Almost 5 years ago, my husband and I made a huge change in our lives. We were unhappy where we were, so we researched locations we wanted to live and we chose the Portland, Oregon area. Then we found jobs and relocated here in February of 2008. We immediately set out to buy a small farm and we taught ourselves (by mostly trial and error and google searches!) how to farm in a sustainable manner. You can read about our adventures here:http://simplemetamorphosis.blogspot.com/
About a year and a half ago, we started to question our decision-making paradigm and we spent quite a few months hemming and hawing about our future. We both loved the farm and wanted to do it full time, but financially, it wasn't a possibility. After much deliberation, we came to the conclusion that we did want to farm full time, but we also wanted to have full time careers. To do both, we opted to focus on the career part now, and the farming in the future. We found a place that is MUCH smaller with zero land (only a small private patio) that is 5 miles from my office and right in the thick of civilization. It's also holds a significantly smaller mortgage. We moved into this place in October of 2012 and spent the remainder of the year working on the farmhouse and property, and re-homing the animals in preparation for sale. This included renovating the bathrooms to take the house form a 3/2 to a 3/3 with a private master suite. We also replaced all the carpeting and cheap laminate flooring in the main living space with a higher end but durable laminate. We painted, we de-cluttered and we generally reconditioned the house and listed it in mid-March. Two weeks later, we accepted an almost full price offer and later this week, we will close on it.
Closing a lovely (but challenging) chapter in our lives.
Now the plan is to move forward with our lives with the intent to farm again when we retire. The goal is to retire early in about 10 years assuming that we can save/invest enough money to make it financially feasible. With the smaller mortgage and newer home, we should be able to contribute to that fund in a regular manner.
In the meantime, we will bike more and drive less, we will learn to live in a smaller space, we will both recondition our bodies (we've let all of this get in the way of our fitness levels), we will grow things at our community garden and we will take the opportunity to see much, much more of our gorgeous state, the pacific northwest and the world in general.
Follow along if you are so inclined. :-)
