Anchor Struck

What you would pay for an idyllic pastoral scene with mild weather, great neighbours and affordable health care?  You could nap in a hammock next to a soothing creek, swim in a pond teeming with trout, pick blueberries from the garden and collect organic eggs from a friendly flock of hens.

If your answer is $629,000 or more, I have the perfect place for you.  Jude and I are selling our farm.  It is with the heaviest of hearts that we have realized that none of our five kids will ever be in a position to move up here to see us through our drooling years.

We’ve known this for some time, but finally started talking about it last November.  With me retired and Jude just a few years from it, we did the math and concluded that we can’t afford to stay here without family help.

So the last few months we’ve been giving away and throwing away much of our stuff.  We told our community of our decision about a month ago.  We are quite sad about it.  Yesterday a neighbour asked “are you sure you want to move?”

I said “I’m sure we don’t want to move.  We don’t expect to ever have such a great situation again.  But we see no other choice.”

We’ve listed the farm on Green Homes For Sale.  If you’d like to check it out, click “Browse Homes” at the top, then “British Columbia” and “Heriot Bay”.  I’d post a link but we’re having some technical problems with the site.  We can’t delete or replace some of the photos, we can’t change the asking price of $629, and we can’t rouse anybody at tech support.

But it’s out in the universe now, at least.  Real estate is moving very slowly here.  It could be a long time before we sell.  Until then we’ll keep prettying up the place.  These last few months have been exhausting and exhilarating.  There’s something very liberating about looking through all your stuff and assessing which of it still has value to you.

This process has been the main reason I haven’t been been posting much lately.  But now that we’ve gone public, I promise to keep you updated.