Wednesday, June 18, 2008

It's a Good Day to Die (or get in a huge amount of debt)


At 8AM this morning we applied for the mortgage for the "farm". If we last till the end of the mortgage, I will be 80. I'm guessing something else will happen before then, but in the meantime we'll have accomplished a goal to 1) live with our alpacas; 2) bring our own business back to our home; 3) try to live more in harmony with the earth. Naw, we're not Birkenstock wearing hippy throwbacks, but we are looking forward to having a garden, some chickens, and of course the alpacas.



The mortgage man, Dave, was helpful and efficient. He also had an interesting collection of political memorabilia in his office that was pretty entertaining. Wow, a mortgage and an opportunity to view an unusual collection which included this little metal clicky thing that said "Click for Dick" (Nixon). Way too funny. The mortgage should be through in about a week. We close August 5 and move in after the 15th.



Tomorrow, we have a carpet guy coming to recarpet the house. The carpet was getting worn 14 years ago, but hey it had a few more years in it, right? We cleared out everything from the three bedrooms, the remains of which are everywhere. We tried to get a POD, but the Pod-people said they could not get down our driveway. I think they were chicken to try. We've had every other kind of truck down here, certainly an 8x10 POD could come down. Oh well. We reshuffled stuff in the garage and moved stuff in there, thereby saving $400 on the POD. Alls well that ends well, I guess.



I had started skirting Leah's fleece and had to bag it up to do later. There's just no way I'll finish with everything else that's going on. I learned to spin (still learning), and ordered a wheel which is backordered for at least another month. I love to spin. I figure it's part of the process. I started sewing with commercial cloth, then learned to hand dye. Now I'm learning to spin fiber. I figure the next step is to plant a cotton crop. I keep telling Len that he needs to spin...it is incredibly relaxing.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Finaleah...

It seems like years since we first started this quest. It only seems that way, because it really has been. Finaleah...both the name of our first Alpaca, and the feeling that we are "finally" moving in a positive direction. Since our purchase of our first Cria in September of 2007, Jo has been scouring the on-line real estate listings looking for the perfect farm for us. Now, in June of 2008, we have sealed a deal to move just four miles down the road to a 4-acre horse farm. We've driven by countless properties, toured 6-8 or so, and made another offer on another broken down farm just a mile away. That one fell through...the sellers were going through a divorce. In the end, I'm really glad. It had no barn, no fence and needed a lot of TLC to fix over 100 years of problems.
Our search was complicated by several other factors: school district (one son going into the 12th grade and another with special needs), and a strategic location to move our "other" business back home( video production specializing in TV commercials and corporate communications). Now that we've found that perfect intersection of attributes, we're faced with moving a business and a home, plus putting our existing home on the market. It's mind-numbing.

Our first pictures of Take2 Alpacas:
















Of all the features of the property, the barn was definitely what sealed the deal for us. Who would have thought...a middle-aged, out-of-shape, couch potato would take on something so all-encompassing? As my wife and I both say to each other...what else would we do?

I guess we'll see.