So much has happened in the last few weeks that I find it difficult to know where to begin. We sold our Auburn home, bought our Burnsville farm, moved our family, rabbits, cats, and way too much stuff across several states, and spent almost three weeks living with my mom in Atlanta while we waited the constantly-postponed closing on the farm. There have been some hiccups in the process including a less-than-ideal home inspection, almost-never-ending land survey, and the emotional turmoil of not knowing what will happen next and when we’d get here. But now we’re here and so excited to get started! We have a lot of work ahead and even though we are feeling overwhelmed at times we couldn’t be happier about getting started with living our dream. So I think rather than go into detail about all the difficulties of the past few weeks I’ll start fresh with the farm. Here we go!

The house – we are now living in an 816 square foot farmhouse built in 1940. It’s a huge change from our huge three-story modern-style house in Auburn, but it actually feels very similar to our Opelika house we lived in for 8 years prior to buying the Auburn house. It IS small… very small. We spent several months reducing the amount of stuff that we had and we still aren’t going to be able to fit everything in here. But I love the feel of this house. It feels like home to me even though we’ve only been here a few days.

The land – we have 11.5 acres and I can’t even really wrap my head around how much land that is. Most of it is the side of a steep hill/mountain with trees and brush so thick it seems completely impenetrable. The usable land consists of a large grassy area around the house, a pasture area with weeds about waist high that includes an old tobacco barn, and another pasture area on the other side of our neighbors’ chicken farm. There’s a lot of clearing to be done, but so much we can do with this space. One of the best features is a beautiful creek that borders our property – meandering across the front yard and then continuing down the side of the pastures.

The climate – at 3015 foot elevation we are experiencing a completely different August than what we are used to. It’s warm, but not HOT like Auburn. We have NO air conditioning in our house and don’t even feel like we need it.   There’s a mountain breeze much of the time which feels amazing. We keep the windows (and sometimes doors) open most of the time. Often it is warmer inside than outside so I’d like to get some window fans to help pull in the cooler air when needed. It has rained part of the day every day since we have been here, which has made unpacking difficult at times and slowed progress on TS’s clearing of the land, but it’s nice to be able to work the soil so easily. Yesterday the kids and I planted the first lettuce in the garden in front of the porch and I easily uprooted some small azaleas and moved them to another spot. I hope it doesn’t continue to rain every day, but I’d rather have a little too much water than not enough.

Overall it is just BEAUTIFUL here. The stars at night are amazing! The mist in the mountains behind our house is breathtaking. I am so excited to see what the future has in store for us here.

LD