From Suburbs To City To Country: New Year, New Adventures
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Happy New Year – a little late! I hope your new year is off to a wonderful start! Ours so far has been filled with tissues, Gatorade, soup and Lysol as it seems that some contingent of the three of us has been sick for at least two weeks running. Certainly not how I hoped to start off the year, but thankfully this scourge managed to wait until after the holidays, allowing for the downtime at home to let our bodies rest. Runny nose or not though, I am so excited to finally share in this new year what our next new adventures entail: we are building a house in the country! Having now been back from Germany almost 6 months, we are deep into the hands on tangible part of the project that we have been planning in the margins for the past 3 years and let me tell you, it is a whole other kind of adventure! While we enjoyed suburban life before Munich and loved city life in Munich, we now can’t wait to venture into country life as we move to family land closer to Charlie’s work. As we are acting as the general contractor for the build process, we are pulling together all of our design and building background and resources to build our dreams of a slower life, simple home, abundant garden and full hearts to share with family, friends and each of you. So, let’s dive into all the details of our city to country transition for an overview of the exciting things to come!!
Dreaming Big
Close your eyes with me for a moment and imagine it… sun coming through the windows. Smoke rising from the chimney. Fresh produce from the garden picked by little hands. More time outside. Sweat. Mud. Hard work. Simple. Full. Slow…. Not glamorous but dreamy all the same.
As much as Charlie and I absolutely loved our life abroad, we both have been craving something deeper. More hands on. More time outside. Tasks to grow and stretch us. To teach our daughter. A way of life that fills the soul and tires the body through the consistent yet rewarding work it requires. So, we are leaping in…to building a house, a home. Eventually to gardening. Maybe even to chickens. But definitely into a life more defined by time shared learning together in God’s beautiful creation, investing into the skills and health of our family. Over the past few years post Charlie’s cancer, we have already started the journey of moving towards local produce, organic, more glass and cast iron, less plastic, so in many ways this next adventure is a continuation of those small starts paired with the desire for our family to grow together in a place and in ways that we can share with family and friends along the way.
Certainly, even with all the excitement, dreaming big in these ways is not all sunshine and sparkle! While abundantly blessed, we are keenly aware of our finite resources of time, energy and money so to alleviate at least one of those three, we will be undertaking much of the work ourselves. This already has brought on late nights, long drives and hours spent working and reworking our spreadsheets, but, even so, I am so excited to share what we learn from this homesteading adventure with you along the way!
First Step: Land Clearing
So now that you know what our next adventure is, what are our next steps?! The first step has been clearing the lot for our home, installing silt fences and spreading grass seed with straw (while finding cool mementos like a lucky horseshoe!) on the cleared portion just beyond the build site to help with erosion control and to preserve our topsoil. Down the road we will get rid of the trees by chipping, burning, using some for garden beds etc. as paying to have them hauled away is a small fortune and not the place we want to prioritize our funds at this point. That being said, we have many neat ideas for uses for these pines and in the meantime they will be out of the way of our house location. While the grass seed has begun taking, this is a process we will repeat several times with location appropriate annual and perennial seed mixtures until the field is fully established.
On The Horizon
Taking on this big of a project moving from the suburbs to city to country means there is so much to come! You definitely can expect to explore the steps to consider when acting as your own general contractor, plans for the design of our spaces, how we designed our own home from the ground up, where to save and how to budget, finishes, room schemes, endless DIYs and eventually landscaping, plantings, and homesteading content as we settle in long term. All of this of course dappled with delicious recipes, holiday ideas and fun travel when we need a getaway. We have a lot on the horizon and so much I am excited to share, but in the meantime, if there is a certain aspect you most want to learn about, please let me know! DM me on Instagram, drop a comment below or send me an email (chloe@porchandpeony.com) as I always hope to best tailor what I share here to things you are most interested in.
Final Thoughts
Moving from the suburbs to city to country has been a dream for years and while it will come with a plethora of adjustments, it is an adventure we are super excited to begin! Designing and building our home from the ground up inspired by the homes, gardens and ideas we have loved at home and abroad is an intensive yet rewarding process and one that I particularly am excited to share. But, I would love to know! Have you ever considered taking on a homesteading adventure? Or hoped to bring bespoke, heirloom design to your home on a budget? If so, you’ll want to follow along as this journey is for you!
Happy New Year!
