Though this blog is brand spanking new, I am not new to blogging. I had another blog, once upon a time. This one will be similar to it in content I guess, but that one held more personal views and information then I would like to present here. This one is just one huge guilty pleasure for me as it’s going to mark the beginning of our new homestead. Or, at least, I hope so.
We have been on a long quest for a homestead of our own. We live in southern New Hampshire, which if any of you know our region, is VERY expensive to live in. My husband has a decent job that pays an average wage, I stay at home on the homestead raising our two loud, wonderful and precocious teenagers and taking care of most everything else. We sold a home last summer that was to be our forever home, but alas, it was not to be. It was a 1755 farmhouse on almost 3 acres. It also had a barn on it that was quite large and needed about $50,000 worth of work to repair the structure and put on a new roof, and had an aging in ground pool that was huge and needed work to its machinery and a new liner soon. We dearly loved that home. We sold it to a young couple who had the time, energy and money to bring it back to it’s glory. They were the right people for the house, and in fact have done many improvements on it already.
That brings us to our current situation. We are renting a lovely old farmhouse that belonged to the oldest resident of our town for most of her life. She passed away a few years ago, and it was purchased by our landlord as his soon-to-be retirement home. So, we were waiting to see what would be our next step towards the homestead that we would be able to afford. In December our good friend and realtor told us about a home that was bank-owned here in town. The price was right, it’s got personality (read: it’s OLD, too. We love old houses) and the square footage is just the right size for our family. So, we went to take a look at it. This is not our first rodeo trying to buy a bank owned home, and it’s never a quick or easy process when you aren’t paying cash for it. Finally after three months of getting the bank to do some repairs to it so that we could finance it, we’re in the home stretch of actually getting our names on the deed. Should this actually happen, I’ll be updating this site with pictures and details soon. My goal is to show the progress of the house, the renovations we will be making to it as well as the outdoors parts of the homestead. And there will always be the cooking, canning, sewing, knitting and crocheting that I also spend most of my days doing.
We are already the happy owners of 9 spoiled, freeloading hens. One farm dog, Brady, and we hope to be getting a couple of goats to help with brush and poison ivy removal. If all goes according to plan, they should be providing us with milk in the coming seasons as well. We’re going to be looking to get a couple of pygmy goats as our new homestead is only a total of two acres, some of which is fairly impenetrable currently. Hence, the need for the hair bearing landscapers. We will also put in a large garden and grow a good portion of our food for the summer and fall seasons.
I hope you’ll come back and visit me often to see the progress of our homestead lives. We strive to have a genuine life with lots of handmade things. To me, authentic means not just running to the store to buy what you need, getting creative with what you have and putting effort and pride into relearning old ways to do things. Instant gratification is rarely authentic in my mind. If you’d like to join me on our path, I’d love to have you along. Perhaps we’ll even sit for a tea on the back porch one day together, you never know how this journey will play out.
Grace Note Homestead 