week 26: a look back in time

this week on the little dream farm

There are a few key milestones we have on our minds throughout the year and pause to stop and reminisce about each time they’ve come around. This one in particular is the day we found the farm. I’d love to share with you the story of how we found it and the events surrounding our life at the time.

Exactly two years ago at this time we began searching for houses in the New England area on Zillow. At the time we were living in a 3 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom row home in Philadelphia that we’d been renting for four years. The following month we’d have to decide if we were going to renew our lease again for another year, but two years prior to that we’d started talking in earnest about getting out of the city and a year before that we had this little thought…a little dream…that someday we’d like to buy a farm for more space and more quiet and room for more animals.

In 2020 we went and toured several farms for rent in the surrounding area—all within about an hour to an hour and a half drive from the city. They all had stipulations that didn’t work for us—they didn’t allow cats, you weren’t allowed access to the barns, you couldn’t have your own garden. We were surprised at how many farms we’d found to rent but disappointed that every single place balked with our then six cats (now we have seven!).

That had been an issue for us with looking for homes to rent outside the city, too. We’d gone and seen a few places in areas we thought we might like to live but each time we struggled with the rent being too high or the owner not approving our cats.

In the last week of June 2021 I headed up to Shippensburg, PA for one of my best friend’s bridal shower. While we were preparing charcuterie boards in the kitchen early that morning, her brother and her mom were telling me about this nearby farm that was for sale and I’d mentioned that I’d be interested in looking at it! I was telling her brother that we really were settled on wanting to try to find a farm and that it was feeling like the right time to go for it, though I never ended up going to look at the farm they’d mentioned.

Fast forward to the weekend of July 4th and Chris and I headed to Cape May, NJ to visit Beach Plum Farm. If you go to the Jersey shore but you’ve never had the pleasure of stopping by Beach Plum Farm for a visit—you must add it to your list! We had such a wonderful time visiting the animals, walking the grounds, shopping in their farm store, looking at all the gorgeous gardens, and eating lunch at their picnic area. It was such a fun time and what really stood out to me was the way the farm—this place—brought so many people together to enjoy being outside and getting to spend a morning on a farm. It felt really special.

We’d spent some time on Zillow that weekend looking for houses in New England. Because we’re not necessarily tied to any one part of the country, we were talking about where we’d actually think we might like to live. Chris has always had a desire to live in New England. For me, I’d always envisioned us somewhere warmer because I’ve never been a huge fan of winter. But something about his curiosity and our initial searches in the area really piqued my interest. I was definitely up for considering it if we found the right place.

The morning of July 4, 2021 we were up around 4 a.m just as we typically are—we’ve always been early risers. While we were sitting and having coffee with the kitties I was cruising around on Zillow and wanted to see if I could get a sense for how many farms were for sale in the U.S. at the time. I set a keyword for “Farm” and zoomed out on the map.

There in the viewfinder to the right was this bucolic aerial image of this little log cabin looking house and these big beautiful red barns surrounded by the most gorgeous setting…and well within our price range.

“Oh my God,” I said out loud to Chris. You have to see this place.

“Where is it?” he asked.

“Umm it looks like somewhere in Upstate New York,” I told him.

The pictures and the description of the farm were like a dream…something to the effect of, “How would you like to live on 58-acres of a sustainable organic farm with a modest house, pristine barns, a pond, fruit trees, space for your animals, sprawling gardens and plenty of space to run a farm or enjoy life in the country.” I have the original listing saved somewhere but that was the gist and we were hooked.

We put in a request to view it and then headed off to the gym. On our walk back home a realtor called and said he could show it the very next day, Monday July 5th. I happened to have had the day off from work but Chris didn’t and Boonce had had a bit of an off day so we didn’t want to be away from her for most of the day. We decided I’d drive up and see the farm and could call Chris while I was there to give him all my initial thoughts and then we could go over it all in detail together when I got home.

I hopped in the car at 6 a.m. that Monday morning to make the 4.5 hour drive up to the farm. The day prior I’d texted the link to my sister to ask her what she thought. She replied, “GET IT!” She saved a screen shot of that message and sent it to me at this time last year on the one-year milestone of us finding the farm. I’d called my mom and told her I was heading to New York to see a farm and she was over the moon when she saw the listing, she kept saying there was just something about it that she couldn’t quite place. That afternoon we were up in Allentown, PA visiting my brother and his wife and hanging out at their pool and we told them about the farm, too. They felt like we should go for it.

So with my family cheering us on I set out to go see the farm. On the radio that morning just as I was beginning my trek on I-95 was a story about this young couple who quit their jobs, sold everything they had, bought a sailboat, and decided to sail around the world. The woman said that in every port town they stopped in, people would remark about how young they were and how lucky they were to be doing what they were doing. “We just didn’t want to wait one more year to start living our lives right now,” she said.

It felt like a little nudge to keep driving…to keep following this little thread…to just see where it might lead.

I arrived without issue to the farm that morning on a beautiful sunny summer day in July. The chickens were roaming about, the cows were in the pasture, the gardens were overflowing and all the windows were wide open in the house as the breeze blew through it and the wind chime on the porch played it song as it swayed in the wind.

There was an iPad on the kitchen counter with hundreds of photos of the farm in every season. On the kitchen table there was a sheet of paper with a neatly organized list of all the capital improvements that had been made to the farm since 2009—the list was long and the price tag of the renovations was huge. Surely the person who lived here deeply loved this farm and put everything they had into making it what it was on the day I was standing there thinking about it becoming our own.

We wrote a letter to the seller and went in with the very best offer we could manage. By that Thursday we were under contract and one step closer to making that little dream we’d had a reality.

I’ll save for you for another time the stories about what Chris and I talked about that night and the next day and the whirlwind of things that took place in the months following in order for us to uproot our city lives to move to our dream farm in the country in a town we’d never been to where we didn’t know anyone.

But here we are now two years later and not one single day since we made the leap have we ever looked back and wished we’d done it differently. At the time we had so many of those “what if” fears—what if we don’t actually like living on a farm? What if this isn’t the right farm for us? What if we don’t like the area after all? What if…

Today, sitting here thinking back through how it all unfolded, the only what if I can come up with now is, What if we’d let fear get in the way and didn’t just go for it?

It makes me think about everything we’ve learned and accomplished and experienced…everything we would have missed out on.

Thank goodness we didn’t miss it.