Next Chapter, Please

Time for the next chapter....

or as Louis Armstrong says, "End of song.  Beginning of story."

The adventure continues at fiveinthefarnorth.blogspot.com

Come join the party.

P.S.  I couldn't help stealing Margaret Murie's title:  Two in the Far North.  It's so romantic.  But... there are five of us, hence the title.  Less romantic, but more fun.
Plus 2 more at random spots all over the earth.  So it really should be,
"Five in the Far North, one in Alaska, and one in Japan."

But that's a little long for a title.

Selling Crabapple Farm

I won't even try here to describe how difficult it was to sell our beloved little Crabapple Farm.  The entire selling process was so horrid, that even now, 5 months later, I cannot think about it without getting a little sad even though I do not regret selling at all.  I just think it is normal to miss something that was home for 8 years.  8 years of everyone growing up and having lots of wonderful times and lots of happiness.

We officially closed on June 10th and in celebration of a new start, Mr. Bechtel bought me a mountain bike, and I bought masses of flowers to put all around the cabin for the summer.

Good Bye Beautiful Crabapple Farm.  You took care of us very well.

It was a wonderful 8 years.

Goodbye Animals

Part of the difficulty of moving was trying to decide what to do with all the animals.  We sold Granny Smith's lambs.  Granny had them so well trained to follow him that they jumped right into the back of the man's horse trailer.  The lambs were in prime condition;  beautiful, bright eyed and  healthy.  It was hard to sell them.

Prairie Spy had a little jersey steer named Ropy.  He sold him on Craig's list.

We sold Kyra, Rita, and their adorable babies too.  I hated selling them.  Kyra had been around since before Crabapple farm even existed.  But we couldn't take them and there was no way around it.

Jack and Pete were coming to the cabin, and the boys were taking the horses back to Ricky Quinns. 

 That left just Alice the cat and her perma kitten, Kokomo, and a random assortment of chickens.  Alice was the last of the original litter of kittens that McCavity had.  Mc Cavity was a stray.  Crabapple Farm was her home.  I decided she deserved to live out her few remaining days at her home and we would not move her.  Whatever the owners decided to do with her was fine.

Same with the chickens.  I gave away all the ones I could catch, but the rooster and about 4 hens ended up staying.  They didn't really bother anyone back at the barn anyway.

The place seemed very barren of life after the animals were gone.  Part of the spirit of the place disappeared.

Packing

We put Crabapple Farm on the market right before Christmas 2014.  Nothing happened for a long time except we would have to show it occasionally.  That meant that instead of doing school or having a nice day, we would have to clean the whole house to a polished shine and it seemed to take forever.  There towards the end we got pretty good at it.

Finally we got an offer.  It was a terrible offer.  We countered and they went silent.  About 6 weeks later they came back with another offer.  We countered again.  It went back and forth and finally we agreed on a price.  Our realtors were crooks.  I don't say that lightly.  They were willing to do anything to get their commission and cared nothing at all about whether the deal was fair or not.  The buyers missed several deadlines in their contract and we could have stepped out of the deal.  It was agonizing.  Terrible.  But in the end Mr. Bechtel helped me see that moving was the right answer.  

We had exactly 10 days to move an entire farm.  I cannot even describe how great The Spy Twins and Granny Smith were during this process.  They consistently encouraged us to sell even though they were sad and they worked like galley slaves moving and packing day and night.

Braeburn was in Alaska driving tour buses for the summer.  We packed his room.  Same with Golden Delicious, who was in Japan on her mission.  I feel bad that they were not there to say good bye officially to Crabapple Farm - but everything was such a blur and it was so horrible that it was probably a good thing they were gone.

Moving a house in 10 days is bad enough.  But what does one do with an entire shop, a whole barn, and tons of odds and ends?

In the end, we rented 5 storage units, threw tons of stuff away, gave loads and loads to DI and hauled just the basics up to the cabin in Island Park.  Also, I made a few mental notes about things I will never do again, and topping the list is that I will never have 2 tons of wheat in my basement, ever, ever again.  The boys hauled every sack out and if it hadn't have been for them, it would still be there.