Searching for Land

After much discussion over the past few weeks, Andrew and I have agreed it's time to seriously start looking for more space. By more space I mean more land. We have a pretty good size yard now, and it has amazing possibilties, but it is still surrounded by neighbors and doesn't really work well for our personal goals. Just what are those goals? Well, ultimately we'd like to be as self suffiecent as possible. Being able to live with what have, and maybe producing just enough income for things that are unavoidable like property taxes. Right now we garden and preserve to help supplament our food....which has been invaluable as the cost of food has skyrocketed, while our salary has not. Not to mention the food industry in this country leaves much to be desired. We do our best to buy other foods directly from thier sources (love the farmers market!), and make staples like bread from scratch. But we'd really love to have some animals of our own. Goats and chickens mostly. I would love to have not only milk goats, but goats for fiber too! Now we have enough space in our yard for some miniatures, and this was something we seriously considered, but then the new neighbors and their chickens came. Now when they first arrived, as you can tell from the post I wrote about it, I was thrilled! And really, they still don't bother me that much. But the rest of the neighbors...well they are not too pleased. Not only are there chickens, but they have turkeys too, and these birds are loud. All day long the turkeys gobble and the roosters crow like they are in a competition for who is king bird around the yard. Not to mention that everyone else around the neighborhood has dogs, including us, and dogs really send those birds into a frenzy! The roosters start crowing well before the sun is up. It doesn't wake me up, but I've heard other people complain, and it can make it hard to fall back asleep if I've woken up for another reason. The point is, while goats don't crow, I'm sure they must make noises of their own, and obviously we are just too populated for farm animals. It's okay to not care if the neighbors think your crazy for talking to your tomato plants, or shake their heads because you grass is knee high before you mow, but you still need to consider them when your choices will affect them too. So we search. We would like at least five acres, and something more rural than where we are. Truth be told if we are going to afford five acres with a house on it it's going to have to be way out in the boonies anyway, but that's just fine with us. The only complication is the house we have now. What to do with it? It's in a very desirable location, close to the best schools and only ten minutes from the most popular shopping areas, but still outside city limits, but that is the best it has going for it. Our neighborhood is one that was built in the 70's, when the lot sizes were big and houses were small. (As opposed to the current trend of building three thousand squre foot houses that are ten feet from the property line so all you see is a good view of your neighbors bathroom). Our house has only 1027 squre feet and one bathroom, and by today's standards, that's a closet. I think it will be hard to sell. We are toying with the idea of renting it, but that's a scary venture in it's own as I know nothing about being a landlord. Either way, it needs a few things like new carpet and kitchen cabinets, all of which cost money. So we figure this whole buying land and moving on thing is probably going to take us a while, but we are ready!