The Crazy Old Lady Who Lived in an...

Nope, not shoe, but in an old run down house just down the road from where we had made an offer on the previous piece of land. It is funny because it was right down the same road just south of the other house by about 10 or so houses. This was a house that has sat empty for a little while. It was on 6.67 acres and had a nice barn with 4 stalls and water and electric. There was fencing and the like but it had been neglected for years and would need to be repaired. The piece of property was fairly narrow at 185 feet but was very deep and on a rolling hill that rose at the back of the property by probably 30 to 50 feet. This house needed some major repairs and was missing a window or two. The roofing needed replaced, the hot water heater was bad, and the floors were torn up because the lady had kept animals inside. I said it before, but I still don't understand it, what possesses people to allow animals to rip their house up? Although these are things that would take a lot of work, we were fairly excited that we wouldn't be facing a whole lot of competition from other bidders. Whoever bid on this house and property had to really want it and be willing to do the work. We contacted the realtor and set up a visit. This was another property that wasn't being lived in at the time. It amazes me that there were two of these properties that were like this. The doors weren't locked and I had went out to look over things at least a half dozen times after that initial visit. It was probably not the wisest idea because I became somewhat attached to the property before we bid on it as I envisioned the various improvements and layouts that I would make. Ah, yes, a chicken coop over there, and a tool shed over here... few years down the road I will build a new barn with living space above it here... So as we bid, we included the cost of the repairs in our bid to be given back by the owner. We had the highest bid that had been placed on the house and it was a solid and fair bid. We didn't want to be outbid again, something about the last house had left us a little gun shy. With all the repairs that were needed and winter coming up, we were confident that we would get the house. The lady, who was selling it wanted someone to take over her mortgage for here. It was only three years old and she had been living in the house for about 15 years so she must have just refinanced it. On top of taking over her mortgage she wanted twenty thousand dollars. It was not a very realistic expectation, especially since she must have taken quite a bit of the equity out of the house when she refinanced. We were about eight thousand off with the offer we made to her and felt that this was a fair offer since we were not even sure if the appraisal would carry the offer we made or not. So we submitted the bid and waited somewhat confidently to hear from the realtor and expected to haggle for a few thousand dollars here or there.

What we got in reality was a rejection of the offer within about 6 hours of making it. We could hear the frustration in the realtors voice as she told us that the lady rejected the offer. We could hear the reluctance as she told us what the seller had said. The seller had said we had to meet her price because she wasn't going to budge on it. We kindly asked the realtor to explain to this delussional lady that if she held on to the house at her current mortgage and had to heat it during the winter (with 2 windows missing) that it would total more than the $8,000.00 difference between us and her. Furthermore, if she chose not to heat the house there would be even more problems with further deterioration of the house that would make it harder to sell.

The crazy old lady (in my opinion) said she would rather let the house be repossesed than to negotiate on the house. We left her with that option and continued on our merry hunt for a homestead. The realtor, who we were very pleased with, later told us that someone had offered two thousand dollars more than we did and she still refused it. The total offer wasn't more than us, but the amount she would have gotten was. I am still flabbergasted that she continues to let it sit vacant.

As you can imagine, after two instances like this we were very wary of getting our hopes up any further. But don't you know it, we stumbled on another house, but that is another post for another day.

The Hunt Begins

The hunt for our homestead came at a time that was really unexpected. Now to understand what I mean by this you will need to know that my wife and I have wanted a homestead for many years. After we bought our little house in the town of Rittman a few weeks after our wedding, we began working around our little yard. The lot in Rittman was 50x150 ft. Talk about a small lot! But it was enough to get us involved with gardens, apple trees (my specialty), grapes, strawberries, and other things. And the love for these things wasn't a new found one for me. I had been wanting to find some land actually before we got married, but things just didn't work out. As a child I had butchered animals, raised some family pigs, lived on a farm for a brief period, and just the normal things a kid does growing up in the country edge of suburbia.

So after we got into living a more frugal lifestyle, we really became addicted to the idea of building our own homestead. As you know from some of my previous post, I believe that we ALL make choices in our lives. We choose to do some things and not others, the reasons are varied and many. Amy and I chose to live a very frugal life so that she could stay home after Hosanna was born. We purposely avoided new cars, much to the chagrin of some of our coworkers. I can still hear them, "Hey, Bob, when are you going to get rid of that rusty old truck?" Now don't think the desire to drive a new, clean, bright truck, SUV, or car wasn't there. We just had to make a choice. We had to choose to have other people raise our children while Amy and I both worked to pay for two new cars, a better house and a big screen TV or we had to choose to live the way our grandparents did and to settle for what we could afford and just make ends meet. We were much happier than most of our friends around us. Even though I was working in the rat race, I wasn't a part of it. And as I said, I knew that God wanted me to work with youth, I just didn't know the "where" and "when" of it.

As I said previously, I figured that out finally. So I took a major pay cut. To explain "MAJOR" let me say that I make in one year about 4 - 5 times less than I did in my last job. But don't feel sorry for me, it was a choice. We are richer for it. It is hard, but God is good and provides every day. I haven't starved, on the contrary, I need to shed some pounds. But God is faithful. He is faithful even when we are not or we doubt. We have lived here in this church apartment for 2 years now. It is small. It is a fishbowl. It has been wearing on us and we know we need to move into a house. It is funny. Before, when we were living in our house in Rittman, I was very specific about what our next house/land would be like, but we knew that we had to set aside those desires and chose to follow God and his will for us. I figure that at worse, I will get to homestead in eternity! So as we began to pray for a house, we also began to fight our own disbelief. It would be very hard to pay electric bills and have heat and food for what I make. But we continued to pray and more important than our own prayers (which honestly were probably more full of doubt than they should have been) were the prayer of those in the church.

So you can imagine that when I casually mentioned a house that I had seen in the realty section of the local, free, trade magazine to my dad and he was interested in going to look at it that I was not really expecting the turn of events that were about to happen. When we called about the house, the realtor had told us it was open and to stop by and take a look at it. The house is exactly 4 minutes drive from the church where I minister and live. It is on a road this is not traveled too heavily and with the leaves on the trees just starting to change color we fell in love with the house. It was a rather small ranch but it had a walk in basement with a bathroom downstairs, a fireplace, and a finished room. It was an older house built in 1960. The lady who owned the house had been in a terrible accident that had left her a paraplegic. The land was over 5 acres and had enough frontage that it met the building requirements for a second house. The land had been broken into two lots and the house was a steal for the local market. It was listed at $139,000.00. It had a 40 x 30 garage/outbuilding that was heated and drywalled. Both the house and the barn smelled horribly as they were both used to store dogs. We made an offer that included closing cost and money back for repairs that totaled $148,000.00, because we figured that in a few years we would be able to build a second house on the second lot. We were the highest current bidder, but someone had bid before us and they had lowballed it. The owner's ex-husband was dealing with the sale and had countered well below what we had offered for it. After the ex-husband had heard of our offer he told the first bidder about it. That gentleman, knowing the value of the house and land and the second buildable lot, offered him $150,000.00 in CASH and guaranteed a close within seven days. The ex-husband didn't waste a bit of time to even consider letting us counter offer. We were prepared to go above that offer, but the owner would have had to wait for about 30 days for the financing and closing and inspection. We were dealing with one of the selling realty companies "other" agents that worked for the listing agent and are very certain now that we were used to drive up the cost and finish off the deal. We were very disappointed in this and our hopes which had been suddenly raised were dashed just as suddenly. Not being people to be sidetracked easily, we forged on with our hunt, feeling dejected and let-down. But we didn't have to go far, but that story will have to wait.

The History of The Homesteader (Part II)

As I last ended my post I began to tell you about a time in my life when I was pretty depressive and felt alone. I basically worked and slept and had very little contact with anyone outside of customers. And let's face it, there are not very many meaningful relationships built over a pack of Marlboro and five instant lottery tickets. During this time I began reading my Bible a lot and listening to preaching on the radio, and I decided to start going back to church. While I was working at 84 Lumber I began to volunteer and do anything around the church I could. They started me working in our Junior Church. It was a job that was hard to fill because a lot of people don't know how to deal with kids. But as I began to just serve, God rescued me from my despair. About this same time, my Pastor and I began to pray for the perfect mate for me.

It was while working at 84 Lumber that I started dating the girl who is now my wife. The funny thing is that we had known each other literally since we were kids. She was a friend of my sisters. I saw her one day when I was still working at the convenient store and couldn't get over how beautiful she had become. I didn't think much more about her, as in my depressive state I figured there was NO WAY on God's green earth that she would go out with me.

I didn't see Amy again until my grandmothers funeral. As strange as that sounds, it was the most memorable thing about the funeral for me. Not that I wasn't close to my grandmother, I loved her. But my sister told me that I should ask Amy out to coffee and I did. We went to Applebee's and I couldn't tell you a thing about the coffee or the dessert. But Amy was beautiful and I couldn't take my eyes off of her. I definitely didn't let this opportunity get away. I asked her out on an official date. Surprise of all surprises she said yes. We went to a murder mystery dinner theatre and the rest is history! I ended up being an accounts payable manager for almost 4 years at Sealy Mattress Company, and then as they moved their headquarters to North Carolina, I moved on to a bigger and better job and salary. It was after I had been there four years that I had been called to get into Youth Ministry full time working with teenagers. I was ordained in April of 2003.

We bought a house about 3 weeks after we got married in 1997 and lived there until December 2002, when we moved into the apartment at our church and sold our house (well we ARE selling it on Land Contract right now) to cut back on cost so we could live on a lot less salary. We had purposely avoided big debt so we could eventually make the move to full time ministry.

We have 3 children and a fourth on the way. We have lost 2 children during pregnancies, one during a tubal pregnancy and another to a miscarriage. My oldest daughter is named Hosanna, my son is Noah, and my youngest (for a few months at least) is Chloe.

That brings us up to date to where we are now. Five, soon to be six, people living in a small church apartment. It is a choice that we have made though and a sacrifice that is well worth it. Now we are planning on buying a house with land, in partnership with my parents. We are going to build them a house on the property and split the cost of the land. We have looked at a couple places and actually put 2 bids on two separate pieces of land with property. Tomorrow we are bidding on a 3rd and hopefully last, as it is a beautiful place with 12.5 acres and a great home built in 1865. I will detail our hunt for a homestead tomorrow.

The Modern Homesteader

The History of The Homesteader (Part I)

Let me give you a little back ground about me and my family. As you have read, I am a Youth Pastor, an ordained minister, in a Baptist Church. It is an independent Baptist church and I suppose my wariness of governing bodies runs deep. Trust an individual, distrust a board! Anyone involved in an independent Baptist church knows that the position of pastor or youth pastor is not filled because it is a lucrative job. No Mercedes, BMW's or even Cadillac here. The senior pastor, who has been here for 15 years, drives a Dodge pickup truck. Granted it is a nice enough truck, but certainly not a luxury vehicle. I have an old '92 Ford 4x4 F-250 and an old Ford van. I am not complaining just telling you that I don't make a whole bunch of money.

It wasn't always the case. I used to work in the "secular" world. In fact I held jobs in various sectors of industry, but all of them having to do with management or even ownership of businesses. My last job was with the second largest trucking expediter in the country. I had a fairly lucrative job there. But you know the old saying, either you have money and no time, or time and no money. I definitely fell into the money and no time category.

When I was in my mid-20's I began to feel God calling me back to my church. When I was a kid I was faithful, along with my parents and sister for quite a while. As most churches do, at some time in there existence, this church had some problems. I used it for a chance to bolt to do all the "fun" stuff I was missing out on. You know the stuff, drinking, partying, etc. So as I went off to college at the University of Akron I partied more than studied. I was a pre-professional biology major. That is the same thing that those who chose to go to Medical School start off with. After a couple years in college, my grandfather died, and I used that for an excuse to bolt from college. Not a good record of finishing things huh?

After I quit college, I got a job at a local supermarket and worked my way up to the highest level of supervisor that the store had. I was young, about 20 at the time and had a lot of lessons to learn. So after staying there for about 3 years, I quit because I got passed over for a grocery manager position at a big new store that this chain was building. Looking back, I can completely understand the reluctance of the corporation to make a 22 or 23 year old THE MAN in charge of a whole grocery division of a huge brand new store. I should have been flattered that I was even considered as it was a compliment. But being young and dumb, my world revolved around me, and reality had not really set in yet. I was pretty focused on money at that time, and my values were very skewed to say the least.

I got into trucking with my father. We traveled for a while but that wasn't a life for a young man looking to have fun. So we sold the trucks and got out of business. I got back into retail management, this time as a manager of a convenient store. I can honestly say, that this was the hardest job I have ever had. It wasn't so physically demanding, but it was mentally killing me. I worked over 10 hours a day for over 10 weeks in a row without a day off. It taught me a lot. I realized that you need to be steady in your life because there are people depending on you. We were open 24 hours a day and I would hire people for 3rd shift and they wouldn't show up, or they would call off and I would have to work that shift. It was horrible, but good for the soul. Well a better offer came along that was more money and less hours. It was more physical work too. It was as an assistant manager at an 84 lumber. I know all the intimate details about that place. The most memorable is that in the summer they don't air condition the inside building and in the winter they don't heat it! It was during this time that I got right with God and started to be faithful to church. It was right before getting hired at 84 lumber actually. I was living alone, and felt really alone. Working all those hours in the store was taking a real toll on me. I was pretty depressive and can honestly say that God brought me out of that.

I will end here and write another post in a day or so.

The Modern Homesteader

The Cost of Land.

Living in Northeast Ohio like I do, I know that the closer to suburbia you live the more expensive land is. As Medina, Brunswick, Strongsville, and Cleveland begin to grow into one large urban sprawl, I see the effects of it in the realty section of the local newspaper. In my mind it is sort of like this clematis plant I used to have. It was at our old house and every year I would mow down this clematis plant (not the one pictured) and by the end of the season it would invade the yard and start crawling up the house. The "city folks" of the area remind me of my old clematis. Clematis is beautiful, and intriguing and the flowers smell great on it. For the most part, most of the city folk in our area are nice enough, kind, and even smell good (wink) but they can become invasive and have a tendency to crowd into an area and then overflow it.

As that has happened around here, the prices of land have skyrocketed. When I was a bright-eyed high school graduate 16 years ago (gasp, I have a hard time thinking of myself as older than 16 now) the price of land was around $4,000.00 to $5,000.00 an acre. I thought that was terribly high then. I mean we are talking about the late 80's here. I even remember when gas was .76 when I first started driving, after falling from "high" prices of 1.20 from the late seventies and early eighties. The thought of buying land never occurred to me then and it would have seemed way out of my reach anyways. Well, for what my priorities were.

Fast forward these sixteen some years. Many of the local communities have enacted local zoning laws that require a minimum of two acres to build a house. It is an effort to slow the urban sprawl supposedly. A two acre "lot" now starts at $55,000.00 in the area. So land is expensive for the most part and we have to live with the fact that it isn't getting any cheaper. So we know that when we buy a house that it will be WAY more expensive for the land and house that we want and that is just a part of living in the county where we minister. But let me tell you where my real complaint is.

I have a real problem with these 2 acre requirements to build a house. I mean the philosophy of everyone having space is good. But here is the problem that happens anytime a government gets involved with managing the lives of the people. What started out as good is no longer good. What started out as a buffer for urban sprawl has actually added to the problem. You see these two acre plots have so many deed restrictions when developers put them in that the true philosophy of everyone having their space has been destroyed. So let's say Joe Shmoe from Medina (only 30K in population) decides he is tired of the city life and wants to own some chickens. So he decides that although his job is in the city that he is going to move 10 miles out into the "country". He has read all about the "Have-More" plan and decides that the level of comfort he would have is to get one of those 2 acre plots and build a nice little house and a chicken coop. So as he is preparing to sign on the dotted line he reads a deed restriction that he can't have more than one chicken per member of his family and that it is for the purpose of participating in an agricultural club like 4-H. He most certainly will NEVER have any hogs on his land as there is a complete BAN on those pesky creatures, but he is allowed to have a pet horse. Of course, there is no where around to ride it because he only has two acres sandwiched between his neighbors $220K "farm" that has 3 rabbits and a turtle on it. So he has a choice, sign on the dotted line, have a small house between the "suburban farmers" for 160K or move on out a little further where he CAN have some chickens. Of course he never wants to grow anything or have neighbors that raise those smelly pigs anyways so he is not opposed to those "swine restrictions" on the new land. And this procedure is repeated and repeated until effectively there has been a leap-frogging of people and prices. So he doesn't have to worry about the city anymore but now he has to worry about a new problem, "keeping up with the FARMER Jones's". Eventually he has as many restrictions as the city did, a longer drive, and a whole heck of a lot more grass to mow. He decides to move back into the city because the price on the city houses with the city lots have remained steady where they were.

Voila, that is where we come in. But that will have to wait, because this is indeed a long post.

The Modern Homesteader

The Balance of Life.

What is the balance that we seek to maintain? I am an ordained minister. I believe that all the things on this earth are temporal, including this skin we wear. And I have to admit that my life is a balance that I seek to maintain. It is a balance between the here and now and the everlasting that I seek to find. Now without getting overly "religious" in my post, I need to expound a little bit on this idea.

We all live a life of self-imposed limits. Everyone of us. Somewhere in our life and lifestyles exhibit it. Some limits are imposed by governments, societies, or cultural norms, but many of our limits that we live with day to day are not imposed by anything or anyone but ourselves. If you are the free-spirited, "non-heaven-believing" type of person, your first impulse may be to deny that you have self imposed limits. You may say that you do whatever you want, whenever you want, however you want. But is this true? Do you eat as much as you want of things that are bad for you? Do you always sleep as much as you want to, or do you force yourself to get up and feed the animals or clean the stalls? Do you skip milking the cows or goats for a week or so, if the fancy strikes you? I would say probably not, and no one MADE you get those animals, or have those stalls. So we all choose to live with self-imposed limits. Does it seem that I went out of my way to make this point? I don't think I did, but I don't know.

The balance that my wife and I seek is tempered by our self-imposed limit to live within this school district that we minister to. Of course we feel called by God and the limit that is imposed is us choosing to follow that calling. And because of this limit we are also limited as we seek a homestead. We used to own a house, but when I went into the youth ministry full time, we sold that house and moved into an apartment at the church. We have 3 kids and another due in February. It is a small apartment (for a large family) and we are now in the position to go in together with my parents to buy some land and will build a second dwelling on it for either my parents or us. That all depends on what the homestead is like and the house and set up of the land.

We seek to balance our work in the ministry with a healthy physical work around our homestead. We want our kids growing up around the work, the animals, and the lifestyle associated with "making it" on your own. And that is the balance we want to maintain. God is important to us. The most important thing. I am only thankful that He didn't call me to work in the city somewhere. As it is we are right on the edge of suburbia and near enough to all the trappings of it. This doesn't make me unhappy, but it sure makes land a premium. I am sure there are homesteaders out there who would never pay as much for land and a house as we are looking to. And don't think it's because we are rich. It will be a stretch and TWO families will be purchasing this homestead together. My parents and my family. It will be hard work but we are looking forward to it. We have looked at and bid on two separate houses. Funny stories those. Stories for another post.

So what's the balance you seek? What are your self-imposed limits? I would love to hear.


The Modern Homesteader

What is Homesteading?

I am sure you have heard the term homesteading some time in your life. In the broadest sense of the word it defines someone who took advantage of the Homestead Act of 1862. The Homestead Act extended for more than one hundred years and was repealed in 1976, with a special exemption that was held forth for the state of Alaska until 1986. It is estimated that 10% of the United States was "given away" to her citizens during this time. The true romantic wishes for these days again and curses that they were born a century late.

The term "homesteading" no longer holds the same meaning today that it did... or does it? Some people today view "true" homesteading as taking a piece of land and living completely off of it, not connected to the grid, not relying on anyone or anything but their own ingenuity or determination. Others hold that homesteading is a state of mind. These are both long swings on the pendulum of homesteading with neither being completely right or completely wrong. It is probably trite to say this, but homesteading is different things to different people, and (and this is the hard part to conceive completely for me) it is the same thing too.

In my opinion a "true" homesteader existed before the Homestead Act ever took place. Homesteading is the American Dream realized. With that said, I hope you understand that the American Dream is a common thread that is born in all "true" Americans. And a "true" American is not just someone that is born in America. America is a philosophy not just a place and that is really what homesteading is... a philosophy. A way of life. A choice. Just like America, it is the dream of "making it". And that's my whole thing I guess. I am saying our central philosophy, our maybe better said, the underlying currents in homesteading flows from the same spring deep within us. The only thing different between most of us is the "it" in the philosophy of "making it". We add things to "it" to define "it". We say things like "Making "it" on our own" or "Making "it" big" or "Making it organically". To me, homesteading is about making it and using it. I am seeking a place for my family to touch, and feel, and live, and learn, and see life. I don't want the disconnected life for my kids that this world teaches. I want to break them out of that mold and to know that God has given us the great ability to create, and build, and kill, and nurture and to see what those things are. I don't want them to simulate it in a video game. I want them to understand the somberness of a life and understand that death brings new life. That is the "it" to me.

How I go about "making it" is negotiable. I think that most "true" homesteaders have always been this way. When they began to settle the Great American West, I think they all had different "it"s. Different reasons. And there wasn't ONE way that was the right way. That line of thinking about absolute truth belongs to the realm of God and His word, not the way that we humans do things. I don't think they handed out a "homesteader's manual" and told them to do "it" this way. Some built soddies, some used log cabins, some grew wheat, others formed communities. But it was all negotiable. The whole goal was to "prove up" in 5 years. To show that you were "making it". That is the price the government put on one hundred and sixty acres of American Dream, and it is a price that everyone was willing to pay because it was a commodity that they were rich in. They were born with deep pockets of "proving up" and earned interest on their holdings of "making it".

So with that philosophy I seek to build a modern homestead. A homestead that uses the great wisdom of the past and the wonderful discoveries of the present. A homestead that hopes to build the future; the future in my family and the future of a new hope. The modern homestead will be one that uses computers and programs alongside hard work, sweat and blood. It will use new philosophies and old wisdom to "prove up" with the goal of "making it". I do hope to share our journey with you. I hope to learn a lot on the modern homestead and to discover the past as we seek the future. If your philosophy is to "prove up" and you are interested in "making it", maybe you could join me in the journey for a little conversation. I am green and bendable, but have deep roots. Let's walk together.

The Modern Homesteader