How Our House Became Ours

My grandparents sold this house to a couple with two kids. This family raised their family in this house, she is an artist, and he was a salmon fisherman in Alaska. My mom would occasionally buy salmon from this family, so I remember visiting this house a few times growing up.

 Fast forward 30 years...

Meanwhile, my husband and I had bought a property a few miles from here and had moved our family of 5 into a 750-foot guest house while we finished plans to build a bigger house. Our plans for that house met many obstacles until we began to wonder if we should stay at that property. We told God we needed something to change, and please would he point us in the right direction?

Our cute little guest house.

I stopped by a grocery store that I do not go to often, and as I was checking out the couple who had bought my grandparent’s house saw me in line and said, “Hi Vanessa!” As that is the name of my sister who lives in Scotland, I assumed they were talking to me. We began chatting, and they asked how my parents were, and my reply was that they were well, and planning to sell their farm, (side note, my parent’s farm was directly on a busy highway, so we didn’t want to buy it.) The couple proceeded to tell me that they too were downsizing and then said, “You should buy our house, your dad always said it is the best place in the valley.”  She gave me her number and email on a brown bag, and I went on my way.

She wrote her number on a paper grocery bag.

When I got home I found that the bag the woman had written her information on, somehow did not make it home with me. I forgot about the meeting at the store and the couple who owned my grandparents’ house. A couple of weeks later I suddenly remembered that I had never contacted her, but I didn’t have her number. I thought about it, and I could see the woman’s email written on that bag. Weird but true. I went in and emailed her that minute. To my astonishment, the email address was right, and she responded immediately. The woman asked me to come by that evening. I decided to go with my 3 little girls, even though Adam was out of town for work.

My first look at our house, a little rough around the edges.

The house was how I remembered it. A beautiful place with huge ponderosa pine trees, a meadow with wildflowers, and a spring-fed pond with fish swimming in it. It was also overgrown and tired. There was about double the amount of “things” on the property than what I would like, including 2 combine cabs for “art,” but I still saw the gold.

Combine Cab “Art.”

My husband later came with me for another tour. After much debate and a soil test (farmer nerd), we decided to make them an offer. It took a year of working out all the details, but we eventually bought this amazing house and property in 2019.

Ponderosa pines on a foggy morning.