As you know, we are working diligently to buy a little hobby farm, a small holding, if you like.

Every day looks better and better and we’re not giving in the towel till the bitter end, which will be borrowing money from Guido at 45% interest.

You think we’re kidding, right? haha… Nope.

(Guido! If you’re out there, give us a ring… hahaha)

But, we thought it would be good to have a few runner-ups, maybe a wee bit higher priced so that the mortgage process might be easier, etc., etc., So we narrowed it down to two properties we MIGHT consider. Even though OUR FARM is way better.

This is Property #1. Here in after called the Bate’s Farm.
(Yep, you’ll learn why in a wee bit… remember the Bate’s Motel???????)

The Bate’s Farm is located just west of Bowling Green, Ohio, in the booming little town of Weston. As you can immediately see, this will cause intense company difficulties because my company is called Westvon Publishing and everyone will assume it’s Weston Publishing, in Weston, Ohio. Of course, I haven’t checked, but there might be a Weston Publishing already, in which case, hilliarity ensues.

Nonetheless… Weston Ohio is a nice enough little place, and it’s actually quite a bit bigger then the non-village of Alvordton. (Apparently Alvordton voted a few years back not to be a village anymore, and they just sort of closed up shop and let the county deal with things. hahaha…. Nice.)

The Bates Farm is right across from a weird little mobile home park and has pretty close neighbors. It’s a long lot, rectangular, and does go back way far. Mostly all flat land.

If our plans were just to farm, animals, etc., I suppose this is nice. But we also want quaintness and little buildings and multi-use buildings and such and well, this place pretty much has a big spooky creepy empty house and a yucky little nasty barn/garage. Oh yes, and a tumbled down makeshift hybrid barn thing in the back that is totally collapsed and filled with junk like tons of pails of blacktop sealer and roofing sealer and like modern trash. I didn’t even see any good American Pickers money making Americana junk. Just junk.

One of the most interesting aspects of this lovely property was the abundant use of yellow caution tape. Not to be confused with red warning flag tape… (which often accompanies the yellow caution tape when considering a place to call home…) but I think you get the idea. It was everywhere you looked.

And the one thing that we THOUGHT we might like, was the barn/garage at the main road. It sits RIGHT on the main road and one might think, hmmm…. cute little rock and mineral shop, a music hall, perhaps a picker’s junk shop or even a cute veggie stand???

No, think again.

There’s something cute and quaint about all the broken windows and plywood boarded up holes. They seem to hide all the tumbling down wood innards and shafts of light from the rotting roof. Oh yeah, and the dirt floor. And the big piles of dirt inside that make you wonder if perhaps someone might be digging holes for something… hmmmm…..

Here’s the kicker. This lovely 3 acre estate is 30 miles from Toledo, and is on the market for $30,000. (Ten more than OUR FARM) And the taxes are $1900 a year… (Double the taxes on OUR FARM) and to be honest, has no decent outbuildings, (vs. OUR FARM and it’s 7 lovely and stable outbuildings) And it’s right in the city and to be honest, I didn’t see ANYONE with livestock in the area. Nor Mobies in their yard. Yeah, there was a park across the street, but I really can’t see moving the Moby there and paying lot rent. No… No thanks!!!! UGH!!!

Property #3
The Piney Swamp Estate

The plus factor RIGHT AWAY for this lovely estate is that it’s about a mile from our Moby. So we’d be in our neighborhood we like and all that stuff. And it’s about a mile from Fran and Wes, actually just exactly a mile from them, one major street over. It a LONG skinny 3 acre lot. Only about 200 ft frontage and then all the rest back back into the piney woods.

The house is a little well weird. Just doesn’t look like it has a front facade to it. There is this weird little building in front of it, that looks like an old fashion gas station for like Disney Land or something, little bumper cars, because it’s small. Riding lawn mowers???? I guess it’s like a little BBQ patio or something.

Next to the garage and coming off the house, I spied this really strange ground disturbance…

Someone is recently digging up a big series of holes and have been installing these large pipes and other thingys in there and they run to the house. It makes me afraid. Our first house we bought had foundation damage and it was a real bear. Bad Bad Bad.

Lots of woods on this lot and unfortunately, nothing really looks like valuable lumber so that’s not good. Most is scrubby twisty and scrawny growth stuff. We’ve been reading that a timbered lot with decent big trees is not a bad thing because you can sell out some of the timber and open up a little pasture/garden space and the timber can give you a tidy little return on the effort. But this didn’t strike me as being anything of value other than screening you from your neighbors.

In the back yard, there was what COULD be a little sheep shed, and then another little garden shed sort of structure. I didn’t walk back there, it was getting cold. But it wasn’t that big of an area and I’m not certain how much farther back in the scrub the property went. Not really impressed.

No decent barn like structure at all. Just a 2 car garage, the toon garage, an open shed and a little shed. Now there was a pond. But it looked more like a contained swamp. Really low water level. We live in an area of Ohio called the old Black Swamp region, and I think this estate had captured a teeny bit of it to enjoy. Pretty, but kind of useless to us. Maggie loves to fish, but this area is not that big and frankly, is probably just a mosquito breeding facility for the most part.

This lovely in-town estate is priced at $59,000.  And the taxes are $3100 a year.   Triple that of OUR FARM… hahaha  (I know, I’m being a little annoying, but right now that is how I am focusing on it and making it happen. )    This is a lovely little home, but I don’t see paying over $200 a month in taxes on top of a mortgage.  And it doesn’t have what we really want.   The animal space.  And being in town, I don’t know you could have very many critters.  I suppose you could do enough, but still, the woods and all, just toooo much. Not what we are looking for.

So all, in all… I’m glad I took a look at them and I’m glad the girls didn’t come along.  They would have been super disappointed in most of them.    Nope,  our little farm out in Alvordton is the dream property for us.  Can’t wait to get to the bank tomorrow and start making things happen.

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