Back in the City, Farm in the Country

Well, I'm back in the city now. Sweetbreads gets in later today. I got in late last night to be back for work this morning. The farm's about 1,000 miles away in Tennessee. It's tough not being out there after we got our feet wet this weekend. Waking up with a yard literally full of robins, cardinals, blue jays and many other not-so-brightly-colored-so-I-can't-identify-them birds is much better than trash trucks in Brooklyn! The good news though is that we finally worked through all the little hitches and closed on Friday! Even if we won't officially move in for a while it's good to have some finality and really start digging in to planning.

With the help of our families we cleaned up the place over the weekend, spent some quality time together and got the home ready for the winter. My parents surprised us by flying out my little sister, which was the highlight of the weekend (aside from buying the farm, sorry sis!). I caught her running around taking pictures when she should've been toting around that shop-vac, but it's all good, now we have some fun pics for the blog! I'll leave you with a few of her shots and we'll post lots more details in the week to come. (Click through for all photos)

I'll be posting a brief story about our first night at the house on Farm Dreams at Noon (ET) today. It's free to sign-up, so check it out!

View of the barns. One will stay, one will go.

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Closing on the Farm - Nobody Said It'd Be Easy!

It's Tuesday afternoon, just wrapping up a couple meetings that have been WAY too long. Looking forward to heading home, eating a meal and planning what to pack for our trip out to Tennessee for the closing on Friday. "Only three more days" I think to myself, "then we’re really locked in!" About that time the phone in my pocket starts buzzing incessantly. One ring doesn’t really surprise me, but multiple calls in a row gets a little worrisome. Now I want out of this meeting even more.

I head to my office and check the missed calls. All 615 area codes. Interesting. That’s Nashville and the surrounding area, so certainly this has something to do with closing. I hope this is routine and not trouble.
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Insurance for the Small Farm

Following up on the First Time Farm-Buyer's Checklist, I posted some thoughts on insurance over on beginningfarmers.org. What are your experiences with insurance?

1.) Proximity to fire station

When we were looking at properties we hadn’t considered the fact that insurance companies might prefer it if we were close to a fire station! Wait, aren’t fire stations all over the place? Well, turns out if you’re in the middle of nowhere they could be pretty far away. These types of things don’t cross us city-folks’ minds.

Continue Reading at beginningfarmers.org