We bought a farm!

I teased you a little with some pictures of house hunting.  In reality, we only looked at one house.  I had a deal with God (ok, I prayed, I didn't really make a deal, but really I did, sorta) that if He wants us to stay out here in the desert for more than a year or two that he would give me our dream house.

Well, it's not our dream HOUSE.  But it is a beautiful, dream farm!  Beautiful for Western Colorado. No, it's not green, yes it is dry, but there IS water (even if it's not ours) and there ARE at least 30 trees (which ARE ours).

Water rights in Colorado are very different than the east coast, by the way. One of the realtors we worked with said "Every drop of rain that falls from the sky in Colorado belongs to somebody before it even hits the ground".  It's sad, but it's true.  We have an active, live, year round ditch running through our front yard (basically a small creek) and a larger one just over the property line to the north (as in on the property line) but we aren't allowed to use any of that water for irrigation of any kind.  Our kids can play in it, our livestock can drink directly from it (but we can't fill troughs from it) and watering cans are ok, but we can't divert it in any way.

But the value here to me is mainly the exploration that is already happening. Charlotte is truly at home exploring in the little bit of wilds that we have.

So these next few weeks will be spent cleaning up and fixing up the houses.  (yes I said two houses!) We bought the property from foreclosure (hooray!  now no bank owns it, it can be used for GOOD again by real people!) so that means a lot of work.  We need two new roofs and all new windows and, what we thought would be the worst, a brand new septic line.  But Praise Jesus, we found a neighbor happy to do the work for us for a tenth of what we thought it would cost!  Today I went out to the property while Dan dug up the septic line all the way from the tank to where it splits off to the big house.  You'll never believe what he found!

Trash from the 80's!  Somebody buried it with the septic line in order to try and "fix" a hole without actually fixing anything. ugh.  Really?

We won't be moving just yet- I need door knobs and windows and running water before I'll move in, not to mention appliances!- so our address is the same for now. But if you'd like to look up where we will be living soon on Google Earth or something, the address is 201 DJ rd, Rulison, 81635 (the mailing address will actually be in Parachute because Rulison doesn't have a post office, but that's just so you can check out the area.  Yes, there was Atom Bomb testing done in Rulison in the 60's and 70's, no it's not anywhere near our house.  :)  No glowing children for us!