This was written in early 2015. We had been married for almost 9 years at that point and had 3 children.
This was originally published on an old blog of mine but the reason I decided to republish is because lately we have talked to so many people who share with us their dream to own a little bit of land, raise as much of their own food as possible and live a life similar to ours. We understand exactly how those people feel about those dreams because we too were there for years – and it wasn’t until we had been married for 11 years that we moved to our 5 acre property. 11 years of dreaming and hoping and saving!
Waiting can be hard but you can still learn skills and do as much as you can where you are – even if you’re living in a small apartment.
We have a dream to own a small farm.
John David and I both were raised on family farms, we met through the FFA and we both have a BS in Agriculture. Agriculture is just a part of who we are. When we were first married, we often talked about our dream to live and raise our family on a small farm.
Last spring, we started pursuing the dream after finding a house, barn and 7 acres. After much prayer and thought, we realized that wasn’t the best move for our family at that time.
Even though we knew it wasn’t the right time last spring, the dream was still there.
At the beginning of this year, we came across another small farm with a barn and 20 acres. We loved the setting, the house was about 1,700 square feet which would give us a little more room for our family to grow, it was set off the road and was mostly fenced and perfect for livestock.
We felt like the timing was right and submitted an offer. That offer was flat out refused, the owner wouldn’t even counter.
A few weeks later, the seller dropped his agent and started the ‘for sale by owner’ process. We went back to look at the house and met the owner. We felt like this house, land and location was a great fit for our family so we decided to put our home on the market.
Our hope and prayer was that our home would sell quickly and that we could reach a pricing agreement with the seller and move to the farm by spring.
We’ve had a little bit of interest in our home but no serious inquires or offers.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve sensed a need to just wait.
After a conversation we had about feeling like this might not be the right time, while doing my morning Bible study in Psalms, I came across this verse:
“Wait for the Lord;
be courageous and let your heart be strong.
Wait for the Lord.’
Psalm 27:14
We are in a season of waiting. We’re waiting for the dream of owning a small farm.
We are uncertain about how long the wait may be. It may be weeks, it may be months or it could take years. While waiting is not the answer we wanted, we know that we are where we are for a reason. We may not fully understand exactly why we are still in the waiting process but we know there is purpose in the waiting.
We also are content where we are. Yes, the desire to have a farm is still alive but we are living on an acre with plenty of room to grow things! Instead of being complacent because we hope to move soon, we’re starting our garden and getting excited about this growing season. And, if our wait ends up only being a few more months, the new owners of this home will hopefully be blessed by an abundant harvest!
The wait ended up being a little over 2 more years! We were content where we were – continuing to grow our garden, learn canning skills, study about homesteading, pay down our mortgage and enjoy living life where we were in that season.
