In the spring of 2019, we began looking for a home to purchase. We looked ALL over. We saw properties that were huge houses on small lots – not for us. We saw huge properties with nice houses, but inside town limits that did not even allow homeowners to have chickens – not for us. We saw cute properties with streams down the middle that one would have to cross every day to get to the other side – not for us. We saw remote properties that require a 4×4 to access – not for us.
We widened our search.
We saw houses that required a large number of repairs, but the current owners would not lower the price – not for us. We found a perfectly excellent property but the foundation to the house was actually leaning, and the current owners would not agree to lower the price – not for us. We found properties that were the right size and price, but had no shade at all – not for us. We found properties that were the right size and price but completely overgrown with trees we would have to begin by removing – not for us.
We searched for months, over four counties, putting hundreds of miles on the car.

Finally we found what seemed like a perfect property. My husband found it on Zillow, the same hour it was posted for sale. We called our real estate agent, who requested a showing, but they were so overrun with showings (already!) that we were turned down. She had to convince them to allow us!

The property was wonderful. Just three miles outside the area we had designated, we decided it was still an acceptable distance from work and amenities. It had a house, garage, screened in porch, two barns, and a small field. The listing was for five acres, a little smaller than we had been hoping for, but still acceptable. But the listing also said that more acreage was available for purchase because the owners were selling the surrounding cropland as well under a separate listing. So we made an offer and said we would be interested in 5-10 additional acres depending on the price.
We heard back a few days later, and they accepted our offer! However, the additional acreage may not happen because the process to separate some of the cropland acreage onto the house acreage was more onerous than they had expected. So our options were to purchase the 5 acres as listed, or to purchase 28 acres that had been parceled out decades before, nothing in between was available. So we purchased the 28 acres!

Us, former city folk, with 28 acres!