The Land | Our Journey To Slow Living
when we realized we couldn’t make this house we love bigger, we went on a hunt. we started looking for old farmhouses. it’s been my dream to fix up an old farmhouse, Joanna Gaines Fixer Upper anyone? but everything we had found on the market was surrounded by conventional agriculture and spraying. I felt with my knowledge and background, I could not in good conscience make that decision for my family. So I told our realtor to open up the search to look for land.
We had just gotten back from our annual trip for Griffin’s birthday and to visit Aj’s mom who is a snowbird in Florida. At the time, it was still uncertain what COVID-19 was. Before the trip, we stocked up on alcohol wipes and brought our elderberry syrup, but the seriousness of the situation was still relatively unknown.
One late night, I got an email generated MLS listing. 38 acres. The pictures looked awful but it was in our price range. It had only been on the market for 3 days. I replied to our realtor that we wanted to see it and a couple days later we were there. 38 acres of 13 tillable land and 25 wooded. No outbuildings, no water, no sewer, no nothing but relatively untouched land. There was a farm road. Amish neighbors on one side and an organic dairy farm on another.
It wasn’t anything we expected but it was kind of perfect. We walked the length of the property, social distancing with the relator, still unsure of what that actually meant. After a hike over the three hills and through the forest, we decided to make an offer.
Fast forward to the Spring, we closed on the land and decided to take our time to connect with the land, to camp, to hike, pick black raspberries and elderflower along the paths, to learn its fauna, crevices and all. We spent three full seasons on the land and have only fallen more in love. This fall we put in a driveway, the first step. I feel my ancestors speaking to me when i’m there. I never lived in a house before I got married, always an apartment and never felt the rooting that happens after years and season in a home. I dream of having my parents building their first house on our land and being close to make up for these seven years of being apart. I dream of the kiddos having sleepovers at mimi and papas house just over the hill. and so now we being the long process of saving money and working to intentionally building a home and learning how to be stewards of this parcel of land.
The ancestral land of Meswauki, Sauk and Ho Chunk Peoples.