I'll try to be brief . . .
This post is a retrospective on Creekside Farm since its beginnings. The sort of thing I like to do when we hit a major milestone. Finding the property was one such posting and I included all that had gone before it in that post. Another such opportunity to read an abridged version of that story was in Redefining the Plan. Plans changed when the former plans stopped making sense. When we Moved from the City and into the tiny home cabin I wrote the story again. There may have been a few more moment when reflection seemed a good idea, but the point stands that occasionally the story needs retold and refined.
We were actually planning to do the impossible. We needed a two million dollar farm themed wedding venue to grow from a dead standing start and nearly no cash to begin the project.
To fund our initial efforts we decided to leverage our experience in dog breeding. The idea at this point was to use small chunks of available cash (to buy dogs) to make medium sized chunks of cash (from raising puppies), then use the medium chunks of cash to buy a Farm (with a house and barn). We bought some dogs and got started right away. But things didn't go as planned -a continuing theme for the bigger project . . .
Early on in our search for a farm it became apparent that any property suitable for our early plans was going to be financially out of reach. Any farm with ten acres, a house, and a barn, was going to be too expensive to move forward in anything but a fully fledged farming business and we didn't have that sort of experience. So we began looking for a "stepping stone" farm.
It took some wildly optimistic searching but eventually we found a derelict piece of abandoned land, with dubious ownership, under tax foreclosure, without a house, and having no barn, that might become a "stepping stone" toward buying a bigger place.
The idea of a "stepping stone" farm seemed one possible way to get to where we wished to go, while learning how to farm while we built up enough money to buy what we needed. Though seemingly impossible to do, we found a place and bought it on owner contract. For our next impossible trick we somehow found a way to pay off the tax lien. The project could then begin in earnest and we began to clear away the trash. Simply finding land suitable for homesteading was just one of the impossible hurdles we would need to jump over. It took a year to clear the trash. We still needed to develop the empty lot into a farm, build a house, and the project was just getting started.
We had decided early on in The Plan to buy some land and leverage a combination of the land value and the equity our house (in town) to get a building loan and develop the Farm quickly. But following the Real Estate Crash of 2007-8 the banks had decided only to fund larger development projects and small building loans were not being made to single family developments. So we changed the plan once more.
Deciding the best way to move forward we built a tiny home to live in while we built a Farmhouse. It took almost a year to build our temporary tiny home and the entire story of that period can be found in the Histories section of the BLOG. We moved the tiny home to the farm under cover of darkness, no knowing if it would survive the trip to the Farm (which at that point was simply a piece of cleared land). And once we were settled in we began remodeling our house in town so that we could get top dollar for it. We sold the house quickly and began our Farm building efforts in earnest. But things took a lot longer that we thought they should.
It took two years to get the required architectural and engineering drawings and secure the necessary permits so that we could go ahead with building the Farmhouse. We made many mis-steps and a few minor changes, but we actually achieved the impossible this year and moved into the new Farmhouse three days ago. Our Plan contained many points where failure might become an issue and stop us from doing as we wished. But the Plan also had many points where failure could become a success. The Farmhouse completion was one such point in the plan.
Step one of the larger Plan was always to build a house because if we completed a house the Farm would become a residence and not a simple plot of somewhat valuable land to home buyers who are looking for a two acre plot with a house. In the larger scheme, building a house creates a safe stopping point. So, our moving into the Farmhouse three days ago is a significant step forward that allows us to move the project forward much more readily. If we never make the next part of the plan a reality, our investment is fairly safe and the return significant enough to think things through into a change in our Plan.
Bearing in mind that Creekside Farm was, at first, intended only to be a stepping stone farm; something that we would build up and sell, so that we might buy a property more suited to our ultimate goals. We have been planning since we found the land to continue with our initial plan here on this Farm, but most things have their own dynamic. It may or may not be possible to do what we wish to do. It may be actually impossible to complete our bigger plans here. In the case of our Farm, the future of the Farm may be two (or more) things at once. We may become a farm which makes enough money to continue; The Farm might become another family's residence (if we decide to move our plans where they might come to fruition); The Farm might continue to grow into the complicated plan containing hospitality and wedding venues we dreamed up eight years ago. The end is still not certain.
But building our House (with our own hands), buying our Farm, both from a dead stand-still, with no cash on hand, both of these were mere possibilities most people would simply not begin with. Both would had seemed impractical or impossible, depending on your personal optimism. We once said we were rolling the dice with all of our future on the line.
Only time will tell how things will work out. But if you've been following our progress so far, you will know that we have done the impossible more often than not.
