living in the country

Like every rose has its thorns, every house has its quirks. And my house is definitely no exception.

Purchased from a frugal elderly couple in their mid 80’s, our house, though from the 40s, was remarkably clean. And remarkably weird. Not at first glance, but within our first few days in our new home we got acquainted rather quickly with our house’s quirky ways.

My beautifully quirky home

When hot is cold and cold is hot

My first shower in the new house was a plethora of surprises. Aside from the petal wilting, nose scrunching, eye tearing rotten egg smell (see this post for why) that overloaded my senses, I also got showered in cold water, EVEN THOUGH the faucet knob was clearly on HOT. So I did the only rational thing, I turned the knob to COLD. Yes! Hot stinky water!

Nearly five months later and we still haven’t fixed the faucet. I’m getting quite used to it now.

Bath of horrors

You already saw the sludge water bath experienced by more poor boys in this post, but there’s more.

You see, we have this decent sized jet tub in our basement. This absolutely thrilled my mom. So, moving weekend she took the liberty of being the first to try it out. All was relatively normal during the bath itself, but when she drained the tub it all drained out onto the floor. Was that supposed to happen? Maybe it was like a two for one kinda thing. Clean yourself and wash the floors all in one go.

This did get fixed. Now everything drains beautifully, but we did have several terrifying experiences of either sludge water or sewage back up into our downstairs bathroom. Ew!

Playing in the frozen pond. Looks a bit like the bath sludge water.

1940s septic, grey water system, and dirty toilet paper

Prior to moving into the new house we knew one thing for sure, we’d have to replace the septic. The septic was original to the house. We had no idea how the heck it lasted so long. Well, we soon found out.

The former owner had redirected all the water from the house, except the toilet water (thank God) out into the front yard. Now, this can be kind of a cool thing if it’s done appropriately as a grey water system. Unfortunately it was running directly into the front yard without any filter. Not cool.
We discovered several plastic bags of dirty toilet paper in the garage. And now we get to the heart of it. THEY DIDN’T FLUSH THEIR TOILET PAPER. Turns out they burned it but didn’t get around to burning the last dozen or so bags. We uneccessarily go through a roll of toilet paper a day in my household. The septic simply couldn’t handle that and it’s nastiness started seeping up through the ground while we waited the three weeks to have our septic replaced. Life can be so cool sometimes.

I’m happy to say that we got a brand new septic and Nick was able to redirect the plumbing into it.

Digging for the new septic

Placement of the new septic

Mildew and mazes

As if the rotten egg smell coming from our water wasn’t enough, but now all of our “clean” clothes were smelling like mildew. Nick thought maybe it was his deer clothes causing the smell (he had picked up a deer processing job at our local meat market and came home covered in deer blood each night, which meant those bloody clothes ended up in the wash every night). It wasn’t. It was the washer.

It also didn’t help that an 80-minute cycle in our dryer wasn’t getting our clothes dry. At first we thought that was because of the whacky dryer duct work. It coursed through our downstairs ceiling like a maze twisting at 90 degree angles every few feet. It wasn’t. It just needed a new hose.

So, we got a new washer and a new hose for our dryer and no more stinky clothes. Yay!

There were other quirky discoveries upon moving in, like the three foot pile of saw dust in the basement workshop, but, although they caused loads of stress at the time, they also make for good story telling, and that I can appreciate.

Easter family photo. For your enjoyment 🙂

That’s the most frequent question we get, at least from the locals here in Cumberland. How we ended up here was somewhat arbitrary. We’d actually never even heard of Cumberland, Wi before. But here we are.

Choosing Cumberland…

It fit our search criteria

When we decided we wanted to buy land and start a small-scale farm our dreams extended as far as Northern California, Oregon and Colorado, maybe even the Carolinas or Florida where the growing season was particularly long. But alas, what we value most, family and friends, became our main determinant for choosing land. And so we set our sights closer, MUCH closer, about 1.5 hours from the Twin Cities, because that’s where all our loved ones are.

Aside from being just 1.5 hours from the Twin Cities, we also wanted land that was affordable and beautiful to hike and explore, which ultimately meant, non-traditional farmland — hilly and full of trees.

So, although our land is zoned agriculture, it’s not ideal for farming, which presents its own challenges, but it also made it more affordable to attain. The fact that it’s farther North with a shorter growing season (another challenge to overcome) also made it more affordable.

We fell in love

After seeing many properties in our price range that were, frankly, unlivable, unfarmable, and unbeautiful, we, to quote Alanis Morissette, “fell head over heels” for this property (yet to be named).

It was a warm and sunny September, Saturday afternoon and our now home was the third of three we looked at in Cumberland that day. It also happened to be the one we were least excited to see of the three (one reason why good pictures are so important). The first two properties we saw were, let’s just say, disappointing. The first was a clean and VERY small home, good farmland, not good for recreation — I wasn’t in love. The second was downright disgusting, and pretty much all marshland, but surrounded by a breathtaking view. By this point our expectations were low. We had already seen so many houses before these.

Maybe that was it, low expectations often equate to pleasant surprises. And so we were more than pleasantly surprised. It didn’t happen all at once but the excitement grew and grew with each step across the property, each new breathtaking view to behold: the pond, the apple orchard, the pine plantations, the rolling hills, and my absolute favorite, the butterfly garden (picture to come this spring).

Let’s take a quick detour to the butterfly garden

Now, bare with me for a second. The butterfly garden was the most dreamy thing I’d ever seen. It was bursting with colorful flowering perennials overflowing a winding zen-like walking path that led to an old twisted tree — perfect for the most romantic tree fort. And then there was the screen house with a wooden swing in it overlooking it all. But it was the butterflies at the koi pond that got me most of all. That’s right, butterflies and a koi pond. Take that every Disney-princess-dream-land ever to exist!

I stood there at the point of combusting with the overwhelming beauty of it all. As I watched the tiny golden koi fish dart between Lilly pads, that’s when the magic really happened. No less than 15 Monarch butterflies flittered boldly all around me. I hadn’t seen so many butterflies at once in the natural world, maybe ever.

Still on that detour — Chasing butterflies

You see, Nick says this thing when I get distracted, along the lines of, “You’re chasing butterflies again.” This inspired my first ever published piece (as an adult) called “Chasing Butterflies.” It was published in Moon Magazine just barely two months earlier. It felt serendipitous. It was meant to be.

Now…back to our regular scheduled programming

We looked inside the house next and relief shuddered out of us. My excitement grew. I could actually live here! It wasn’t the prettiest, nor did it have the most character, but it wasn’t gross and I could do something with it. Yay!

Nick and I were positively jittery with excitement and fear. He turned to me and said, “I don’t know how I can farm here, but I don’t even care, I want to live here.” Me too. Me too.

And so began three days of trying to decide if we purchase on emotion. It didn’t work in the past for us and we definitely didn’t want to repeat past mistakes, but we felt that in the case of chasing your dreams, you must always lead with your heart, not your head. And so we brought my parents back three days later, explored the possibility of how we might farm here, checked out the town (which is adorbs, btw) and made an offer a few days later.

The ~~End~~ Beginning.

Adventure This Life

A philosophical take on this adventurous life

Every house has its quirks. Mine is no exception.