Knowing we were going to move from Grandma’s old place, we wanted to buy some land so our boys would still have some land to roam on.  We knew we could not afford anything around where we lived.  It was a tourist area and land was very expensive.  We had heard an acre of land on a main road had sold for one million dollars.  Also, traffic was getting worse each day and each season.  People would ask how far we lived from town.  My response would be 5 minutes to 2 hours, depending on the traffic.  Being from Ohio, it seems like every other car down here is from Ohio.  One of the favorite bumper stickers of people here is, “If it is tourist season, why can’t we shoot them?”

With these two concerns for us, we contacted the realtor from our friend’s church.  We arranged a time to go look at some property.  Let me tell you how the county lays.  To get to the county seat, you have to go over a mountain ridge which is pretty straight up and down.  The town is surrounded by ridges.  The area is one of the poorest in the state, I guess because of the way it is situated.  There is very little industry in the area and people have to travel for work opportunities. 

With prices of land a whole lot less than where we lived, we wanted to try and get at least 50 acres.  With the realtor we looked at several pieces of property.  One was a gorgeous piece of land that had a stream running through it.  The stream was stocked with trout each year.  It was close to 100 acres, but most of the land was on a ridge that the realtor could not even take us on.  It was located close to the county seat.  We also looked at some property that was over “the Ridge”.  This was a part of the county that was cut off from the rest of the county because you had to go up and over “the Ridge”.  It had switchbacks on it.  For you Flat Landers let me tell you what a switchback is.  It is were the road makes such a sharp turn that you can see you kids in the back seat and wave to them without turning your head.  “The Ridge” is straighter up and down then the other ridge getting into the county seat.  The properties we looked at where beautiful, but thinking about going over “the Ridge” each time to go to town weighed on our minds.  We went home with the realtor’s website that I would check occasionally.  One day I was looking at it and number 900 popped up.  It showed a picture of a field and a beautiful stream.  It mentioned in the write up that the property also had an old grist mill on it.  I showed it to my wife and we both got excited.  Then we asked the question, I wonder if it is over “the Ridge”?

I called the realtor and guess what?  It was over “the Ridge”.  Our hearts sunk, but we decided to go look at it anyway.  We met the realtor and followed him up and down over “the Ridge”.  We waved at the boys as we went around the switchbacks.  Then we drove “forever” and finally came to number 900.  We passed the mill which sets about 2 feet from the road (and that is no joke).  It was all over grown with Virginia creeper.  You could hardly see it.  We found a little pull off on the gravel road and parked our cars.  We crossed an old barbed wire fence and saw the 40 foot wide creek.  It was beautiful!  The land was owned by a husband and wife that lived in Iowa.  They never did live on the property and had owned it for 20+ years.  They leased the land to a local farmer who had cows grazing on it.  Watching where we stepped we walked toward the creek.  It took our hearts.  The crystal clear water, the gurgling sound, oh how majestic!

To back up a second.  We had told the boys to pray specific for what they wanted in our new property.  The family we had first visited in this county, they had a cave on their property.  Our boys loved it, so our boys had been praying for a cave.  As we walked down the creek towards the mill I looked to my right across the creek.  Was it what I thought it was?  It was an opening in the side of the mountain, but covered some with vegetation.  I did not call attention to it to the boys.  I did not want to get them excited about the cave, not knowing if we would bid on it because of it being over “the Ridge”.  The realtor had not been on the property and did not know much about it.  There was an old logging road behind a barn on the other side of the creek.  We decided to walk it.  It seemed to go for ever up the side of the mountain.  Finally, we got to the top.  There were some beautiful views.  The Lord sure had His hand on this place.  We went back down and looked at the outside of the mill.  It was a huge 3 story mill with a large metal wheel.  After that we headed out.  Went forever back to “the Ridge”.  Went straight up and down, waved at the boys on the switchbacks and headed back to our tourist town.  What were we going to do?

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Posted by Carol

I can't wait to hear the next espisode of this. What a wonderful entry.
~carol

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Posted by fooddude

Thanks for the post on my blog. Yes we bleed orange, so to speak, around our house. We aren't overboard or obnoxious about it, but we do like to watch a good SEC football game or two. We just happen to live in Wildcat country and are commonly misunderstood at times. Thats OK though. We can handle it. I look forward to going to your blog and reading about you and your family later tonight if I can get away from my desk. What little I read about your homestead story sounded very interesting.
Gods hand was very noticeable in our move as well.

Take care - Tony

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