Part 2: What Spring Taught Us

Winter on the farm had been beautiful and brutal in equal measure. We'd made it through — living in the RV, learning the land, noticing the first hints of what was growing all around us. But as the cold began to ease, something else was shifting too. Hope was turning into motion.

The Land Next Door

It started with a game cam.

We hadn't checked it in about a month, so when we finally pulled the footage, we weren't expecting much. But there it was — an image of a man we didn't recognize, walking through our woods with a pistol in his hand. It was unsettling, to say the least.

We investigated. Turns out, he was a realtor — listing our neighbor's property. The same neighbor who had refused to grant us an easement for electricity. She was selling.

There was already an interested buyer. The next day, we were in a bidding war.

We knew this was our only shot at getting electricity to our land. So we went all in — and we got it.

The day we closed was one of elation. We celebrated like it was a holiday, because in a way, it was. We could finally run power poles. We could finally see the path to lights. To indoor plumbing. To a real (albeit temporary) home.

The Cottage Arrives

In late February 2024, our cottage was delivered. It was a shell — four walls, a roof, and the most adorable front porch you've ever seen. It was also completely unfinished inside, which meant it was ours to build.

We got to work.

With the help of an old friend and a stack of borrowed books, we were shown how to wire a building, install lights and run plumbing. We learned how to frame walls. No internet — just printed pages and a willingness to figure it out.

We rented a ditch-witch and trenched a water line across the gravel road that splits our property — one of those quirky farm realities that makes everything just a little more interesting.

We figured it out, one problem at a time, the way you do when there's no other option.

Built From Our Own Land

We moved in on April 1, 2024. One of the things we're most proud of: the wood. We milled lumber from trees cut right here on our property — trees that had stood on this land long before we arrived. From that timber, we framed walls, installed shiplap, and built something that felt genuinely ours.

When our power lines went in and a beautiful pine came down in the process, we didn't let it go to waste. We milled it into a kitchen counter — one of the most beautiful things in the cottage, and a piece of this land we'll use every single day.

The wood stove came last, and when it was finally in place and lit for the first time, the cottage stopped being a project and started being a home. It felt like the farm was finally saying yes.

What Spring Taught Us

Spring didn't just bring warmer days. It brought electricity and running water. It brought a cottage with the interior built by our own hands from our own land. It brought the realization that we were capable of far more than we knew when we first arrived.

And somewhere in the middle of all of it — between the ditch-witch and the drywall, the sawmill and the shiplap — we started to notice something else. The land around us was waking up too. Plants we hadn't seen before were pushing through. Herbs we didn't yet have names for were growing along our walking paths and along the creek.

Spring was teaching us more than how to build a home. It was introducing us to the land itself and that's when I made our first salve.

More on that soon.