Getting Started

Getting Started

So, we now own the old farm house and 15 acres of land. When we closed on the house we stayed the weekend in a hotel. We spent some time looking around the house trying to decide what to start with first. We decided the most important place for us to start was the bathroom.  We dove right in and started ripping it apart. We also ended up ripping up some other ceilings and ugly old paneling on some other walls.  As we did this we thought about how much we had done and started getting the notion that we could get the bathroom done in another visit or two.  Well... we quickly realized that everything takes much longer to do than you think.  Once we took a look at the plumbing of the bathroom, Greg realized everything needed to be redone.  Thank goodness, Rocky (Greg's brother), had recently told us about a new type of plumbing that would save us a lot of time and money. While Greg got started working on the plumbing after we stripped the bathroom, I refinished the old bear claw tub and tackled cleaning up cracks on the walls in our bedroom. The inside of the tub was in great shape so I just had to clean it, sand it down (I used a wire brush attachment to a drill), primed it and painted it with Rustoleum gray paint.  I spray painted the claw feet white and then used the gray in a dry brush technique on top. 

       





            Getting started in the bathroom

Greg installing Pex plumbing

We used the bedroom next to the bathroom to put the torn down bathroom in as we dismantled it.

Greg had to rip up selected floor boards for the plumbing.

Our stripped bathroom (minus the floor).

The refinished bear claw tub.

We have spent every weekend on the farm after that which took us to the end of the teaching school year for me. This is where the teardrop becomes a huge help.  We can't afford to stay in a hotel when visiting the farm so we park our teardrop in the little barn and live out of there.  We also brought a griddle, coffee pot and a small refrigerator that partially works for the house.  We do have electricity.  So, it is basically like camping in our own yard.  Showering gets tricky and so does going to the bathroom.  However, remember, people didn't always have these modern conveniences and so we make do. We do have water we get from the basement.

Our mornings are pleasant. We get up at sunrise around 6:00 am.  Greg usually gets up first and then I follow about a half an hour later.  I wait for him to make the coffee.  We sit around and chat about the day ahead of us and what we think we will get accomplished.  Next, comes breakfast which I cook on the griddle.  Sometimes dishes after that but many times the breakfast dishes don't get done until after dinner. 

Greg joined the Arbor Day Foundation and bought many trees.  They also give you free trees with your purchase and so we got a lot of trees.   We have now planted 22 new trees on our property.  Some fruit trees so we can have a nice orchard and some red maples, sugar maples, oaks, birch and more.  We wanted to start these trees now so that if they survive, in five years they will be established when the house is finished and we begin our farm life at retirement age.  This is our big plan!

Watering the trees is usually done in the morning when we are there.  When we are not there, we have to rely on God to send the rain.  We use 5 gallon buckets with lids and put them on a small garden cart that we attach to our riding mower.  Greg usually sits on the back with the buckets while I drive the mower.  We travel our mowed paths and stop when we get to the orchard.  Here we usually both hop out and grab a bucket and walk to various trees to douse them with water.  Then we move on to the next set of trees.  We go from one side of our property to the other side.  We only have two buckets so this takes about a good hour because we have to keep going back to refill them.  I must say though that during this time I am really enjoying myself.  I imagine I am a real farmer plowing his field in the early morning hours as the sun rises.  I now understand why farmers love what they do.  I am also amazed at the beauty of our land.  We bought it in winter and I had no idea.  I see a multitude of greens in the rolling hills and fields. I see scattered blossoming wild flowers in various colors. Red winged Black birds, brightly colored orange, yellow and blue birds dart around our property. Monarchs and other various butterflies are plentiful as are the deer. What will it look like in the fall?  I can't believe that we own this land. 

Heading out to the orchard

Getting ready to water the trees

Big mistake - remember the sunscreen before trying this.

Beautiful wildflowers which now adorn the toilet we removed from the bathroom.

Mama deer and baby - Greg spotted them out our parlor window.

I can't believe we own this land!

Laurie

Discoveries

 Discoveries

The first 2 weekends spent at the house, and working on it were filled of new discoveries.  Some were fun, a few are expensive, and one or two were kind of scary.  In reality, none of them should have been too surprising, considering it was a farm house built in 1915 and it had been vacant for the last 6 years.

My first discovery was electrical.  I had assumed that there would only be one outlet per bedroom, since it was an old farm house, but discovered that there were no outlets upstairs at all.  The electric is also very old, with insulators in the wall.  We decided very quickly that all the electric would be replaced. 

Plumbing was also a bit of an eye opener.  We live in a very rocky area, with yellowish rock everywhere.  It was a bit of a surprise, though, to open up the bathroom sink drain and discover sediment, the same color as all the rocks, had filled the inch and ¼ pipe to the point it was only open 1/8 of an inch.  We decided, again, very quickly, that all the plumbing would be replaced, and we would put a few inline filters on the waterline.

One of the fun discoveries was the wildlife.  We have a mama bird on the porch sitting on eggs,

                      we saw a mama deer and her baby in the field across the road,

       and we had a bat fly past us when were upstairs at dusk (Sorry, no pics of that. We left quickly.)

          

We had been told that our farmhouse was a Montgomery Ward mail order house.  Our research, though, showed that Montgomery Ward was not sending out mail order houses in 1915.  We had also been told it was a Sears mail order house, but we were doubting that also.  The answer came when we took out some of the molding around the windows and discovered that it was a mail order Gordon Van Tine home.

Gordon Van Tine was a company in Iowa, which is not far from the house, and started by supplying the materials for the Sears mail order homes.  When Sears got their own mill, Gordon Van Tine started their own Catalog.  Later, when Montgomery Ward got into the mail order house business, they also used Gordon Van Tine. Now we are in the process of looking for the catalog which shows our home.

Well, our discoveries will continue, along with our rebuilding, and we invite you along for the ride.

-Greg.

In the Beginning

In the Beginning

It all started in 2007 when I (Laurie Pledl) met Greg.  We met online through Yahoo Personals. Greg had a hobby farm before and he was dreaming of having one again.  I love animals and have always enjoyed farms but I never really thought about owning one.  As our relationships grew, so did this dream.  Greg quickly found out that he met someone whose dreams become realities, if at all possible. We married in 2008.

 Greg's other dream was to build a teardrop trailer.  I heard him talk about it for years and saw him research it many times.  Finally, with my encouragement, we started building.  I bought him some plans online for his birthday.  Greg found out that it was not that difficult to do and we discovered that we work well together. Our teardrop has been done for about 8 years now and we have traveled many places with it.  Some of our longer vacations in the teardrop include: the Outer Banks, NC, Maryland, Utah, California, Virginia, and Florida.  The teardrop has also played a huge role in our farm dream.  In fact, I would have to say that our farm dream could not have become a reality without our teardrop.

For five years Greg and I searched First Weber Realty online for farms.  We found a few we liked and went to look at several properties.  It was simply remaining a dream. It was getting tiring and frustrating for me. I believe Greg enjoyed the looking and dreaming more than me.  All of a sudden, a property we had looked at before showed up again.  The price was down a bit but probably still a little more expensive than we could afford.  What intrigued us was that it was listed as an old Montgomery Ward house, it had 15 acres and it was in the drift less area of Wisconsin (a part of Wisconsin in the western part of the State that was not covered by glaciers in the ice age).  We made an appointment to see it.  We looked at the house in February, 2018.  There was snow on the ground and it was cold.  The house clearly needed a lot of work. It had stood vacant for over 8 years.  However, the potential for this house was plentiful. What sold me on this property was not only the house but also the area.  In researching the nearby city of Monroe, I discovered it was quite a quaint with an artistic flare.  It has a great town square and some really fun shops and places to eat. It is also not far from Madison, WI.  As a graduate from U.W. Madison, I was thrilled.  Greg can live out in isolation and have no one else to talk to but I, however, would go stir crazy.  This place was looking better to me all of the time. We started to think about it more seriously. 

Before we even put in an offer, we had the well tested.  The current owner did not want to deal with any contingencies due to a few previous deals falling through.  The water tested fine and we put in our offer.  It was considerably lower than the asking price but Greg had figured out that we would have to put about $55,000 into it.  We decided to leave it to fate and put in a low bid based on what we could afford.  To our amazement and surprise, the offer was accepted.  Then we had to start jumping through some hoops; loan companies have a lot of them.  Our credit was really good though and so we were able to make the jumps like thoroughbreds. The expenses began to multiply.  Even before closing we discovered we had to put in a septic system.  We decided that this was not a bad expense to get out of the way. We closed on our farm on April 27th, 2018.

This blog will be the making of our farm dream come true.  We will share our progress of fixing up this old 1915 house and making it great once again. Stay tuned for our struggles and excitement as Greg and I create our dream farm.