Our New Property...and The Fun Begins

As many of you know Mike and I thrive on projects.  We have been looking for a house to remodel in one of old neighborhoods in FL for many months now.  Sadly we have had no luck in finding any deals so we had to broaden our search requirements.  Since we have traveled and stayed in many places in Florida we are familiar with a lot of areas.  Mike thought we might like to do a small farm this time. Maybe settle down, ha ha, and have some animals in the future.  So in September we started scanning the real estate ads for a piece of property.  Since we have very nice friends, M and J, close to the area we are interested in they will be checking on some properties before we travel down.

Our requirements are 5 acres or more, a paved access road with some trees on the property.  You think that would be easy but it's not.  Sadly many properties in FL that have any acreage are on lime rock roads and those are awful to live on.  They are a big dirty dusty mess and your car and vehicles will constantly be filthy.  Also for whatever reason a lot of property here is completely cleared which offers no privacy.  

There are two properties we are interested in.  This is the one we think we will like best. 

And the entrance:

M and J drove by to take pictures for us:

After hurricane Irma they went back to see if there were any water problems.  As you can see there is a small "pond" by the road caused by not having a culvert and a place to flow out:

The future neighbors, lol, and more water:

The entrance is pretty wet:

Right after Irma, Mike and I contacted the realtor and drove down to Florida to see the two properties that interested us.  We stayed a few nights with M and J and drove around looking at property.   The one that was closest to M and J is the one we liked best so we made an offer and scheduled the closing for mid October.

Then it was time to get back to TN and make arrangements for another big move.  We are going to need just about everything we own to get this new job done.  We have 30 days to get moved.

There are two things we need right away, an enclosed trailer and a bush hog.  We lucked out and found a nice enclosed trailer and bought a new bush hog from the Farm Supply.  Of course Mike wants to take the tractor so we had to call transport companies and wait for quotes.  Sadly none of the places I called came through so I called our local towing company and asked the owner if he could do it.  He said yes but the cost would be too high and I should try uship.  What an amazing site if you need to transport cars, equipment or anything else.  You actually place a free ad and it goes out to haulers.  You tell them what you need hauled, to and from and give them a price.  Private haulers will contact you if you fit their schedule.  Anyway we got a man who makes regular trips from our area in TN down to Florida.  He was excellent and we will use him again.

He picked up the tractor a few days before we were leaving.  We met him at the store in the morning and he loaded up.

He contacted us every few hours with an update.  He arrived at M and J's house at about 8pm.  They sent us a picture of the tractor and bush hog.  All safe and sound.

Mike and I loaded up and heading south:

Next up...the new adventure begins.