Let me start by saying that my husband and I have been looking for land, dreaming of buying land, visiting potential properties and wracking our brains for how we could afford it for YEARS! Four years to be exact. And now, here we are. We just closed on our 12 acre property here in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia and we’re asking ourselves…Now What?
Well first, let me officially introduce myself. I’m Morgan. I was born and raised in the area and was convinced for quite some time that I would always end up somewhere else. Somewhere busier, somewhere more exciting, somewhere with activities and lots of people and job opportunities and on and on. I suppose I got a little older and wiser because I quickly realized there is nowhere I would rather be. The area is gorgeous. Anytime I’m away from home I always return with a renewed appreciation for how beautiful it is here in Virginia. Beyond the physical beauty, the saying home is where the heart is certainly rings true for me. In five minutes or less I can be with all my favorite people – my parents, my sister and my best friend are all super close to me and it’s such a comfort.
I am married to my wonderful husband, Rob, and together we have a daughter and are hopeful to bring another child into our family sometime soon. When Rob and I met, I was trying “not to get too excited” because he seemed REALLY great and I didn’t want to get my hopes up. He has such a kind heart, is a hard worker and doesn’t get upset when I boss him around a little (haha!). On the reverse he would probably say close to the same. Kind heart, hard worker and rather than bossing me around he would say I go along with his crazy ideas. He’s right, I do! And I’ve just done it again, because here we are on twelve acres, looking around and then looking at each other with big eyes and half smiles wondering if this will all pan out! I know it will. We will dream and brainstorm and he’ll come up with a crazy idea and then I’ll boss him around a little until it all comes together.
Where it started – crazy idea #1:
We started Twin Row Farm a little over three years ago and it began as a market garden in our suburban back yard. We began with two 50 foot garden beds, hence the name Twin Row. Everything moved pretty fast from there. We attended two farmers markets each week while we both worked full time jobs. We harvested and cleaned everything on Friday nights after work and Rob would go out early on Saturday mornings donning a headlamp to finish up while I loaded up the vehicles with all our supplies. We also grew microgreens inside and delivered each Friday to restaurants in town and sold those at markets as well. I tracked our sales very closely throughout our year and a half of doing markets and found that our real profit center was in the microgreens. So, we decided to hone our skills and, for now, we are solely growing microgreens. So, this is us. Twin Row Farm.
Our dream of owning land and building something of our own has arrived – partially. We bought the land. And if you’re at all tuned in to the real estate market, you know that prices and interest rates are inflated in a big way. We had been waiting for the right time, the right property, the right location, the right price, the right interest rates, the right everything to come along and eventually we decided that we had to lower the bar just a bit and decide which of those things was MOST important to us. When will the market level out? What if it doesn’t? Even though prices seem high, what if they don’t come down as quickly as we’d like and this is our shot to own land and build our home. We are growing our family now. We are in our prime working years to build something. We want to spend our lives enjoying our hard work, not looking back wishing we had done what we dreamed of. We both agreed that location was the most important. Proximity to family and proximity to Rob’s job were the big things we really didn’t want to compromise on. So, that greatly narrowed down our search area, but that also meant we may have to compromise on price, the view, clear a piece of wooded land, or do some excavating to put a driveway in a hillside. This list could go on, but we decided we needed to stop looking for the perfect property and focus more on the perfect location. The property we have now is not the first property we put an offer on. And in hindsight, we are super grateful that the first property didn’t work out. We were so disappointed at the time. Through all of our property searching I was consistent in my prayer that if something was meant to be ours that the way would be made clear and if it wasn’t for us, that it be completely out of reach. Our first offer was over asking with escalation clauses in it and we STILL didn’t get it. So again, while we were disappointed I do always appreciate God’s clear communication and I moved on pretty quickly. Fast forward a few months, and a house nearby with 30 acres comes up for sale. It was out of our price range and while the house was nice, it wasn’t what we would choose to build if we were doing it ourselves. I looked on the county’s real estate site and realized that the house and property was actually 42 acres and my wheels started turning. I got in touch with my real estate agent to see if she could ask about the other 12 acres. Are they going to sell it separately? Are they going to keep it? I needed to know! I can go from not interested to full blown investigator in two seconds flat if there is something I NEED to know! Turns out the owner parceled out the additional 12 acres of road frontage, had it perked, and did have plans to sell. WOO HOO! I felt like I had hit the jack pot! I wanted this land and no one even knew it was for sale yet. Certainly we had a shot at getting this land and maybe even for a little less since it wasn’t even on the market. We put what we felt like was a strong offer on the land (even though it technically wasn’t even up for sale) and got flat our REJECTED. Talk about taking the wind out of my sails. So, we waited a few weeks and decided we had nothing to lose and put in a higher offer thinking, okay maybe we started a little too low and he was insulted. Our agent said it was a strong offer, the listing agent said it was a strong offer, but for one reason or another the seller didn’t feel the same and didn’t budge one penny. No counter offer, just a flat out NO. Turns out the seller decided he didn’t want to sell until Spring now. So, trying to stay content in an answered prayer I decided it wasn’t for us. We can’t buy something that someone isn’t going to sell, so in my mind it was made completely out of reach for a reason. I don’t even thing a week had passed before my realtor reached out to me and let me know that something had changed and that the property was, in fact, about to go on the market. Back within reach. Rob and I went from disappointed to full of hope and I was definitely feeling the whiplash of the rollercoaster we just hopped on. So here we are, the ideal location, the less than ideal price tag, and we know we will incur some additional expenses because the land is pretty heavily wooded. Rob and I are fairly conservative financially and do what I think is a pretty good job saving money. We’ve been saving since we got married so that when something came available we would be ready, but I’m telling you when it comes time to actually spending what you’ve saved, its hard to pull the trigger. Even though it is the exact thing we’ve been saving for and its the whole reason we worked over and above our “real jobs,” when it comes down to spending the money I still get a little nervous. Rob is a lot better at this than me and definitely has the “what the heck, lets just do it!” attitude. Over time and from some experiences I’ve had personally and with previous businesses, I know that sometimes being nervous is not a good reason to not do something. So we are moving forward with Rob’s crazy idea #2: Buying land.
Long story short, we went all in. We are a bit out of our comfort zone. We don’t know exactly what we are doing. We don’t have all our ducks in a row. But we did it. We bought twelve acres and we are starting the next stage of our dream.
I’m excited to document our life and our progress through this blog. What can you expect to see here on this blog? First, I want to share what we’ve done so far to get to this point to give you an idea of what our dream for the property and our life is. How we’ve saved up money, mistakes we’ve made, and ways that we pivoted to make things work. I’ll also share where we are now. How we will continue to budget and save, what it’s like running our farm business from home, being content as a stay at home and work from home mom, things I love doing to make our home a cozy place that we love, recipes we love, routines and systems to make our life more manageable and in the not so distant future, how we will make these 12 acres OURS! I hope you’ll join us as we grow our dream of Twin Row on Twelve.
Want some more insight into the land we purchased? Check us out on YouTube!
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