Today, The Land Became Ours

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.
– James 1:17

Today – June 14, 2018 – is one of the most awesome days of our lives (besides our wedding and babies being born)!!!  Today we FINALLY closed on our land and we are thrilled to be able to share the news!  Back in December 2017, we shared our first blog post about the beginning of our journey.  Since that time, we have gone through the long process of getting to this day.

For us, it is really special because if you are keeping count, it has taken us SIX MONTHS to close on this property.  The reason for this is buying land that was heir property. We purchased a total of 13.4 acres, but it was split up over two parcels.  One parcel was owned by two people and the adjacent parcel was own by the same two as the first, and seven other people.

While the closing attorney was doing the title search, he discovered that the second parcel had two heirs who had no idea they had rights to the property. We had to make sure that we covered all of our basis and give the opportunity for all the heirs to be contacted for approval.  The last thing we want to happen is for someone to show up at our doorstep one day contesting the sale of our property because they were part owner.  The good thing is that even if something like this were to happen, we have something called Title Insurance to cover us throughout the ownership of the land.  If there is one thing I will say, when offered, TAKE THE TITLE INSURANCE!!!  Maybe we can talk about that in another blog post.

Next Steps

So much has happened since we first started what we have dubbed as “Phase I” of this journey – acquiring the land.  Now, we are moving on to “Phase II” which was to start building a home. However, we might have to tweak the actual end goal of the next phase into smaller attainable chunks. So, here is what is in the immediate future:

• Access
  • The property has an easement, but it is partially blocked by a tree line that is roughly about 15 ft deep and the width of the easement. It’s not much, but there are some decent size trees and some stuff that need to be cleared.  In addition, a power pole was put smack dab in the middle of the easement, so we will need to have it moved.
  • At another point, we will have another drive-way created on the other side of the property which will give us two ways to access the property.  However, for now we’ll need to finish the first step above.
• Clearing the Property
  • In the video below, you will see a lot of tall grass that has to be cleared.  That is about 5 acres of land which will need to be bush hogged and then cut with a finish mower (we have neither one of those, but if there is a will there is a way). If Deidra had her goats, we could put them out there and let them do it, but we don’t have those either…yet.
• Making the Land Work for Us
  • It may be a while before we can build, so we will start to figure out how to make the land work for us while we work on getting out there permanently.  Whether it be starting the garden, continuing to grow hay for sale, etc., we will try to figure out something.  If you have any suggestions, please drop them in the comments below.

At any rate, stay tuned because things just got exciting!  Below are a a few of videos and photos from our day: