I'm so happy! We are going to buy the farm for sure.

We are buying the farm in Portsmouth Ohio for sure. I am effing ecstaticly elated. Gurtitude awaits!

Here are the attributes and plans:

It has a pond, 2 acres, both city and well water, a 3 bedroom house, two car garage with a storage loft, a small barn, comes with appliances including a new ifrared stove, has a fireplace, persimmon tree, pear trees, and a chestnut tree.

Plans:
The first order of business is to till and ammend a starter garden of 3760 sq ft. The stock fence there is on 3 sides and needs completion. The back porch will be expanded and made into an outdoor kitchen; to include a 6 ft diameter double chamber cob oven. An herb garden in stone or brick raised beds will lay between the house and the street both providing herbs and protection from drunk drivers. A small apple orchard needs planting on one corner of the property. I rather like vibernum bushes so at some point the house will get a facelift via these perfumey shrubs. I have plans also for setting up wood working shop and for eventually raising chickens, goats, and pigs.

Ryan!  That is just awesome!  Congratulation's! Home owning is a great forward step in life.  (Its also a lot of work...) Great investment in your future!
Sounds like some cool plans you have for it !
With being close enough to town for city water are you allowed to have livestock ?  

Sounds great!  We are rooting for you! Be sure to keep us  posted on your progress.

Since you are acquiring limited acreage, I would guess you have nearby neighbors. I would suggest to anyone buying land, to first visit all the neighbors. No matter how attractive a home/land is, with a difficult next door neighbor it will be a trial. Look as hard at your future neighbors place as you look at your possible purchase. Is there junk laying around? "Inappropriate" signs? Are they running a car/mower/tractor repair shop next door, and how much noise do they make? Does their land drain onto your land, and what drains? Do they have a target range in their back yard, so you will be listening to gun fire every weekend? You might even stop by the police department and ask if there have been complaints about your future neighbors. ~~Good luck with your purchase, but try to be realistic. You may be at your new "paradise" for a very long time. Neighbors will be part of it.

thomas rubino wrote:Ryan!  That is just awesome!  Congratulation's! Home owning is a great forward step in life.  (Its also a lot of work...) Great investment in your future!
Sounds like some cool plans you have for it !
With being close enough to town for city water are you allowed to have livestock ?  

Yeah, we are about 15 minutes down the road from town. Our new neighbors raise cattle.

Jim Fry wrote:Since you are acquiring limited acreage, I would guess you have nearby neighbors. I would suggest to anyone buying land, to first visit all the neighbors. No matter how attractive a home/land is, with a difficult next door neighbor it will be a trial. Look as hard at your future neighbors place as you look at your possible purchase. Is there junk laying around? "Inappropriate" signs? Are they running a car/mower/tractor repair shop next door, and how much noise do they make? Does their land drain onto your land, and what drains? Do they have a target range in their back yard, so you will be listening to gun fire every weekend? You might even stop by the police department and ask if there have been complaints about your future neighbors. ~~Good luck with your purchase, but try to be realistic. You may be at your new "paradise" for a very long time. Neighbors will be part of it.

The neighbors across the street seemed pretty plesant. No garbage, places look kept up. The other neighbors are a state park and a pasture and the pasture folk's house is over a mile away. We spoke with a fellow from the area and he says they keep to themselves. They said the people across the street were nice and will watch your place when you are away and call you if someone suspicious shows up.

Your talk of drunck drivers surprises me, do you have plenty in that area?

Congratulations! Now comes the hard part. I purchased a fixer upper farm-stead about one year ago and have lots of ambitions like yours. The number one thing I learned: "Things happen when they happen." Nothing has gone as quickly or as easily as I thought/hoped it would. Ended up skipping a garden for the first time ever that first spring (just no time for it.) I started to get anxiety over how slow things were going. A touch of depression in the winter as well. So my unsolicited advise to you: Enjoy small victories as they come, and accept a longer timeline on a lot of projects. Try to move as gracefully as possible from one priority to the next! Best of luck to you.

John C Daley wrote:Your talk of drunck drivers surprises me, do you have plenty in that area?

It is caution plain and simple.

Ryan Hobbs wrote:We are buying the farm in Portsmouth Ohio for sure. I am effing ecstaticly elated. Gurtitude awaits!

Here are the attributes and plans:

It has a pond, 2 acres, both city and well water, a 3 bedroom house, two car garage with a storage loft, a small barn, comes with appliances including a new ifrared stove, has a fireplace, persimmon tree, pear trees, and a chestnut tree.

Plans:
The first order of business is to till and ammend a starter garden of 3760 sq ft. The stock fence there is on 3 sides and needs completion. The back porch will be expanded and made into an outdoor kitchen; to include a 6 ft diameter double chamber cob oven. An herb garden in stone or brick raised beds will lay between the house and the street both providing herbs and protection from drunk drivers. A small apple orchard needs planting on one corner of the property. I rather like vibernum bushes so at some point the house will get a facelift via these perfumey shrubs. I have plans also for setting up wood working shop and for eventually raising chickens, goats, and pigs.

      Hey, Ryan, major congrats ! I am wondering about your plans to till the planned garden.. . Have you heard much about no-til gardening ? I have barely begun it myself. having had to move twice in recent years, and didn't have the health to really aquire & spread a more ideal amount of mulch etc., but i still highly recommend it - definitely wayyy less weeding, and If you avoid even that 1st time plowing etc., youyll probably be better off "weed' -wise & compaction/soil structure-wise. I have learned a ton more on it just in past year, on YouTube mainly ( but most of these are authors too) from these HIGHLY successful & knowledgeable/experienced folks : Charles Dowding, Richard Perkins of Ridgedale Permaculture, James Prigioni,  No-Till Growers w farmer Jesse, Singing Frogs Farm of CA.. and more. Richard Perkins doesn't even soil test, which was good news to my lazy way ( well, just not super technical way ) of doing things, though he does mess around with making his own "amendments" & uses them some, he & others also show that mainly, you just need to be "feeding soil, not plants" & you do that with compost topdressing &/or mulching, have photosynthesizing plants covering it as much & as for as long, as possible, & by not tilling. Hope everyone who hasn't yet, checks 'em out !  

Ryan,

Sounds like a sweet place!  Just so I can picture this in my head, how big is the pond?  Was this an old stock pond?  My property has a bit over 9 acres with a 1/4 acre former stock pond.

Sounds like you have big gardening plans.  Good for you.  I know it sounds like a lot to tackle, but I also strongly suggest/support the wood/mulch garden.  This is all I ever do any more.  I kinda regret tilling this soil in the first place, but adding woodchips has drastically improved my garden beds.

Just as a thought (take or leave this as you deem appropriate), making a garden from a series of raised beds can yield a lot of food from a small amount of space.  3000 sq ft is a pretty huge garden.  I like your ambition.  Raised beds might make caring for your garden (especially weeding) much easier.

But at any rate, congratulations on your new homestead.  Sounds like you have an adventure ahead!

Eric