What are we doing?!

To those who know me and Chris, you'll know that this past year has been one full of numerous transitions for us, each of us personally making a 180 shift in our daily activities, and then also managing that major shift of responsibilities between us as a couple.  From us both changing careers, number of paid hours worked (0->50, and 50->0), amount of free time (about the inverse), household duties, priorities, discovering how ADHD plays out in a partnership, and managing all of the tenants and housemates that've been needed to maintain an income level that gets us barely squeaking by within $50 of our monthly expenses, it has been a fairly rough year all around!

Being married is hard enough
work to cause calluses!

We've both learned a whole lot about better communication, better listening, having more patience, better anger management, being clearer with our expectations, when it makes sense to spend a lot of energy & when to just let go, and oh of course, we learned lots about compromise.  While all those are great things & our lives are better for it, for two really stubborn people all of that is pretty exhausting and it wasn't how we planned to spend our 2nd year of marriage!

More than we expected -- up & down, round & round,
but still smiling & still holding hands!

Bea & Chris in Maine

So this past June, Chris & I went on a week-long (too quick!) road-trip vacation to visit some friends & family up in Maine, Vermont, and points in between.  Out of the 5 groups of people we visited, 3 of them had some “non-traditional" kind of idyllic-seeming rural living arrangement/lifestyle worked out where they got to spend most of their time doing activities besides focusing on economic gain.  From raising alpacas to foraging wild edibles & grinding their own acorn flour, changing cloth diapers on a sheep-skin to living in a tiny house (40 sf converted toolshed), we visited a lot of happy people!!!

Somewhere along the trip, the distance between these people who were living the sorts of dreams I had always envisioned myself & my then-hypothetical partner pursuing and where Chris & I currently exist day-to-day became so stark.  I kept thinking, “We have to get ourselves a farmhouse!  We have to get away from the city!"  Chris was not quite so easily convinced.

For a month or two, I kept looking at our city life, trying to figure out if there was a way to make it work without moving away.  I just keep coming back to the same problem -- I want more space, physically, mentally.  I want our income to be more in line with the median of a given area, without compromising our values and without the career-driven, overpriced, hustle bustle and traffic.  Neither Chris or I are career-focused and would far prefer both working part-time and having free-time for hobbies and each other, and our someday future kids, rather than busting our butts just to make ends meet.  I want to co-create a life with Chris as a team, not to try & adopt him into the city life I had before he came into it & vice versa.  Chris originally moved to DC for a job (long-since finished) and to meet someone to settle down with (check!).  I originally bought a house just outside DC in order to support the lifestyle required for me to start up a non-profit urban farm project, but after 4 years & getting married, it was time for me to get regular paid work and rebuild my savings account.  In short, our reasons for living in the city have been a couple years obsolete.

I started day-dreaming about my ideal property in the country.  Chris' folks live near Richmond, so being closer to them was our only geographical constraint.  On a sleepy weekend morning, I got Chris and a notebook in the same place, and we brainstormed this list:

Required	Would be Nice
3+ bedrooms	Pond
2 bathrooms	5 bedrooms
Space for garden	Pre-made garden area
Workshop area	Outbuilding(s)
Modern windows	Solar panels/south-facing roof
Modern roof	Wood-burning stove
Town within 15 minutes	Central A/C
Hobby rooms (craft, computer)	Ceiling fans
Porch (covered)	Gas stove
Big kitchen	Chicken coop
Not a trailer	Town within 5 minutes
Not new construction	Wraparound porch
Flush toilets	Basement/Storage
Good source of water	Large closets
Broadband/cable internet	Wood floors (no carpet)
	Riding mower conveys
	Tall ceilings
	200 amp modern electrical
	Woods
	Shade trees near house
	Paved road
	Progressive neighbors/community

So with this info & Chris somewhat grudgingly on-board with the idea, I went online and started looking at Craigslist home listings.  It led me to a few real-estate websites that were about a thousand times more searchable (and I took advantage, tagging far too many as “possibilities").  Weeks later, we set up a tiny projector, pillows on the office floor, and I got Chris to watch a day's worth of slideshows of real estate photos flash by on the ceiling displayed in 256 colors.  Alt-tab to google maps to make sure each one isn't totally in the middle of nowhere.  We narrowed it from 50+ houses to 10 in all directions around Charlottesville, and we decided to go in person to see what these places really looked like.

We made a last-minute reservation to spend the night in a caboose cabin and headed off to see 10 houses in 2 days, as an information-gathering-only type of trip.  Luckily, the realtor wasn't available to go with us to all 10 on 24-hours' notice so we drove all around by ourselves and managed to get inside & view 3 of the houses.  From the remoteness & lack of reasonably nearby towns, we quickly ruled out 90% of them.

Farm I worked at -- you can just barely see the
barn from the top of the driveway.
Beautiful, but pretty inaccessible.

I mean, I've lived on a farm where you have 1.5 miles of rocky muddy clay and 10% grade to navigate just to the top of the driveway, and from there 15 more miles to get gas or groceries.  If you don't have a 4x4 (and we don't), you're not leaving if it rains.  We'd much rather be able to get out & about whenever we need to!

Anyway, that whole week following, the 2nd house we saw kept playing around in Bea's head.  Not only did it meet all but one of our requirements (we've since decided the original wavy glass windows were way better suited to an 1880s house than modern windows!), but most of our “would be nice" checklist was represented too.  PLUS THERE IS AN ABANDONED GENERAL STORE ZONED COMMERCIALLY!

So many possibilities!  And so the adventure begins...  We'll be moving sometime between October-January, depending on how soon we find new jobs in the Charlottesville area.

We'll update our progress periodically on this site.  We probably won't post with any regular schedule, so please subscribe if you want to keep up with us!  Thanks for following our adventures into the next chapter of our lives!

The soon-to-be Fixettwell Farmhouse!