Farm + Old House .....Anyone Else Live from Crises to Crises?

[QHEventer]

YES! Our house isn’t even that old (2003) but we have a large, somewhat wooded acreage and its ALWAYS someting.

The creek floods washing out our 1/2 mile driveway (stranding us), storms knock trees down across said driveway, septic field wet and puddling (despite 2 companies failing to find anything wrong), HVAC on the cusp of needing replacement (2 units), 1/4 acre pond with a leaky damn, arena that washes out with heavy rains…the list goes on and on.

We want to sell the place and build new on a smaller property but with the market and economy the way it is right now we feel stuck. So, we’re going to wait it out a few years until hopefully things turn around. In the meantime, we have a baby due in 3 months and feel beyond overwhelmed

[Miss_Motivation]

Oh yes… the pride of ownership when you have a farm property.

It. Never. Ends.

But read the ‘boarding’ threads and we’re all getting rich and the clever horse owners are going to just show us, by buying their own farm and saving money on board!

Fact: i recently sold my large boarding barn and now have a semi-normal house in a neat area. It rained last night for the first time in forever and, as I have for the last 16 years, I woke bolt upright in bed when the rain started… then I realized I didn’t have to worry about all the nefarious things a bit of rain could do to a stable, since i was in a normal house… and I went right back to sleep.

[NaturallyHappy]

Oh my…I’d forgotten… I had what I thought was a leak in my roof. When the roofer came to check it, he called me at work and told me to sit down. Turns out the entire back section of my house was part of an old barn they’d pulled up to the house and the attachments were failing! It took about 30 seconds to dismantle it. It was cool though…you could see the ladder leading up to the loft as they were tearing it down.

[endlessclimb]

Not related to this thread but just because I’m curious - will the barn you sold remain a boarding barn, or did it go for other uses (private owner or development)?

[Miss_Motivation]

At this point it remains a boarding barn, although the new owners seem to primarily be interested in a neat property in a great location for their own enjoyment. They hired a barn manager to keep things going but are not ‘horse people’ per se.

As currently zoned it cannot be densely developed, although there’s no financial incentive to keep boarding horses. There were nine serious lookers and only two had an interest in keeping the horses.

[endlessclimb]

Did that factor into your decision of whose offer to accept?

[Hightale]

Wryly chuckling at your idea of an old house. We lived in one that dated back to the 1600’s!
Absolutely loved that place.
Current farmette is a house from 1892 and 22 acres of land plus 13 acres of woods.
The work is perpetual. We’ve only just got a proper kitchen in after starting the internal work in 2015.
I don’t think we’ll ever be fully on top of the land management

[Djones]

@Hightale

Wryly chuckling at your idea of an old house. We lived in one that dated back to the 1600’s!

Lol oh I know mine isn’t old, for sure it isn’t. I’m perfectly happy to have modern windows and plumbing such it’s all work, no matter what the age.

[EssexFells]

Circa 1880 homeowner, reporting for duty! It’s never ending. One thing though is we’ve made a huge huge priority to establish and maintain a 20k emergency fund, and we don’t live beyond our income. Which for us means living in a low-cost-of-living area, and accepting that we’re far from family, there are few restaurants / fun things to do (who has time for that anyway? We have fences to maintain, dammit). I get that boondocks living is a sacrifice that not everyone can make, but It makes it so much easier when the big repairs and surprise projects inevitably pop up. It’s not a financial strain --just endless work and inconvenience/ disruption of plans.
For anyone taking out loans to cover the fairly routine costs of homeownership, I urge you to downsize / relocate somewhere that your income will go further. Financial stress is awful.

[Miss_Motivation]

endlessclimbAdvanced

1d

Did that factor into your decision of whose offer to accept?

Keeping the property as a stable was one of many factors that weighed into our decision, but ultimately, it comes down to who wants the property, who can buy it, and what their timelines are.

The reality is many of us who own farms today are aging-out Baby Boomers, and our farms- the dirt, not the businesses on the dirt- are our retirement plan. For lots of us, the boarding operations were a juggling act to try to break operationally even, while we paid the mortgage with our ‘real jobs’ and kept hoping that the land appreciation would, one day, provide the security in our old age that most people have with traditional retirement plans.

When you own agricultural property, you are essentially land-banking, doing whatever you can to keep all the plates of businesses on the land spinning while you hope the property itself is appreciating. It’s a long-term hold, often of generations not just years, and in the meantime, life changes, cities expand, houses get built, populations shift, people do different stuff with their spare time and money, and the rural lifestyle becomes harder to live.

The economics of the horse business, to me, make less and less sense. Covid was the great disrupter and now, with the pendulum swinging between crazy demand for horses (already cooling) and unprecedented price spikes in everything it takes to support a horse, the business model is even more fragile than it was a few years ago. Stable owners know this, but I think many boarders do not, but they are starting to get an inkling that their horsekeeping options are dwindling and going to cost quite a bit more than they are used to.

I had a wonderful run with my place, and will always be grateful for the experience, but I also feel very fortunate that we were able to step away at an opportune time to provide security for our family. That security was hard-earned through many years of risk, betting that some day the work and dollars put into the farm would pay us back.

[B_and_B]

Trustee for a family property (Historic National Register listed) with numerous outbuildings, main house that ranges in periods of construction from 1790 to 1893, and lots of acreage. It is a large, very large house, there are sections that maybe see a person once a month (come to think of it…not sure anyone actually has been in a certain attic room this year…) There is always something! It is a money pit, and despite the tax assessor’s claims completely unsellable for what it ‘looks like’. I doubt a permit has ever been pulled for anything and the wiring and plumbing was put in during the 1920s and has not been updated, never mind the lead pipes, lead paint, asbestos insulation on pipes, and a complete lack of actual insulation. I love it. I couldn’t imagine living elsewhere, most of the rest of the family would cheerfully burn it down. DH and I will hold on as long as we can before dissolving the trust.
That being said…I do have the odd fantasy about a vacation trip or decorating a room the way I would want to…

[eightpondfarm]

1840s stone home plus a few hundred acres here. Ancient barn (a little bit older than the house even) which we renovated. A couple of quite old outbuilding also. We are in the middle of having a new roof put on, and will have to have part of section of our balcony ripped off and a new cedar post plus some of the flooring redone. Plus some soffit work in a small part of the north side of the house. Fortunately the soffit work will only be 4x20’ (ish).

We JUST ordered new lantern outdoor fixtures that are being made for us. six of them…pretty exciting!

Plumbing from one of the wells into the house was redone last year.

Next year, rewiring.

It’s a constant money-pit…but then, so are horses! lol

[aregard]

@cayuse

, a $21,000 septic system installed, the $21,000 septic system repaired

Just to make you feel better, here if I want to add a bedroom I have to add a septic pre-treatment magicbox. It will run over $60K. And that isn’t even to redo the septic system, just the pre-treatment.

[eightpondfarm]

ewe! who wants to spend BIG MONEY on something that’s not even pretty, let alone be septic. I feel your pain. We had to waste 5k on a new transmission on an old car. Not as much money, and slightly less ‘ugh’…butstill

[allons-y]

Aging out Baby Boomer here. I could go on another 10 years I think, but not my husband. He aged about 20 years in the last 5 years, one injury or health issue after another (He’s only 73 but seems 93). I can keep up with everything outside, but the house itself is killing me. I’ve had to get a Handyman to do stuff inside that my husband would have easily done. Thank God I’m partners with my neighbor on the Pecan side, and he keeps the tractors and harvesters going. I’m feeling a bit down with these issues. Lost my best buddy Farm Cat in May, husband went downhill in June. I’m living in a Nursing Home it seems and not able to be out and doing as much as I would like. The thought of selling just kills me, but I see it coming loud and clear. I just hope the economy rebounds so I can get enough money to live on. Also, I love every inch of this place, I hope to pass it on to someone like me, just decades younger. But I absolutely wouldn’t have missed this journey for anything.

[B_and_B]

Nothing I can do but a virtual hug. I see that in my future too. And like you, I wouldn’t have missed the journey I am on; but Lord the landing looks like it is going to be hard.

[enjoytheride]

Owning a farm is saying “next week will be easier” over and over until you die.

[pony_grandma]

One yr Gramps didn’t fix the old tractor so he didn’t keep up with pasture mowing. So I made him go out and help me hand cut and burn the ironweed.

So now age has happened and tractor broke again and I no longer care.

[Dressage59]

Definitely!!! The original house is 80 years old with 2 additions - nothing flows, 2 kitchens, 2 dining rooms, but not a duplex. The barns are pole barns. The rats showed up about 1 1/2 weeks after we moved in - I think they had a lookout posted! We have this running list of what needs to be done and we’re always behind. Sometimes the stress is too much!

[wsmoak]

It’s not really a farm, but a late 80’s log home with a roof pitch suitable for a blizzard that will never happen in middle Georgia. We have been chasing a roof leak since we moved in and finally relented and replaced the whole roof, whereupon it leaked WORSE around the chimney. Months of pestering the roofers who finally admitted that they could not fix it, nor could they hire a stone mason to fix it because their insurance wouldn’t cover it, they are only roofers not general contractors. So we finally found a mason and this week both of them are out here hopefully FINALLY fixing the roof.

I am done with the horses at home thing. The maintenance on this place is just too much. We are making a plan to sell and move somewhere lakefront so DH can go fishing.