Ahh, the excitement of owning a farm!  Welcome to the first of many blogs about my new experiences owning this small piece of heaven in the beautiful Willamette Valley.

I suppose an introduction is in order.  My name is Joel and I am a software engineer at a local software company.  Not long ago, my better half (Michelle) and I decided that we were ready to stop living in this ridiculously small one level apartment and get into something that really matched up with what we were wanting for our future.  We were both sick and tired of never having the space to do the things that we wanted to do.  For me, that was working on and riding my Harley, entertaining my friends, and relaxing at home.  For her, it was gardening, crafts, entertaining, and possibly running a small home business.  We were both in for the surprise of our life.

As we started looking for houses in Salem, Oregon which matched up with what we wanted, we came to the realization that we may not be able to get the greatest house in the world for the price that we wanted to pay.  It was a little disheartening, but we kept looking.  Early on in our quest to find the best house we could find, we stumbled upon this old 1947 farm house on a little over three acres of an old tree farm in South Salem.  It was a little run down, the basement leaked for some reason, the siding and roof were covered in moss, and the carpet came straight out of the 70’s.  There were a lot of things that said “don’t buy me!”, but it had a shop and a large “wood shop” which was in need of major repair, was on its own well and septic, and had a lot of promise.  This property had been looked at by many people over the past two years and it was evident that no one wanted to take on the task of getting it in a more acceptable condition.  As we continued looking for property, we kept coming back to it over and over as we tried to convince ourselves of the reasons we shouldn’t buy it.  Evidently, we failed in that endeavor, because we bought that property shortly after the new year.

In our new found property, we have found the life we have always wanted (but didn’t know we wanted) to have.  I look forward to sharing the remodel and the “homestead” progress with all of my two readers (myself and Michelle)!