When you spend most of your adult life moving every few years, it seems like settling down is something you are driving towards, but it is way in the horizon.  You know it is out there but don’t really feel like you are getting there.  Going away to college, medical school and residency, I expected to move but never thought that I would have “Army wife” as one of the hats I would wear.  While it was fun looking for a new house to live in as we have moved from one duty station to the next, I never really thought too much about it since it was not going to be our “forever home”.  As we rapidly approached Ken’s retirement, it all started becoming real, so to speak.  We had spoken about looking for a place with land over the years and more recently, we had talked about having a farm.  I began searching Zillow in the various cities that we were looking at and realized that finding a house on a piece of land might be harder than we thought.  Once we finalized our decision to move to Northern Virginia, I started looking in earnest.  We were starting to get discouraged so I expanded my search to include smaller houses, thinking that we could always expand.  That search led me to a farm with a 3 bedroom house and many outbuildings on a nice sized piece of land.  It was pretty close to the hospital we’d be working at, and certainly closer than what I was used to driving, but on a windy, country road that seemed to go on forever.   Luckily, I was used to driving country roads after visiting Garrett County, Maryland to go to Deep Creek Lake all these years. 

The house we found was built in 1750 and was originally part of a much bigger piece of land that had been since divided up and sold.  It was first renovated in 1790 and then again in 1820.  It was then gutted and taken down to studs and completely updated with modern wiring and plumbing in 2006.  The current owner had not lived in it for a couple years but told us he had looked all around the county for a house in as good condition and had been happy when he’d found it.  Turns out he would still be living there but his wife liked another property better so now he was trying to sell.

As we explored the main house along with all the outbuildings, we realized that if we decided to choose this property, there would be many, many projects in our future.  The property itself was a mix of farmland and forest which seemed to be the perfect combination as I was not really interested in living in the woods.  For those who know me, this may seem strange given that I love camping and all things Scouts, but I love the open land and prefer to visit the forest rather than live in it.  After much soul searching (me) and debate, we decided to take the plunge and buy it. 

While I have often joked that I wanted to be a country girl, after actually standing on our property and seeing how far it was to our nearest neighbor, I was not sure that I meant it!  Nonetheless, I am not one to do things half-heartedly so join me as I embrace country life and chronicle our adventures renovating the house and property.