Progress

Well, we are about 6K into our 10K renovation/repair budget and are just barely making a dent in what we need to do, but what we've done so far has been important to the house, and both things we've done so far needed to happen while we were not living there, since they are the kinds of things that generally make people flee to a hotel for a couple of days. So we've stayed here in the rental and let the guys work before we move in.

The first thing was replacing the well pump and casing. We knew there was an issue there, and negotiated a significant price reduction because of it, so it was the first thing we set about fixing once the property became ours. Country property is only as good as the well it's on, and this well needed work. Not for lack of water -- there's plenty of that -- but the pump was 22 years old, the casing was metal and was gradually disintegrating and instead of fixing it, the previous owners had instead installed no less than three filters running into the house in order to keep the metal flakes from the pipe from entering the household plumbing.

If your house uses no less than three kinds of water filters, plus one at the well head, you might have a well casing problem, not a water quality one.

It was also only pumping a meager seven gallons per minute, pitiful by even California drought standards. Work on a well is a can you can kick down the road, but at your own risk. Generally well pumps like to give out at the start of three-day weekends, at the hottest time of the year....usually when you have houseguests about to arrive. Life is stressful enough without adding that to the mix.

And so the well guys showed up last week, replaced the aged pump and changed out the metal casings for heavy-duty PVC, and the result was....sparkling clean water, coming in at the rate of 27.5 gallons per minute. That's what I'm talking about, Oregon! Bring on the water! That's almost a 400 percent increase from what it had been at. It makes me want to wash the car in the driveway just thinking about it.

The second thing we did was have the yellowed, too-varnished floors stripped and refinished with a clear coat, using a German product designed NOT to yellow over time. What a difference THAT made! See below. It looks like the floors can breathe again.

Floors before. OK if you're a fan of orange.

Floor after! (Excuse the blue tape the guys put on to protect the carpet.)

The window guys, the locksmith, the general contractor, and the garage door guy have all come over and done their respective craft. And I bought five bare-root roses, so I'll spend some time getting them in the ground soon. Pics to come.

Like most challenging things, it will be worth it in the end. And doing it this way is allowing us to get to know the house gradually, before we move everything in. 

Coming up next...replacing the ugly, dirty whirlpool bathtub with a regular soaking tub. What hides in those jets, bacteria-wise, truly scares me, especially since I use the tub on a nightly basis. But like everything else, the result will be worth it.

Overwhelmed

So right now I'm slightly....OK, actually more-than-slightly overwhelmed at what we've taken on at the new house. As per usual, there is a lot we've learned since closing escrow that has added to our to-do list and will put a strain on our wallet. There are busted window casings, broken blinds, and garage doors that don't open. Is it ever any other way? Do people ever buy houses without hemorrhaging money for the first six months? 

I'm not even gonna list all the things that need to be done, because it will probably make me cry if I see it all written down in one place, and I don't think you have that long to read it all anyway. But some of it has to happen before we move, and the rest will be done by us (long) after we're in.  I don't even have a date for moving right now, because as I said....some things have to get done first, which means I'm relying on The Guys (collective term for the Flooring Guy, the LockSmith Guy, the Tile Guy, the Windows Guy, the Contractor Guy, and the Garage Door Guy) to start work on the things that are on the Before We Move list.

That's right, I'm expecting contractors to show up and complete work on time. Clearly I have lost my mind already.

But once we're in, I suspect I'll have projects going on for literally years. And since I actually like projects, this may be the most perfect house ever for me. But looking at it from the start is a little like staring up at a skyscraper you are about to climb. Hopefully once you get past the 10th floor it'll get easier. Hopefully.

In the meantime, I'm enjoying our last few weeks in The Vineyard House. The Vineyard House is like good, strong alcohol...incredibly enjoyable until it gives you a headache. I will miss the views, the grand trees in the back, and the quiet -- but not the total isolation or the fact that something died under the house recently and is causing intermittent stinkage. Neither Big Ag or myself feels inclined to crawl into the crawlspace and inspect, and the company does not seem to be inclined either. They already have this place rented out when we move, so I guess the new employee/tenants will have to deal with it.

I also had the fun experience of having a mouse living INSIDE my car recently, which stays in the barn when I'm not driving it. One electronic trap later and I have solved that problem. But living in a working vineyard has its drawbacks, I'm tellin' ya.  Yet I will miss it deeply. How dysfunctional is that?

So in the overwhelming moments, I'm having to just breathe deeply and remain in the present. After all, how does one eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Of course this situation is actually TWO elephants. One elephant is this house (packing and readying to move) and the other is the new house (unpacking, projecting and making it  a livable home). But taking it all in good time all any of us can do when faced with a pages-long to-do list...

No expectations

One of the best things about starting over in a new place is the freedom from having a lot of preconceived notions about things. Right now, for instance, daytime temperatures have been hovering in the mid to upper 30s in the central Willamette Valley. And every night when I watch the news from Portland there is much grousing and commiseration among the anchors and commentators that it is supposed to be about 54 degrees at this time of year, and why in the hell is it not warming up, already? The poor weather guy really has to take a lot of flak about it. People are quite offended the weather is so "abnormal" right now.

But for us, with this being our first year here, we have no expectations. Which I'm glad about, considering I made something of a cottage industry of complaining about summers in California when we lived there. So if we wake up and it's 27 degrees that seems just fine, thank you very much. It's still February, and we knew February means chilly temps anyplace north of the 40th parallel. So we're open to whatever form winter is going to take, including ice and snow. We're never disappointed because we have no expectations...or years past to compare anything to. What freedom there is in that!

54 degrees?

No expectations.

Expectations are really a curse in long-term commitments, when you think about it. We expect friends, the weather, spouses, towns and restaurants to all be a certain way, and it really fries us if they start to change and we don't like the direction things are moving. And the longer we've been enjoying something, the more we take offense when the ground beneath our feet starts to shift. That's why, occasionally, our elders can seem like such massive pains in our behinds. Often you'll find that, for them, the way things were has hardened in stone and is now the way things should always be. With pretty sharply defined edges. There is sometimes anger in nostalgia; paradise lost and all that. What a way to curse a perfectly good present.

I'm not afraid to say that I'm not exactly sure how it's all going to work as we move to our new place, and in fact am kind of excited by that fact. Homesteading is, by its nature, fairly monotonous, and so re-learning it all in a new place is certainly one way to keep it fresh, if one can just resist the temptation to try and bring the past routines along and cram them into new spaces. That probably would not work anyway, and I've seen people broken by the act of trying to make that happen. 

It's hard to keep those expectations at bay, but trying to stay in the zen of the present is a good exercise for staying open to any new ideas up ahead. 

It's official

We are homeowners again! Escrow has closed and we now legally own our own sweet little farm-ette. We won't be moving right away as the family/former owners asked for a few weeks to rent back to us, but we'll begin doing some repairs right after they vacate and will begin moving a couple of weeks after that.

I am already looking to purchase a couple of livestock animals to help us keep the grasses down, so stay tuned for that! And my hens will once again have their own chicken house, which will make life a lot easier for me, as it will need a little less cleaning and they'll have more room to roam around inside when it rains. 

So with this move will come a return to a simple, less carbon-intensive lifestyle, which I can't wait for. The old adage of "you don't know what you got 'till it's gone," is true when it comes to homesteading. There is not only common sense and environmental responsibility, but also pleasure and comfort to be found in things like re-using instead of buying new, composting, growing your own food and hanging your wash. (Since I've brought it up about ten times, can you tell how much I really miss drying my wash outdoors? Every day here it doesn't rain I think to myself, "If I had a clothesline I could do a load of wash and hang it out right now." 

So the order of moving will be from least important to most important items, with professional movers coming on the final day to take all the furniture we can't lift ourselves. I miss the college/LA days of having rattan Pier One furniture, masonry brick-and-wood stacked shelving, and art posters in plastic frames, all of which I could move by myself if necessary! 

Those were the days. Milk crates and DIY shelves.

And in a great Murphy's Law Conundrum, two of my three kids will be here visiting the week we're getting down to the nitty-gritty. Which probably means lots of take-out food, driving around showing them things, and of course having them move some stuff for us. Just so they feel useful and needed, of course. Ya, that's it. 

So maybe the simple, eco-friendly life will have to wait another week or so after we move. But it'll come. I know that now. And just in time for spring! There will be flowers and veggies to plant, animals to bring home, and the art of turning a house into a home. I cannot wait to show you around the new place and get to work making it our own.

Packing up (again) is hard to do. Not.

Hello, new farm!

Farewell, Mouse Turd Manor.

If I wasn't so happy to have found a home, I might be bummed that we have to pack up and move again so soon -- for the second time in one year, for those keeping track. But I'm quite grateful to be doing so. In many ways it will be great to get out of this rental -- a run-down, manufactured home I aptly named "Mouse Turd Manor," when we moved in (although we've since eliminated the rodent issue, at least inside the house). But the property is way too close to a dairy and the accompanying stinky dairy lagoon, and too far away from other neighbors to have made any connections there.  It's not exactly close to town, either. Great views though. I'll miss those.

The views from the front door of Mouse Turd Manor are mystical and magical. The dairy smell, not so much.

And since this time it's 1) a cross-town move, and 2) a move that will be done over about a month's time, it will be a lot less painful than moving to a new state, like last time. In the 20+ moves I've made as an adult, a local move, done over two or three weeks, is the least painful and most easily-organized way to move, by far. Take a carload or two a day over to the new place, UNPACK IT, empty the boxes, return and refill the boxes for the next run. Have the furniture movers show up on the last day and move everything you can't lift and load yourself.

Not having a ton of boxes to unpack reduces the number of items you'll have to go box-diving for in your first few weeks at your new place significantly. In other words, you'll know where your spatulas are when you need them. I always try and put unpacked items in the same places they are now, at least for the first few months I'm there. This means, if your picnic basket and carpet cleaner reside in the closet of the bedroom where the blue quilt is on the bed, they should go into that exact place in your new home, if possible. You'll feel a lot less cognitive dissonance that way and you can always move them later on to different places, once you're more settled in.

But the things I'm looking forward to the most are the things that were just too inconvenient or impossible to do here. Stuff like growing significant amounts of food, canning, preserving, hanging wash out to dry, using the solar oven, having a dedicated space for my chickens, and having garbage and recycling pick-up. Those are all things I'm looking forward to having available again. Move to a new place and you'll find out quickly the things your soul needs, and mine needs that stuff. I've felt like a boat without an anchor without being tied to the seasons and the land in those very meaningful ways. And I really miss homegrown food. 

I'm even looking forward to having some farm neighbors again.  Boy, I never thought I'd feel this way, especially after we lived next to that one guy next door who blasted "Radar Love" by Golden Earring on his patio every single Saturday morning when he was out working on his property. While I love the quiet, neighbors (patio speakers notwithstanding) can really help you feel part of a community. Even if you don't like their music, at least you know they are over there. 

And so March will be Moving Month. We'll also be putting in a new well pump, doing some minor septic repairs, painting, cleaning, and refinishing some hardwood floors. It will be great to post pics and write about what's going on, because it's going to be a lot!

Boldly Forward

"The Old Farmhouse" by Reb Frost

I am happy to announce that...tentatively....we've found our house!

We made an offer on a newer farmhouse about 30 minutes north of here last week and found out over the weekend that our offer was accepted! We'd been watching this house for several months, waiting to see if the price would drop, and once it did, we moved in with an offer.

So now there will be the usual round of inspections, which is why we're still tentative at this point. (We may discover that a swarm of Asian stink bugs, or Amelia Earhart and DB Cooper have been inhabiting the attic for years. I doubt it, but one never knows.) But we're extremely optimistic that this is The One.

It's been a long road to get here, and as much as finding the right place took a long time, what also took a long time was finding out how we wanted to be in this "new world" we moved to 10 months ago. Did we want to be suburb-ians with chickens or true country bumpkins? Flatlanders or mountain folk? What cities did we want close proximity to?

There was also an insane sellers' market this last summer, and we decided early on that we were not going to lose our heads in bidding wars or in having to make immediate offers on places we weren't sure about. I am glad we didn't succumb to any of that madness, even if it did make our wait longer.

But I think the biggest mistake we made (in looking at the 20+ houses we saw...20+!) was in thinking we should adapt -- either to a house that wasn't really "us" and needed extensive remodeling,or to an area that made sense geographically but didn't necessarily feel like home. You figure if you move 800 miles, you are going to have to adjust to almost everything, including your home preferences. But if you do go in that direction, you will feel a keen sense of loss over what part of your personal dream (the things you already believe about what "home" should be) you are giving up. It might be enough closet space, that extra half-bathroom, or the view out your window. 

But if I could give any advice, I'd say honor those things, however irrational they seem to others. Or you will not be happy.

What we ended up with was something astonishingly familiar to both of us. It is a 1990's build (we have never owned a home older than that) that has a lot of flat, usable land, about 2 acres, with plenty of room for chickens, clotheslines, livestock, fruit trees and vegetable growing. It has a shop for Big Ag. It has air conditioning. But it's also reasonably close to city amenities. 

Oh sure, we spent time dreaming and trying on the idea of living in Victorian fixer-uppers, mid-century ranchers, and quirky old farmhouses with various additions tacked on over the years. But it turned out, what we really needed was a relatively plain-vanilla, modern home with no quirks and no surprises. Sure, we don't get any hidden closets, old wood-burning fireplaces, solid wood interior doors or built-in bookcases. But we did get something that felt like home. To us, anyway.

In short, our mistake was in trying to be too flexible, and force the square pegs that we are into round holes. Do that and it will never fit. All you'll end up with is bruised edges and disappointment. Especially at our age, when we've had a lifetime of living in, frankly, a certain kind of home. It's adjustment enough to move to a new state and settle in. Unless you're young enough to experiment with living in different kinds of houses, you might want to stay with something that feels familiar.

And so it's with a huge amount of excitement that we (hopefully) move on to this next phase of the journey, which is getting ready to move again, but to a place we can't wait to get to. 

One thing that occurred to me is that it will be great to get back to blogging about all things homesteading, that's for sure, as well as writing from a place that feels like home. And home is clearly where we want to be. 

Plus, plenty of time to plant some vegetables in spring! Hallelujah to that!

The colors and changes of autumn

Autumn is in beautiful, colorful full swing here in the PNW, and as a lifelong Fall fan, I'm finally celebrating my favorite season in an area which actually experiences it. It's heaven.

There's a crisp bite to the morning air, warm afternoons which cool off quickly in the evening, and things are hopping down in the vineyard, where harvest is progressing nicely. Apples are literally everywhere -- on volunteer trees by the roadside, in the parks, and around on this property, to a point where it's a bit like summer zucchini -- you can't give them away. There are just too many. And we've had over an inch of rain this month. A full inch -- just in September! So along with fall oranges and golds, there is also a lot of green popping up again in the fields.

There is also a ripe pumpkin field about a mile down the road which stretches as far as the eye can see, so much that these orange orbs should have their own zip code.

Our property search progresses, but we've re-tooled and will now add bare land to our focus, with an eye towards building on a couple of acres. The homes we've seen here have been disappointing, I'll be honest. Oregon's property tax laws are very odd, but one rule we now understand is that any significant remodeling triggers a reassessment, which could significantly raise your taxes from that point on. The point is, it discourages people from improving their property, other than required maintenance. (Which explains all the 1970's kitchens and bathrooms.) We have seen a lot of people remodeling right before they sell, so that the buyer and not them will face the new, steeper tax bill.  (which explains all the bad house flips.) So it might just be easier to build new and face the music, being given a tax amount based on comparable properties with no improvements needed, keeping our tax bill relatively stable.

And we've also figured out that rather than go south to towns like Albany or Corvallis, we really love the area we're in. Independence has all the small-town ambiance of a Hallmark movie, with friendly people, great little shops, and a really positive community vibe. So while we won't rule anything out, we'd like to stay close to where we are now. It turns out God may have known exactly what he was doing in finding us digs 20 miles from our intended destination. And isn't that always the way?

So if we do build, it looks like we may well spend a full year in this vineyard. Being plopped down here was actually key to us realizing we did not want to live in town if at all possible. But those realizations take time. I can't imagine what we'd have done if we would have had to choose a place up here based on just one or two weekends of traveling here from California and looking. 

So my advice to anyone thinking of relocating is to take your time. Your opinions, ideas and visions of what a place holds for you will change over the months you live there. So before making a permanent investment that could be wrong for you, take the time to rent somewhere before deciding. Big changes demand good data, and some revelations only come to you once you're in-country and living in the general area you are desiring to settle down in.

There seem to be a few people reading this who are themselves relocating or thinking about it, and so I will say that despite the time it's taking to find a place, this is still one of the best decisions we've ever made, hands down. It's been an education, an adventure and most of all, a huge improvement in both our lives.

If it's been flipped you must (not) acquit

So here we are in the middle of an Oregon summer, on a seemingly endless house hunt. As of this writing, we are still in our rental, which has become very comfortable, homey and livable...especially considering we do not pay any utilities, and have been watering the grass furiously (no shortage of water here) and setting the thermostat at 75 degrees through some warm (90 degree) days.

But we'd like to find a real home; a place we can list as our permanent address, where we expect to be for years to come. But despite looking at quite a few houses, it just hasn't happened yet.

Part of the problem is that we're still learning our way around the region. Every time we go to an Open House or to see a house with our realtor, we discover a new neighborhood. Doing this has allowed us to narrow down our search, which has been great. But it's also been a little like going on 20 first dates. It's enlightening finding the neighborhoods, but sometimes a little depressing when it comes to the homes themselves.

Yes, the homes. Let me tell you.

One place we toured, built in the 1940s, was glorious...original plaster walls, huge garden, but updated with central air conditioning, heating AND solar. The fly in the ointment was the teeny-tiny one car garage, which MIGHT hold a mini-cooper if you had nothing else in there. Big Ag's comment: "Cars were big in the 1940's. I don't get it." While I've read KonMari's Tidying Up book just like everyone else, I still refuse to get rid of my Christmas decorations and patio decor, so garage space is mandatory, especially when you figure most of the patio furniture will get stored once the rains come. (Actually KonMari lost me when she wrote how she'd gotten rid of her tools and now used a frying pan to hammer nails into the wall, instead of just keeping her hammer. We clearly live in different universes.)

Hello, Garage. Might there be a house hiding somewhere behind you?

 Another place we saw was a home on a nice piece of land at the right price point, but was the victim of a terrible remodel, where the garage was extended forward and forward until it completely eclipsed the front of the house. And the new kitchen was placed so that as you walked through the front entry, you basically walked into the enter of it all. Considering the state of my kitchen most days, that's not the way I want to greet guests.

And then there are the many, many bad flips we've seen, all done in the Chip-and-Joanna style of Everything Gray, white subway tile in the kitchen/gray quartz counters, and taking out the shower and soaking tub in the master to put in one GIANT open shower. Oh, and the vinyl wood-look flooring, which is not too bad except when it's gray, like the walls, counters and tile often are. Truly, we've seen about 10 homes like this and want to shake the flippers and take away their HGTV-watching privileges. Don't they realize that buyers know these things are a trend, same as "open concept" once was, and that like most trends, not everyone is interested in them, long-term?

A flipping awful kitchen, with repainted old cabinets, subway tile and gray granite. Because Chip and JoAnna said so.

No tub for you. Gray shower for you.

And so there you have it...our new hobby, house-hunting. If we don't find anything in the next six weeks or so, we may be in this house until spring, when the market picks back up. Of course I can find lots and lots of houses I'd love about 200K above our price point, but isn't that always the way? Maybe I'd better start playing the Mega Millions lotto. 

Unclenched

This is what "unclenched" feels like.

About six months ago I was talking to a friend about anxiety -- something we've both experienced on a chronic basis at different times in our lives -- and she described it as "clenching." As in she'd wake up and think of some task that needed accomplishing in her classroom that day and get a tightened-up feeling in her solar plexus that would radiate throughout her body and create a "fight or flight" reaction.

She was clenched. Clenched over bulletin boards and history papers. Like a fist, ready to strike out and get done what needed to get done. I've been clenched at various times in my life, for things both greater and less than those things. 

Those times in my life include, for some reason, the last few years or so, where I felt that way most of the time. Clenched describes it perfectly.

But not anymore. I noticed the other day I am definitely un-clenched. For some reason, I've relaxed, which I only realize when I compare myself to where I was before I came here. 

Our locations, to some extent, define us. And even if we hold ourselves apart from those places, they still rub off on us. We breathe them in, we bump up against them in the market, and we drive along their roads. We pay our taxes to them. It's as if we are water and our location is the rocks around us that we flow in response to. Whether we like it or not, our location shapes us and defines our boundaries.

Rocks that define us (in this case Proposal Rock)

These days, I'm honestly no longer bothered by the little voices that used to chide me always to do more, to be more, to drive faster, work faster, and keep up, keep up, keep up. Make no mistake, although people talk about how "laid back" California is, that's probably the greatest myth about my home state. Californians live hard, drive hard but, to their credit (or detriment, depending on your personal philosophy), they play even harder. Which is why the wine country regions of the state are such a rousing success. Work hard, play harder. 

And I think living in what became one of the "play harder" places in the state just did not agree with me. Hence, a very primal kind of clenching began, which was nothing more than a soul trying to tell its person that they both needed to be someplace else, not soon but rather, yesterday.

And while it's hard to see things that could be in places you are not, pondering/exploring those futures is something worth thinking about if you're less than totally happy where you are now. For years I thought my anxiety was purely biological, or a product of upbringing, or of age. But it turns out a good part of it was where I was living. Not only did I need to slow down, I needed to live in a place which gave me permission to do so. I also needed to live in a place with a more gentle climate in summer. Because most of us are, as it turns out, defined by our location. 

Chickens are clenched, but I think they like being that way.

At this point I'm not sure what this area is all about, but everyone doing their own thing and giving others space, respect, and kindness seems to be high on the list. For me, this made it OK to finally relax and draw inward a little bit more without feeling like I'm either missing out on something or slacking off. 

And so, from an unclenched place, I wish you a good mid- summer.

Neskowin Wildlife preserve is extremely unclenched. 

Here for now

Allow me to introduce you to our temporary digs, Mouse Turd Manor. The garden and brick walkway actually look scarier than the house in this pic, but I've worked on it since then. 

The last two weeks have passed in a kind of haze. Isn't that always the way it is with huge life events? We may hang onto a moment or two from high-stress times, but a lot of it passes in a blur.

Every week here seems to feature a new form of help for the house, which is good because it needs it. I feel bad for this house. Someone obviously loved it a long time ago, but being a manufactured/modular home which stood vacant for almost two years caused it to fall into disrepair. If it was a person, it would currently be in the Emergency Room with a saline IV drip line, antibiotics, and full x-rays and a blood panel being done. It might even be feeling a little better at this point. At least the many fixes are happening, and at no cost to us.

But we are making sure we get out and have at least one day a week of fun, and one weeknight in town. Last week we went into Independence for dinner, and its simple beauty and friendliness made me feel like I was walking through a Hallmark movie.

Hanging flower baskets on the streetlights -- so pretty.

That sweet, small town feeling!

The Willamette

And last weekend we went to the famous Pelican Brewery in Pacific Beach for lunch and beach walking. Sometimes you need the familiar in your life, and the beach and ocean are that for me. It's still the Pacific, after all. 

A day at the beach!

Say yes to stress eating lol.

But this place is beginning to feel more like home as well. Next week I begin painting over these miserable colors and half-painted walls in a more neutral palate. This house is proof that some people watch way too much HGTV, and/or believe you can successfully replicate what the professionals do there in regards to paint. A 2,000 square foot home painted in 12 different colors is a little like a gypsy wedding (sorry, gypsies): Something old, something new, something red, something blue, something yellow, something gray, something turquoise, something orange, something black, something green, etc.....Yes, friends, it IS possible to love color too much. It works for The Property Brothers, most of the time. But don't try it at home, no matter what the Valspar commercial tells you.

Can you count the colors? Dark grey, gatorade yellow, and turquoise. Ick.

I've also decided the vegetable garden is beyond saving, but the flower garden in front is not. So I'm weeding the flower beds but won't be planting any vegetables this summer. I'm not really sad about it, except when I need some onions or parsley for a recipe and realize I have none outside.

And so it goes...a little at a time, in the garden and inside. Making sure I stop and take in the greenery on a regular basis. Because while you can have too much color, too much greenery is something I just can't get enough of right now.

One Week In

On the road, near Mt. Shasta

It's been a week since we moved to Oregon and it was a crazy week filled with plenty of upheaval.

Let's start with packing out. As kind of a present to ourselves, we hired a local company to do our packing for us. The packers showed up for their six hour stint, and worked vveerrry slowwly. Packing. Each. Item. Extremely. Perhaps. Overly. Carefully. And occasionally checking their phones. One had two inch long fingernails, which made it impossible for her to work efficiently. So a big thumbs down on hiring packers. I could have done it myself, for much less time and a LOT less money. Which we did anyway, since we ended up having to pack about 50 boxes ourselves at the last minute, because they didn't get done what their estimator thought they would.

There were about 10 boxes labeled like this. Not helpful. Mixing bowls? Serving platters? Plates? Who knows.

But moving day was a breeze. The way I figured it, I was in labor with my son for 26 hours and the drive was 14 hours, so if I could do the first I was obviously capable of doing the second. Even with five chickens, two doves, one pigeon, one sedated cat and a dog it was a pleasant, easy drive. I highly recommend it over labor. Less mess and you can stop if you need to.

The arrival, however, was anything but pleasant. The house was supposed to be made ready for us since it is a place belonging to Big Ag's employer, however, it was not. When we arrived at 11 pm after our long drive, we found the windowsills covered with dead insects, rodent droppings everywhere, and the whole place was filthy. Honestly, the first few days after that I don't even want to remember how awful it was. But once Merry Maids and the exterminators started to do their work, improvements started to happen quickly and continue to happen. We may even have a working garbage disposal and range by the end of the day!

So all that has made things better. And you know what made it even better still? Oregon itself. It's really hard to be depressed amidst this kind of incredible beauty and abundant water and life. And people have been so welcoming and friendly, it's been a pleasure anytime we've gone into town on business or had people here to the house.

The view from the front yard.

"You're in Oregon now," they say to us. It's part comforting, and part reminder (to me, anyway) that it's our job to fit in -- to become Oregonians and not bring California with us as we come into a new place and learn to be a part of it. 

We're in Oregon now. And that makes all the difference in the world.

A moving moment!

Well, this post will probably be the last before we officially become Oregonians. The house is packed up and while we have about 100 things to do before we leave in a day or two, we feel like we have things in hand.  Accounts are closed, new ones are being opened up, and we're readying ourselves for a 14 hour drive with our five chickens, two doves, one pigeon, one cat and one dog. 

The house looks a little forlorn right now, as most homes do when they're getting ready to be unoccupied. No worries though, if all goes well and escrow closes as it should, there should be new people here to love it soon.

For us, it will be nice to arrive, and even nicer when our furniture arrives a day after that. And of course there's internet to be installed and satellite TV to go up, because it's the last season of "The Americans," and I can't miss a single episode. Priorities.

People have asked if I'm sad to be leaving either the area or our house, but I am not one of those people who minds moving, as long as I have plenty of notice and help and I'm going somewhere I want to go. So while it's a little bittersweet, the sweet is the prevailing flavor -- right now, anyway. 

We did have a serious hiccup yesterday though. Our packers arrived and proceeded to work much slower than our moving coordinator had estimated, leaving us holding the bag with about 50 boxes to pack ourselves, after he mistakenly told us the ladies could have us packed up in about six hours. Nope. But we're not afraid of hard work. 50 boxes later, mission accomplished. 

Nice to know I can out-pack a trio of 20-something girls though, even at my age. If homesteading gives you nothing else, it will absolutely give you endurance (and very strong arms). 

I'll post as soon as I'm able from the great Pacific Northwest! If you are the praying sort, say a prayer as we travel, and if you're a "sending positive vibes" kind of person, those would be welcome, too! 

The virtual home

View from the driveway

One of the hardest parts about this move is that, while I've visited Oregon and feel pretty confident and happy about the state we are moving to, I have never once been in the home we'll be living in. Usually when you move, part of moving out of your current place is feeling the excitement and anticipation of where you are moving into. But if you've never seen it, it's basically a big, yawning chasm looming ahead of you with a sign hanging over it which says, "I'm sure it will be just fine. Really. I hope." 

Luckily, Big Ag is in Oregon this week for some meetings, and so he went over to the house yesterday afternoon and we Skyped together, him on his phone and me here on my desktop. Together we "walked" through the entire house, looking in cupboards, seeing the view through the windows, and discussing furniture placement. It was gorgeous day with a partly cloudy sky and the sun just setting, and so of course the whole property was bathed in beautiful light and looked warm and welcoming. The inside of the house itself looked friendly and inviting, with just enough projects to keep us busy without major projects that would be a headache.

Doing this virtual walk-through lowered my anxiety levels by about 80 percent. Many of us complain about the hassle our virtually-connected world brings us, but with it come incredible advantages, like being able to tour your new home, real time, from the comfort of the one you're selling.

The home we're moving into has been empty for a couple of years, and definitely looks it. I just finished a novel where one of the characters says, "a home needs to have people living in it to be happy." Looking around at this vacant house, I can see that's true. Something goes out of a place when people no longer occupy it. It can be clean, it can be structurally sound, but it just feels lonely. 

So maybe in making a happy home, we'll also be making a home happy. That's what I'm hoping, anyway.

Big Ag met these "neighbors" walking in the road yesterday.