We put Bedlam Farm on the market six months ago, and nobody wanted to see it in the winter and early Spring. I understand the nature of the real estate market, but I was surprised, a bit hurt too, to be honest. I love the farm so much and so much of my life, work, blood and fortune is in it – and it is such a beautiful place for me – that I couldn’t understand why no one even wanted to even see it. Now, as the realtors predicted, it is early Summer and several people do want to see it, especially after we dropped the price by $50,000 to $399,000. Two years ago, we put it on the market for $650,000. I have no complaints about this. Times have changed, and I will change with them. The farm has been magical for me, and I will not regret a second of my life here.
Sometimes the realtor asks if I am comfortable sticking around, as people want to meet me or have specific questions for me. Sometimes they don’t want me around, so that people can speak openly about what they see. I am fine with that. Yet I have to be honest, showing the farm is hard for me. People see it so differently than I do, even those who love it. People are so different than me, something I sort of know but am occasionally jarringly reminded of. And showing the farm makes it real. People are coming to see it, and we are leaving.
I bought the farm one day in 2003 while driving down Route 30. I looked up and saw this sprawling old farmhouse and barns sitting high up about the small hamlet of West Hebron. I called a realtor on my cell phone and said I wanted to buy it. “But you haven’t even seen it,” she said, and she added, it wasn’t for sale. A few weeks later, she called to say it was suddenly on the market. I bought it over the phone. But you haven’t gone through it, she said. I know, I answered. I’ll have it inspected and check it all out. I just love the place and I want to live and work there. I bought it. My life changed forever.
The farm was a portal for me. My life fell apart there and came together. I’ve written seven adult books, three children’s books, an E-Book original there and became a photographer, an artist. I broke down and got divorced there, got rich and went broke there. Got well and found love there. I have redone or re-worked just about every inch of the place, restored four barns, built four out buildings, a drainage ditch, new wiring, two new rooms, a stone wall. Walked a million times through the woods, read St. Augustine to my dogs. Blows my mind really. I spent all kinds of money I will never get back and that is okay by me. I love my life and will not speak hard of it.
When we bought the New Bedlam Farm, we thought of Florence’s spirit and the feeling of the place and our change to buy it together and we didn’t even think much of the ancient wiring or the 50-year-old bathroom or Grandma Moses’ kitchen or the windows that haven’t been opened in 50 years or the tiny septic tanks outside or the collapsed barn. Who cares? We’ll get around to fixing them. It isn’t important.
Maria is more grown-up than I am and has more experience buying and selling homes. Normal people care about the details, she says, go over them. It is the way it ought to be done, she said, even if it isn’t the way we do it. I am learning this. I listen to her. And the farm is in pretty great shape, I am proud to say, and people do seem to love it. Maybe I am just sensitive about this entry into my most private of spaces, the spaces I don’t even ever put up on the blog.
But when people come through and look at the farm as if it were a business transaction, or fuss over the placement of a barn, or the strange layout of old farmhouses, it is sometimes hard for me to understand that it is a business transaction and this is perfectly natural and normal, what adult people do when they are looking for new homes. Perhaps it is what I should have done. This is why I don’t have lots of retirement money in the bank. Or any. I think a spiritual life and a creative one teaches us that we live in a larger field than us, swim in a bigger stream. The people who buy it need to love it in their own way, not in mine. But as much as I want to get to our new home, it hurts to sell this place and leave it, and it is pure ego and foolishness to think everyone who comes here ought to feel the way I did about it and appreciate it in the way I do. They have to make their own history here.
Maria said I might want to skip showings and let the realtor do it, but I don’t want to. I’ve learned to grow up and and take responsibility. And I want to make sure I am here to see that whoever buys the farm sees the spirit that inhabits this house, these barns, the creative spark that opened up my life and Maria’s along with everything else. Even if it hurts.
