What started it all…

June 2022… I remember getting a phone call asking, “So, if we move to Arkansas, will you at least come visit?”

Of course my answer was, “Duh!” Why wouldn’t I go visit some of my best friends. Of course I was sad that they were going to move out of state, but I was excited for them. The conversation continued with me being told that I should just move with them, there was no way I would leave Arizona without my mom, and I knew then that my mom had no interest in moving anywhere.

As the summer went on, we were traveling throughout Michigan spending time with family and friends. And our friends that were planning to move were sending me house postings to check out. It was fun looking at places they were interested in. This led to Zillow searches of houses all over Arkansas. I set a budget based on what I would be able to afford on my own, and then slowly my mom started looking at places and asked what we could get it we raised the budget a little.

Somehow we had gone from saying there was no way we were moving, to now looking at properties and talking to a realtor. We went to Arkansas for a week and met a realtor that we had been talking to and texting with a lot. She showed us some homes, we fell in love with one and put in an offer. After our inspection, we backed out of that and decided to put things on hold a little.

Mom sold her house, moved in with me, and we went back to Arkansas in September to see a new property that had become available. We went to see 37 acres with two homes, and a barn. It had about 10 acres cleared or at least mostly cleared, and a wet weather pond. We fell in love with the home and property. We put in the offer, which was accepted, and we moved forward with the inspection and all the details for closing.

At the end of October 2022 we signed the papers on our new house and hit the road with out first load of household and garage stuff. We spent almost a week in our new home, and got some work done. Replaced toilets, cleaned and power washed the barn, unpacked everything we brought in the first load. After almost a week, we headed back to Arizona to load up the rest of our stuff. It was a chaotic week or so back in Arizona and then we hit the road again. We said goodbye to Arizona and got on the road with a 26 foot uhaul, a 12 foot cargo trailer, plus the bed of a truck, the back of a van, and the entire interior of an SUV loaded with everything we were moving.

23 hours straight through on the road and we were pulling into the driveway of our new home…

Into the land that would house our dream… the dream of building a better life for ourselves and especially for my son… the dream of building a homestead and taking a step away from that chaos of city life so that we can grow and raise our own food and learn to cook and bake more.