2.27.2013

Us, at home, Here. And a search for land.

Us, at home, Here. Apologies for the repeat photos. It is a veritable white-out on the farm right now. The photos would be blurred and snowy outside, and inside, the living room is covered with laundry-to-be-folded.

Perhaps it is the 22 week baby (boy!) growing in my belly or maybe its the prospect of pasture and garden management for 2013 on a land that isn't ours or better yet it could just be runofthemill narcissism and greed, but I want my own land. We want our own land.

We haven't been in Vermont for even a year but, and I think I can speak for us both, we feel profoundly settled here. Nick and I have moved a grand total of eight times since we met each other back in the Mission district of San Francisco five years ago. They have each carried with them the bare-knuckled stress and naive fantasia that a moves seem to have. We loved living in France just as much as we loved the warm early springs of Carolina, which we loved as much as Golden Gate park. Yet we always felt a twinge of impermanence. There it was with each move. After these 5 past years we find ourselves in a state, in a county, in a particular tiny town in Vermont where we feel that we are emphatically home. We both grew up in Massachusetts, I on Martha's Vineyard and Nick in the heart of Boston. It isn't a shock that the home we find is so close to our families.

We fell in love with and felt settled in Vermont within months of being here, perhaps it was just weeks. It isn't hard to fall for the green rolling hills and long dirt roads and old wood houses and fertile soil and good protein rich grass. We were a bit wary of what winter would bring, and despite All Of My Complaining (and a 3 week getaway to the South) we are finding ourselves on the up side of winter headed to spring without feeling too worse for it all. With that said, it is purely miserable outside today. The snow was quite literally blowing sideways when we woke up for the walk down to chores. Curse it all.

Winter is perhaps one of the worst times however to look at land for sale. Everything is covered in the obvious white blanket. You can't take soil samples. All of the empty houses feel very very very cold. The trees are bare and the general starkness can make the entire endeavor feel rather bleak, rather hopeless. We don't have the labor capacity to spend days at a time looking at land in the summer, the farm demands too much for day-dreaming trips around a couple fallow fields.  BUT as I've taken to say, if you can fall in love with a place in winter, you will love it all the more in summer. And fall in love we have. With land after land. It is one of the more emotional of roller coasters I have ridden. And it isn't just because my body is teeming with extra hormones. Nick feels it too. We come home from looking at a place Sky High. Mentally we both move in to a place, to a pasture, to a stand of pines or a sugar bush as soon as we see it. We start to worry over ridiculous details like where would our pet pigs winter? Or, where would I plant my moonflowers? Would the yurt go up on the high pasture behind the house? Nick has a seemingly endless fascination and patience for working the numbers over for each place we love. How many head of beef we need to be raising in year 1? In year 5? With what money will we pay our taxes? Is there a good option for fuel (wood) on the property? How many years could that stoke our fires without depleting the forest?

Two farms this winter really roped us in. The first was a gorgeous lot of 300 + acres with decent pasture, and majestic woods. We walked it over several days, early in my pregnancy, when I was easily tired and out of breath after several minutes of rolling hilled paths. We found the perfect spot where we would build our home, our barn, put up the yurt for any visitors. We loved it so and they asked us to make an offer. We did and we were elated at the possibility. By the end of the week we were told that our offer had (happily for them) urged an older potential buyer to finally make their offer which was accepted over ours.

Several weeks later we fell for our second farm. An endlessly sprawling old wooden house (in need of much repair) and several hundred acres of pasture and forest creating a half bowl of hilled land that hugged around the house and barn. Again we fell. Again we (mentally) moved into the upstairs bedroom and put our favorite tea mugs on the kitchen's one shelf and opened our herd of cows to the lower pasture. And again we made an offer and again we were told that somebody of more importance had swooped in and made a better one. Again we lost a home when we thought we had moved in.

I am cognizant of how dramatic I am making this all seem. It has been so for us. I know in the grand scheme of Life this doesn't deserve its own pity party post.

Where we are renting the land is beautiful and the house is (small) tight and warm. Our landlords and our neighbors love us and we them. I will be so fortunate and happy if I am able to swim in the pond across our field until my last days of pregnancy and then birth our son in our wooden bedroom. We could and would stay here forever, if it weren't for the narcissistic --but perhaps human?-- desire to call something our own.

I felt compelled to write about this, to capture our desire for our own home, because some day we will find it, or rather the land will find us. Some day, be it in 2 months, 2 years, or 10 we will move into a home we can call our own. We will pay land taxes and not rent. We will carefully measure and document the height of our son by months and then by years on the doorjamb by the kitchen. We will slowly rehabilitate the aging sugar bush. We will drag black locust out of the forest to build fence that will last a lifetime. We will move cattle, and sheep, and chickens, and maybe one day goats, gently, and methodically across the land. And in winter we will hunker inside and serve out the hay we collected from the summer and try to keep every animal warm and dry. We will carefully tend for a bit of earth that will produce food and life for our children and their children and their children's children.

That is what we want. That is our vision for our farm and for our son.

26 comments:

  1. There is something that settles is when we can call home our own. I love your ability to describe farm life with its highs and lows in such a beautiful way.

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  2. oh my, your prose is beautiful. please write a book :)

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  3. This is a beautiful post.

    You seem to be going through the same process that we are immersed in at the moment. Too many times I have hung my coat on a peg that turns out not to be one that I am going to own, planned the kitchen where I will bake the bread and make the jam and then heard that things have fell through with the property.


    As you say one day hopefully soon, we will buy the place that we can call our 'forever home'. We have less time than you as our children are already grown and have flown the nest with families of their own, so we need to push this and keep some momentum.

    Nice to hear your baby will be a boy, but then it would have been nice to hear if it had been a girl too :-)

    Sue xx

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  4. OOOH!!! You're going to have a SON! I'm so happy for you Kate. Little boys are amazing. xoxo

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  5. Kate,

    Congratulations on your growing baby and getting over the hump of your first winter in VT! We raise sheep near Lake Champlain and I love your blog.
    I just wanted to send you some words about becoming a mother during planting and harvesting season... Remember that farming and families have gone hand in hand since the beginning of time. You are gathering women around you to help, which is right. Consider embracing "gender roles" for awhile and nurture your baby while you let the others shoulder the physical farm work... you'll be back at it again soon enough. Also, know that babies sleep a lot during the day, at first, and love to be worn. Mine loved the Ergo and moby more than slings. By the time summer rolls around again, your little boy will be exploring for himself!

    Good luck!

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    1. this is such a wonderful response.

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  6. beautiful post, i hope you find the right land, or it finds you, soon. i know it will.

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  7. your feelings are so normal.... at least, normal to me! we bought our house in portland about three and a half years ago- after an agonizing 6 month process. we fell in love and put in offers on 4 houses before we landed in the one we call home now. i wanted to quit so many times because mentally moving my mixer and my vintage pyrex each time was getting exhausting. but that old saying, when it's meant to be, it will be, really comes into play here. When we walked into this house the first thing i thought was - this is the most grown up house we've seen! and that was appealing to me, because i wanted it to feel more like a grown up house then a rental from our college days. and here we are. more than three years later, with a place we call our own. i will admit, that i do sometimes drive by two of the houses that we *lost* and briefly imagine what life would have been like there :) be patient, i'm sure you are sick of hearing that! and enjoy the snow, i grew up in new hampshire, i sure miss it!

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  8. My wife didn't really understand my need for our own land. she was pretty much happy so long as we owned our own house where we could raise a family. I always wanted that little bit more. We've now got a little plot of 5 acres (all we're ever likely to afford in the UK with the price of land) and a lovely little house but I did make her move at 8 months pregnant so she'll always have that one on me! Good luck with your search I hope you find something soon.

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  9. I often read your blog and have never commented before, but felt compelled to do so after reading this post. Beautiful! Your words, your vision for your family, all so beautiful. Your land will find you and your growing family in time.

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  10. i am so excited and happy and content to get to read, watch and imagine your farm life, as you raise pigs and a son and tell us stories.

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  11. A boy! I am so happy for you, Kate. Love these photos, too.

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  12. You are a very talented writer and I am so pleased that I stumbled upon your blog. I can relate in so many ways to the restlessness of creating a homestead. Believe me, it takes more patience than you can even imagine and can at times feel like a test. (As can raising boys-I am the mother of two) but believe me when I say, like motherhood, it is so worth every moment.

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  13. This post was beautifully written. I am only hoping that I will get to be in similar shoes as you someday. Is there information on how you all got started somewhere on the blog already that I am not seeing? Would love to know how you started your journey.

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  14. You have put it out into the universe, I know without a doubt it will return in a tangible form. :) :)Yay for baby boys!!

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  15. So beautiful, and so true. I too want some land, stunningly beautiful land.

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  16. Yay! A baby boy!
    We may be east coast neighbors! We are waiting to hear on whether we got a house in Connecticut. We are in contract and will know by next week if we got it. Assuming we do, we'll be packing up quickly and traveling via RV cross country from California. It's a little gem on 3 acres. Not huge, but enough to start.
    You'll find something soon!
    XOXO

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  17. I'm itching for the same thing, for my family and for my son. We are in our first home and I can tell you, being able to call something "yours" really can make all the difference. However, the residential lot doesn't allow for much more than a good veggie garden (which I love) - I yearn for so much more. We are at least two years away from being able to make a move, but already I find myself checking out parcels of land for sale.... someday...

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  18. We are in the same (sort of) boat. I'm just 23 weeks pregnant with baby number two, and we're currently holed up in an above shop apartment. I want a farm, and land, but we just can't afford it in our area yet, so we're hunting for an in between house where we can at least have a tiny patch of soil and space for a garden for now. We're planning a home birth as well, and I feel this fire under me to find a place where I can birth this baby into "home" and not just "apartment where we live which really belongs to someone else." I can't wait til we are finally in that final home someday, and I can tell my children which room they were born in, and feel ownership over the dirt I wash off my hands after coming inside, and wander far across the grass and still be a home. Someday. I am excited for the three of you, and for the day when you finally announce you've found your home!

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  19. so beautifully written, and laced within it all, the exciting news of a boy. congratulations---the right opportunity and home will come in its perfect timing i hope and better than the two you've already fallen for.

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  20. I love how casually you dropped the big news in there - congratulations! I can't imagine how excited you must feel! As for the home, I hope you find the perfect spot soon. Until then, the summer swims in the pond you just described don't sound all bad either...

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  21. my god, you're a perfect writer.

    i enjoy your blog so much.

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  22. beautifully written- every few weeks I remember that I haven't read your blog for awhile and then I get the joy of several posts at once! what lovely news, congratulations.

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  23. I agree with what everyone had to say that you churned out a very beautiful post. I’m amazed at how you can look at a piece of land and already see the possibilities it could yield. I believe that when you do find that land that you and Nick are dreaming of, you will bring the best out of it. Good luck and congratulations on your baby boy!

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  24. very informative..thanks and keep posting..:)

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