basement, one that would be perfect for my root cellar! Of all the houses we had looked at this one was the closest one to being priced appropriately.


When it was all said and done we decided to make an offer on the third house.  It was the most expensive of the three but it was the one closest to being “turnkey” for a homestead, when we retire I can pretty much go straight on homesteading while we continue to get the main property ready. After an offer and a couple counters we finally agreed on a price I think we were both happy with, or at least content with! This property is set up enough where we can keep the livestock on the 40 acers for spring through fall and move them to the homestead for the winter.   The main issue was this property is about 10 miles on un improved roads from the mail property.  On the flip side this house is on the state highway which will make trips to town much easier!  Here is an over head picture of the property.  The previous owners as a barral racing course on it in the north west corner.   Not sure what I will do with that area yet!  Well, one stop closer, should close in September!






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

April is Gonna Suck, Embrace the Suck!!

Well this week’s blog is more a personal update then the last few have been.  It is about 7 weeks until I start my terminal leave from the Army, I will leave the Army for home for the last time on Good Friday and get home right before Easter.  The timing is not lost on me that my next chapter will start in full on Easter.  We started doing our taxes today and part of that was figuring out how much we have already put into the farm, not including property or the truck we are over $35K in and that does not even count most of the livestock which we will not have  or purchase until this year.  That is buying mostly second-hand equipment folks and I still have some major pieces to buy, farming ain’t cheap. That being said, I am still confident this was the right move.  I ran into one of my former NCOs from when I was a detachment Sgt in Korea for lunch this week, he was one of three buck Sergeants I had, who basically made my job easy there (except they cou...
Post a Comment
Read more

Long over due update! We added livestock (and poultry)!

Non-gas operated lawn mowers! It is hard to believe I am so far behind on my blog posts.   Spring is a busy time on the homestead, especially a first spring!   Two and a half inches of rain last night in about a two hour period has given me some time this morning to write as it is too wet to get much done!   So much has happened in the last two months, I will probably on touch on most of it in an attempt keep this post readable!   First, we lost our bee hive from last year, the bees ate the stores in the middle of the hive, all the way to the top, but did not eat the outermost combs.   From the looks of it they ended up starving themselves out because they moved too far from the edges for them to reach them with the cold weather.   We were able to salvage about 15 lbs of honey and a pound or so of wax out of the dead hive. We also managed to harvest a couple containers of virgin honey comb. This years honey harvest In this picture you can re...
Post a Comment
Read more

Fruit Trees

Fruit Trees Well in the last three posts I have talked about some of the different livestock we will have on the homestead but it takes more then meat and eggs to keep us going (there is probably about half the members of my family who and having serious doubts that it is really me writing that!).  We have decided to plant fruit and nut trees for various reasons, as I mentioned in an earlier post I would like everything we do have multiple uses on the homestead.  The fruit and nut trees are no exception. I am going to go off subject here to tell you about the area where we are setting up our homestead but rest assured I will circle back around.  My wife's parents have a little less then 320 acres total. We will be getting a little less then 40 acres of that.   A lot of that land years ago was farm land but there is also somewhere about 60 acres that is native prairie and woodland.  The tract that we are planning on building the homestead on...
Post a Comment
Read more