Is a 1/2 acre enough?

[mrbstephens]

Well, we looked at the house today with the real estate agent. We LOVE the property and location! It's SOOOOOO quiet! Totally the opposite of how it is where I live now. At my current home I'm constantly hearing lawnmower, leaf blowers, weed whackers, traffic, and dogs barking. At the other house, all I heard were birds!!! So beautiful and peaceful! Now the bad stuff; turns out there are really only 2 bedrooms. The 3rd is so tiny I'm not sure a twin bed would fit in there. This means my 2 young children would have to share a room temporarily. There is space for an easy addition on the second floor though. And the walls all have wallpaper or paneling. So, we'd have some peeling and painting to do. The basement is only a partial. The garage isn't quite large enough for my husbands workshop. He's a woodworker. But, he says he could make due until we could add on.
Did I mention the pros? PEACE AND QUIET! It's mostly wooded and is next to land that can't be built on that has hiking trails that lead to ponds containing fish, frogs and salamanders. My 6 year old son LOVES this place! I have to check back about the wetlands thing. The real estate agent thinks it's a mistake. BTW. I gave my car a good running start with some extra power before reaching that hill and made it over just fine.

 

[Beekissed]

You can stack several species and have a great garden on that much space. Definitely enough for a family of four.

I have an orchard that also has graze for my sheep. I also will be keeping my bees there and my chickens free range there.

If you fence in your garden, you can plant a good cover crop there for fall/winter and also maintain plastic tunnels for a 4 season garden. The sheep can be rotated through this garden area in the winter and this will supplement their winter feeding.

The square foot gardening method of utilizing every inch of your garden can certainly maximize your garden potential.

Good luck and keep us posted about your new home!

 

[mrbstephens]

You can stack several species and have a great garden on that much space. Definitely enough for a family of four.

I have an orchard that also has graze for my sheep. I also will be keeping my bees there and my chickens free range there.

If you fence in your garden, you can plant a good cover crop there for fall/winter and also maintain plastic tunnels for a 4 season garden. The sheep can be rotated through this garden area in the winter and this will supplement their winter feeding.

The square foot gardening method of utilizing every inch of your garden can certainly maximize your garden potential.

Good luck and keep us posted about your new home!

Thank you! We're going back to look again on Sunday. The real tricky part is selling our current home and buying this one before someone else buys it. According to the real estate agent not too many people are selling on contingencies these days. First come, first serve. There are a lot of houses on the market in this area, so there's a lot of competition. We'd have to sell our house for a low price.

 

[rebecca100]

We are in the same boat. Dh is looking for a new place now so we can be with his dad and we still need to even put this place on the market. My dad burned trash in the yard before he passed and stacked the rest in the shed. I don't think he ever took anything to the dump in a couple of years! So we still have to clean it up before we can sell it and we found a couple of places we were interested in AND in our price range but I am scared they will be sold before ours is!!

 

[Aidenbaby]

The market sucks here too. We live in a starter home community and our house alone lost $50,000 in value in one year. Let's put it this way, we bought our house 3 years ago for $120,000 and thought it was a great price because it was valued at $140,000 (it was short sale). Last year, it was valuated at roughly $80,000. We may be here for quite a while.

 

[Wifezilla]

Yup. Both houses next to me went in to foreclosure. One sold to a flipper and someone is purchasing that now. The other one is just collecting weeds.

 

[mrbstephens]

The market sucks here too. We live in a starter home community and our house alone lost $50,000 in value in one year. Let's put it this way, we bought our house 3 years ago for $120,000 and thought it was a great price because it was valued at $140,000 (it was short sale). Last year, it was valuated at roughly $80,000. We may be here for quite a while.

We bought our house in 2001 for $256,000 which was a great deal. Two years ago it was valued at $550,000! Right now we'd be lucky to get $380,000. At least we'd still get a nice profit for a good sized down payment and hopefully some extra for renovations!