A New Wilder Family Homestead

I may have made some vague mentions over the last few months about expanding our homestead and undertaking new adventures, but then I totally dropped off the radar! What the heck?!

Well, dear readers, that is because some big things were happening over here and I wanted to get somewhat settled before I filled you in. The time has come for me to do just that, even though you have probably already guessed, but here it is…

We moved to a NEW homestead!

Let me back up a bit.

Rory and I have been looking for several years for a new home. We wanted to live closer to family, specifically in the town where we both grew up. We both loved being raised in the “sticks” near the Mountain and always knew that it is where we wanted to raise our children.

But, yall. The housing market. 

Houses were going fast. Prices kept jumping up. Not even creeping up, like full on sprinting higher and higher. We didn’t really want to settle on something that wasn’t right for us, and when something that did fit our needs came on the market and the stars were so aligned that it happened to be in our price range, it would sell fast, often beyond the asking price.

We were starting to feel defeated. Well, at least I was. I’m one of those people that when I make my mind up about something, I want to move on it immediately. 

Then in February of this year, we had our third child. Our current house immediately felt smaller and our family felt further away.

It was time to make a decision and act on it.

Two days after Ivy was born, my husband’s beloved Grandfather passed away. It was a really hard time for us. The unbelievable joy of bringing our daughter into the world was shadowed by so much grief.  How I could feel so much happiness and sadness at the same time still haunts me.

The question was brought up if we wanted to buy his Grandfather’s house, and I immediately shut it down. My postpartum hormones were still pumping something fierce, and between caring for a newborn and two other little humans, sleep was not abundant.

I also couldn’t imagine living in the house that had gathered four generations of family-family that had been so unbelievably hardworking, resilient and successful. How could I ever measure up to that? Those shoes were too big for me to fill. We also weren’t sure if that house would be a good financial fit for us and wanted to make a responsible decision, not one made out of grief and nostalgia. 

We kept exploring other options. We put an offer on another house, but were turned down. We looked at property that a family member had, but it was too wet for our needs.

Then, we found what we were looking for.

My father was preparing to sell my childhood home and had already decided to keep a five acre parcel of it. He was willing to sell it to us so we could build a home there. It’s a beautiful piece of property, the right location, a doable price. We wanted to move fast. 

We started drawing up plans, learning about the house building process, reaching out to professionals for bids. It was on. Although building from scratch wasn’t what I had originally wanted to do-my heart is in renovating older homes-I totally embraced it and we were both very excited for the process and the ability to design and build exactly the home that we wanted. 

And then something happened. 

I was laying in bed one night and this feeling washed over me. Doubt. Doubt that wasn’t there before. What if we were making a mistake? What if this was not the right path for us? I could not shake this feeling that maybe, just maybe, we were meant to have his Grandfather’s house. 

I got out of bed and went to talk to Rory about it. 

I told him about my doubts, about this feeling. I asked if we could revisit it, crunch some numbers, really look at it as an option for us. What I proposed was that we should really break down both projects in every way and see which one was the more logical choice. They each had their own unique and desirable qualities and they each had things that gave us reservations, but which one was more right for us?

It wasn’t hard to convince him to revisit this house, after all, in the beginning of our relationship he told me that he would often dream that he was flying above the fields here. Something deep inside him always wished that his children could be raised here too, although that seemed unlikely.

I knew that even though he agreed to move on to other options, his heart really belonged here. That it would mean so much to him if we could make this work, make this our home, raise our kids and grow old together here. 

So, being the logical people we are, we crunched the numbers. We got the bids, we tallied bills. And do you know what we found?

That they were about even.

Building would cost more up front, for sure, and take over two years to complete, but buying this house would mean bigger bills in general, it’s an older home with higher property taxes. Building would mean having more land and privacy, something that was very important to me, but buying would mean we could hit the ground running and live even closer to family. Like real close. Like “Hey neighbor!” close.

But, it was time to make a decision. And I think we both knew what the right answer was without even saying it out loud. 

We both wanted the family house. 

And so it came to be. 

The NEW Wilder Family Homestead, established in 2018, was formally the home of my husband’s grandparents and now home to Rory and I, our three children and our ever expanding entourage of homestead critters. 

This place is wonderful just the way it is, Grandma and Grandpa saw to that, but we also have big plans to make it our own. We fully intend to put down deep roots here, get comfortable, make this our dream home. After all, dreaming is what I do best!

It has been about two months since we decided to call this place home. Our stuff is still finding its way out of boxes and into their forever places. Every day this house becomes more home to us. 

Maybe one day Rory and I will watch our grandchildren and greatgrandchildren run these halls, the way his grandparents watched him, the way his Grandfather watched my sons. Maybe one day it will be passed on to them the way it was passed on to us.

I hope you will join us on this great adventure as we turn this multigenerational family house into the homestead we have always dreamed of!

In our next post I will formally introduce you to the NEW Wilder Family Homestead and show you the plans I have worked up for the gardens and other outside spaces.

Until next time.