Our second day went better than the first. There was no road trouble if you exclude all the close calls with bad drivers, and we only had about five hours of driving ahead of us.

If you remember, I trusted Greg’s judgment in putting a contract on the place without my having seen it. He brought home lots of video and pictures and I felt confident about the purchase. We’ve been looking at property for several years now. Our close watch of the market not only allowed us to watch prices climb higher and higher, it enabled us to get an idea of what we wanted and what we didn’t.

When we were close, Greg cued the song we’d been listening to for a month straight now– our theme song, Knee Deep in Bluegrass. I knew something was wrong when my engineer, aerial photo guru, GPS boy said, “Yeah, I think this is it…Wait. No. It’s just ahead. OK, here we are.”

The reason we couldn’t see the place was because the weeds were 10 feet high.

5 Driveway and Pond

This is the driveway and pond we couldn’t find. This picture was taken a few months ago, though. However, all 6 ponds were still full. We think some of them must be spring fed.

The drought didn’t suppress the weeds. I could see how the place kind of looked like the pictures once I situated myself a little better. Yes. There. I just had to use more imagination than I intended to.

We signed papers, unloaded our things, and began exploring. Greg made a few trips down to the pond for water to flush the (very gross and abandoned) toilet for us. At that moment, every fly in the state descended upon us and our food. It was hot. It was sticky. And we needed water.

No problem. The water would be coming the next day.

The next day came. We met several neighbors and talked at length with two contractors we were interviewing to install electric, water, flooring, and cabinetry in the house. This Amish house has walls and the basic structure, but we still need to finish it out. (This is why we don’t plan to make the final move for a few months.) We measured, sketched, and noted which windows needed replacing.

[I believe I only made one serious faux pas with a neighbor. He told me that bush hogging is done by the air. "By the air? I'm sorry, sir, I don't understand." He replied in two syllables, "HO-UR." I'm such an idiot.]

The children were not bored, and I was glad to see it. They named the guineas and the ponds, and they rode down the hill in the wagon. But they were dirty.

4 Pasture

8 Barn

We hope to raise our own meat here.

We decided to wash up before we left to meet some folks who invited us over for worship. The water people came and Greg went down to the shut-off spot which is pretty far from the house. He turned it on.

I heard this gushing noise. Apparently, a line wasn’t capped in the kitchen. While trying to turn knobs and other stuff, I started yelling, “Turn it off! Turn it off!” but Greg couldn’t hear me. I sent the kids down the hill and around the barn to tell him. By the time they found him (one of the problems of having more than a city lot), the water had been pouring for several minutes.

We cleaned up the mess and went on to our new friends’ house.

7 Front of house
We are converting the Amish house on the inside, but we’ll keep the simpleness of the facade. Gardens, flowers, and trellises will be the only additions.

One of the beautiful blessings we received with this move is more invitations than we could possibly accept. I’ve received emails from all over Kentucky with offers of dinner, help, and places to stay as we get situated. I can’t tell you how neat this is to us and how good it makes us think of the Body of Christ.

We worshipped that evening with about 60 people in an old tobacco barn that had been converted to a house. It was more refreshing than running water. We sang, prayed, and enjoyed meeting our new friends. It was the confirmation we needed that this wasn’t going to be a complete disaster. There are good things coming.

When Jesus said that man does not live by bread alone, I understood a little more of it considering our somewhat annoying circumstances so far. We were tired physically, but after that evening, we were refreshed. (We were safe and healthy, and that’s why I consider these inconveniences only mildly annoying.) After several days, we were still without power and water, though the power part wasn’t bad at all. The flies were incredibly annoying and seemed increasingly more interested in us as our smells grew. It’s hard to sleep as it is, and so my insomnia worsened. We were hot, sticky, tired, and dirty, but we were encouraged.

6 Inside of future store and commercial kitchen

There are two cement floor buildings on the property. This is one of them.

3 Workshop
This is the other building: Greg’s New Yankee (Confederate?) Workshop. He will have a nice set-up here. He is a great carpenter. I am so glad that he gets a bigger space for his tools. I will have a sewing corner in the laundry room, so I’m getting a workspace too.

Another day went by and I met some blogging friends in real life. We had 26 (+1) children between the four of us. It is no wonder that we know each other from MOMYS, which stands for Moms of Many Young Siblings. I hugged them (lightly) even though I’d been many days without a shower. I ended up asking one of them for a room that night. We all needed showers, and plus, it’d put us about an hour closer for the long drive home the next day.

26 kids

I believe they were all under 10, except for about 4 children.


Here we are trying to capture a picture of the group. Yes, that’s my escape artist refusing to pose for a picture.

Welcome to KY

He’s a cutie pie, though, when he’s not running away.

We made it back home without incident, and we are grateful to the Lord for His goodness, especially that shown through His people that we’d never met before.

We plan to move after the baby is born and after the house is finished. We’ll have water by then… I hope.