An Unplanned Life Change, Buying property and my Mobile Home Fiasco

It’s been a while since I have visited this realm. I pulled a few posts that were based on our world in our previous home, with previous animals when I was living with my now ex partner. It seems like a very distant past. I realize now that he started creating his exit strategy far in advance, first with the unannounced sale of our rabbits. I admit that I was somewhat relieved to have them leave. The market for them was stagnant and keeping up with them was quite a bit of work in the setup he created. I may try them again some day with smaller numbers and a better setup, but for now I am rabbit free. He then created a scenario to send our cows to a friend’s pasture, which they are happy on now and I’m thankful that they are where they are because I currently don’t have pasture space on my property. He constructed new chicken pens, why I’m not sure, but thankfully I was able to take them with me and they are now on my property. Sadly I had to sell my ducks, as I do not have a setup with water currently.

All of that to say, in January of 2024, mine and my son’s lives were uprooted, and we were forced to move with very little notice. On a Monday afternoon, while my son was with his father, I loaded first three of the four dogs, and then a bag and left. I am SO fortunate to have a very dear friend who is like a bonus mother to my son, who allowed me to come stay with her while I figured everything out. I didn’t know where I was going to go, whether I was going to rent or buy. I just knew that I couldn’t stay where I was. The chickens were able to stay where they were until I was able to get situated and at his insistence my belongings went into his storage shed.

I decided because of the size of the dogs and the trouble with finding rentals that would allow them, that I would try to buy. I again was so so blessed to have my friend to stay with through this process. She opened her home to us without hesitation and I would not be where I am without her. I went through two land contracts between January and April before I found my third parcel of land and the contract didn’t fall through. It is a 1.25 acre parcel full of trees and birds and both of the properties on either side are currently vacant, so we have lots of wildlife. There are deer and turkeys and I had synchronized fireflies all over the property, in the thousands this spring!

I closed on the property in July, and the home was set in the last week of August. Since that time, I have had endless issues with my home, which was bought new, and getting it properly set up, with installation issues, contractors causing damages, etc. That will be its own blog post.

But here we are! We have fencing up, the chickens have been moved to the land, we are in the house, though it is still a wreck and I may end up blogging that entire saga. For today, I’d like to share that I will be diving back into gardening, cooking, raising chickens, cows, our dogs, my son and hopefully sharing more. I hope to set up a farm stand to sell bread, jams, teas and some other things eventually. It is a slow process, and I am still mentally recovering from all that we have been through. But we are getting there, and I’m glad to be here again.