Foster Road farm sign

Farm Journal

Thoughts and images from life at Foster Road

 

Entry 2: DECEMBER 2008

 

Closing Day

The closing took a month longer than expected to arrive and I was frazzled with frustration. By then, winter had closed in. Linda and I trudged through snow for the final tour the house and outbuildings. Everything had been neatly cleared out. On we went.

 

We killed time over coffee, and reminisced about some of the amazingly awful properties we'd looked at over the past four years. Like so many things in life, you kiss a lot of frogs looking for that prince.

 

Then the lawyers, the checks, the I signed papers. Then it was all mine. A cold old house and lots of work. What had I done?

 

I returned to find the furnace was out and refused to relight. I'd learn my first lesson in country living: don't let the oil tank run low and have it filled while the furnace is running or gunk from the bottom of the tank will clog up the works. Lesson number one cost over a hundred bucks.

 

There would be a thousand new things to learn and I was taking a bigger risk than I'd taken in a decade. The economy was in a tailspin and all around me, people were hunkering down. All around me people were congratulating me on my dream come true. And all I could think was, be careful what you wish for.