Well, it happened. The honey and I have been toying with the idea of getting a little farm for about 5 years now. We would drive all over the eastern part of Colorado Springs out to Black Forest, Falcon, Peyton Pines, Elbert County, Ellicott and Calhan. We toodled down to the southern part of Colorado Springs all the way to Penrose, Westcliffe, Rockvale, Canon City and Florence. I don't really like it out east. It's wicked windy and flat. There also isn't much surface water available. Properties are pretty reasonably priced out there so we continued to check them out. I loved the southern areas though. Right along the Arkansas River. The elevation is a bit lower, there is a lot of readily available water, it is nearly 10 degrees warmer there all of the time, there is a river, mountains, trees and beauty all around and properties are pretty reasonably priced. We kept looking at places and even put our house on the market at one time hoping to sell it to get into a little farm. That didn't end up happening, so we just kept on keepin' on. Meanwhile, we continued to fix up our little city home and make it a super comfy urban farm. We still kept on looking at homes with acreage, dreaming and hoping. There was one articular property, at the end of a long lane. The first time we looked at it, it was listed for $325k or maybe a little more. In any event, it was more than we could comfortably afford. We kept looking and that house just kept popping up and the price kept going down. Until finally, the blessed thing reached $105k and we decided to go for it, I said offer them 110k and have them pay the closing costs. There were already offers in on the place, offers of cash but they were a little lower than ours. Turns out it was going to be a short sale too, so golly, we had no idea how long that'd take, or if it would even be possible. Then to get approved for the loan we had to make sure that there would be functional utilities in the place. I guess I forgot to mention why the place was down so much in price. Well, after they realized they weren't able to pay for the place, someone went and took out anything of value. Interior doors, bathtubs, the entire kitchen, carpet, the well pump, the meter on the propane tank. It was pretty gutted. SO, we stuck our necks out and spent 1000 bucks to get the well operational. Another $400 getting electricity to the place, $150 on plumbing parts because the pipes busted in the crawlspace, another $150 to fix a leaky skylight, $200 to fix some drywall, another $1000 on cabinets for the kitchen, $300 bucks on propane stuff and probably another $100 on other little stuff, like a banister for a staircase, thermostat, caulk for around light switches and plywood to cover the hole where there used to be a bath tub.. And that was before we were ever given approval for the loan. Yikes! Well, we got it! They approved us. We scrambled to get our house in the Springs either sold or rented, we ended up renting it out, and hopefully it will stay that way. And we packed up our stuff and we moved.
