Posted in Compost on February 10, 2012
Yesterday I closed on 1.25 acres in Yolo County, zoned ?residential agricultural.? The house has a good floor plan and a lot of potential, but it needs a great deal of work, which I spent hundreds of dollars in inspections to know about in precise detail before taking the plunge? ? I had to know just how bad it was.
While I was ?approved?to borrow about twice what I paid for the property, my goal was not to trade up but rather to reduce my cost of living dramatically. Had it? not been for the horrible economy and the property?s status as a somewhat scary fixer I could never have purchased it at all with a plan of reducing my cost of living. It was $100K less than the house I?m living in now, which I bought in 2003, before the real estate bubble started to expand. Probably I?ll spend $60-70K to get the new place fixed, one $10K project at a time, paying as I go.
The location is very good. There?s a million-dollar home going in next door, another two doors down and several more down the street. Almost everyone has horses, up and down the street. My dentist inherited a 40-acre farm not a quarter-mile away, and the man who leases the property is a regular at the weekend farmer?s markets, and runs a farm stand every summer weekday. It?s less than a mile to a rail-to-trail line that runs alongside the Sacramento River for 30 miles or more, perfect for trail-riding. There?s a nice new high school, a Target and an upscale grocer not two miles away. If I walk down the street a little, I can see downtown Sacramento, but I can see real farms even closer all around me.? Some day the entire neighborhood will be custom homes. Right now, my neighbors are mostly the people who built these homes (my house was an estate sale) or the sons and daughters who inherited the properties.
I know where I?ll be putting in the raised beds already. The round pen ? I?m still thinking.
Before I can do anything, the place needs a new septic tank. The ramshackle ?guest house? needs to be demolished and hauled away. The electrical needs to be brought up to modern safety standards. The barn needs to be braced in both directions so a good wind doesn?t bring it down. The fencing needs to be fixed and, eventually, replaced. The AC unit ? is running out of time.
And that all has to happen before I can even think about moving in. And that?s not all:
The windows need replacing. Drywall needs to be added in the two front bedrooms. The kitchen needs appliances that work ? none of them currently do.
The house needs painting, inside and out. There are no window coverings. The hardwood floors are a mess. The place needs new baseboards. Insulation. Re-grading and drainage. Putting in a decent home office. Replacing the driveway. Removing a dozen old stumps.
And then, at some point, I?ll add a second bath.
The only things that really don?t need work or replacement are the well and the roof.
What I did today, the day after closing, was go to the CarMax and trade my little truck for a slightly bigger one, a 2004, one-owner, low-mileage no-frills Tundra that can haul it all, from a full sheet of plywood to a three-horse slant-load trailer. I tossed a few thousand in cash on top of the trade-in to make it work, because I am determined to pay as I go for everything from here on in. I?m guessing it?ll take three-to-five years to get it all done. In the meantime, it?ll be perfectly safe and comfortable for all, if not very pretty.
But we?ll all be together, dogs, cats, horses, chickens and even my two pet ducks. I will be pushing to be living at Rancho Buena Fe?by mid-April.
If I weren?t so damn happy I?d be terrified.
Source: http://www.goodfaithranch.com/compost/a-home-for-all-an-adventure-in-small-scale-farming-begins/
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