homesteading.

My husband and I recently moved our family up to the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. We have been scouting rentals for literal years, and around these parts, you have to know someone, or at least know someone who knows someone to get any kind of lead in the housing department. We wanted something secluded, but close to town, with land to grow vegetables and let our kids and dog run wild. What we didn’t expect was to get a two story farmhouse, built in 1857 that was originally going to be the Governor’s Mansion when Columbia was in the running for being the state capital.

This house has some serious history. Miners used to have gun fights in the street that my daughter and I now watch the cars drive by on. There are rock walls still perfectly intact all around our property that were built hundreds of years ago, and a supposed, yet to be seen witches coven that still meet somewhere out in the woods out past the house, leaving only stick sculptures in their absence.

This home had been treated very badly by all it’s previous tenants for the last 11 years. It was piled high with leftover crap from each person that had lived here, strange drawings and writings on the walls, no cabinet doors and a “murder room” with a legitimate story to boot. Needless to say it took a lot of convincing on my husbands part to get me to agree that this would be the place we have been dreaming about raising our kids. (Now, I’m not a total weenie. I love true crime and witchcraft just as much as the next gal.) So I agreed. My selling point to the kids was that Santa’s reindeer spent their off season here in our neighborhood. Jackpot.

Every weekend for two months we came up and worked, cleaned garbage off the property, scrubbed the walls, floors, cabinets and every crevice I could see. We cleaned under the house (which once was, and hopefully will be again, an open root cellar for canned fruits and vegetables). I trusted my husband that this would be worth it, because by now I have learned that nothing you really desire is easy.

So here we are, about a month in and I see the light at the end of the tunnel. Our ghost “Grumpy” from the murder room, has been very mellow. I told him I would bring him back to life and kill him again if he went bump in the night, or scared my kids. I’d say we have an understanding. Also I think that If there really are spirits here from long ago, they are happy to see the love and care finally being restored into this home and land.

My husband and the family renting to us that live across the way, are gearing up to get more chickens, some pigs and goats, and the morning view could ease the stress of a politician in front of congress.

The vegetables are sprouting, the sun is shining and the kids are alright.