Crossing to safety. A person, a pony and a dog, each looking for their own way, each in some way touching and helping the other.
Some decisions to make. In a few weeks, we are all moving to our new home, the New Bedlam Farm. Donkeys, dogs, chickens, barn cats, humans, all of us, all of them. There is not a day that somebody does not tell me it is very brave and risky to buy a home without selling the one you have, especially “in this economy,” words I banned from my own writing and vocabulary months ago. Still, I know they are right.
Bedlam Farm went on the market nine months ago, the asking price was $475,000, and it is still on the market, the asking price $375,000. Showing the house has been an education for me, a window into my own life and soul and those of other people. I have been uncomfortable with most of the people looking – they tend roll up their noses at the peculiar nature of old farmhouses, wondering why they don’t look like split-levels with attached garages and gleaming new kitchens. I have been very comfortable with several people who looked at and loved the farm, but their plans all collapsed for one reason or another – banks, disapproving parents, relatives that didn’t want them to go. The problem, as usual, is me, not them. I shouldn’t be there when they look. Too personal and emotional for me.
A fascinating and mesmerizing time. Nothing I thought would happen has happened, yet I have never been on a clear or more appropriate path. I just can’t look at the place with any detachment. So many people love the farm, I just believe in it. I will take care of us, it will take care of itself. The person who buys this farm will love it as much as I do – I bought it over the phone after seeing it from a distance, on the road. I didn’t care what the kitchen was like or the falling down barns or the fraying wallpaper. But that was me, a different time for me, and a different time for the world.
So we have a new plan, a forward-looking plan about the farm. We will leave it on the market until December 1 at its current price, and then we will raise the price a bit, prepare to close up the farm for a winter and put a caretaker inside and tough it out until Spring. We think it is undervalued now, and we won’t raise the price by much, but enough to affirm our confidence in the farm and our belief that the market in 2013 will be even better, a direction it seems to be heading in.
We had to decide where to be before the winter sets in – hay and wood has to go in one place or the other – and we are setting out on the next chapter in our lives. I know these are challenging times, but so are most times, and I do not intend to put my life or my work on hold. The new farm is calling to us, a blind pony our prophet and guide, a meaningful life more important than a fearful and cautious one.
This will challenge us in many ways – financially, emotionally, time and work. We will figure it out. We take good care of both of our homes, no matter how much driving back and forth. There is no price too high to pay for a meaningful life. Or the right home to live in.