Lately, most of my time online is spent researching property and plans as we make forward steps with buying acreage. (Background info. is mostly here and here.) I said that I’d journal our journey, and I hesitate talking aloud on things that aren’t a done deal. But in the event that it might be helpful to others or cause us to rethink some things that need adjusting, I’ll keep updating.

Costs vs. location
The further out you go, the cheaper land gets. We have set a budget of 2,000 an acre for pasture and water, so this limits many locations. We’d rather be connected with a local community: living, working, playing, and worshipping with the people who are our neighbors. Finding the right balance has consumed a lot of time. We’ve tentatively narrowed it to South Central Kentucky and South Central Tennessee.

Building a house vs. buying an existing house
We’ve remodeled two houses (while living in them) to suit our growing family. Most dining rooms accommodate a family of four just fine, but that makes buying a house for a larger family more difficult. If you do a cost analysis of building new vs. buying old, it’s generally a wash. In other words, you can’t remodel a house with the money you’ve saved unless the existing house is greatly discounted for its poor condition.

Experience has taught us that it is better to start from scratch than to demolish and remodel. It is cheaper as well. When Greg raised our kitchen ceiling, he found plumbing that went diagonal instead of around the perimeter. When he opened a wall one time, he found no insulation and access to the outside. So a good rule of thumb is to always take a reasonable time estimate and then quintuple it.

Another idea we’re considering is building a house that relies on solar energy, wood heat, and water from a spring house or well. This would cost more initially, but in the long run, it would save us a bundle. I’m not sure if this puts us technically “off-grid” or not, but I like the idea of saving money and greening the earth a little.

What’s next
We anticipate a trip to buy land sometime near the beginning of March. We have a few lose ends to tie up before that, but it seems we’re on schedule. In the meantime, we’re getting more information on properties that would suit us, fiddling with possible floor plans to show local builders, and getting our house in sellable condition.

Who cares?
The end of all this is God’s glory. (I elaborated on the “how” of this in earlier posts.) You can decide now to raise your children to the glory of God by loving God and resisting the god of this age wherever you’re at. To wit, this doesn’t mean that we freak out when our children hear others cussing, so we need to run to the country where they’re too busy chewing to cuss. (I actually don’t mind my children witnessing vulgarity.) That’s not what being holy looks like. Rather, we purpose to teach them to love God and to resist the things of the world by insulating them within.

Consumerism is the god of America’s children. Cultivating contentment is the response. When we are discontent, we are not grumbling about our circumstances, per se. We are actually grumbling, raising our fists against God. Who owns it all? Who provides for our every need? When we complain and practice discontentment, we tell God that He is not sufficient.

Rick Saenz answered me in a comment today:

Although the most people throughout history have lived satisfactory lives as subsistence farmers, they also lived very differently than we live now. (I’ll post some more about that later today.) As we fret over how to provide a good and sustainable life for our children, we spend less time worrying about generating sufficient material wealth than we do raising them to be content with much less wealth that their parents have become dependent on.

Since godliness with contentment is great gain, we measure our steps and make deliberate choices to live our lives accordingly with God’s help.