Its almost March on a Maine micro flower farm. Seed starting begins soon, the sun is staying out a little later, and spring is finally starting to feel tangible again. For now, though, I am still stuck inside most days, watching my duck flock out the window, having questionably in-depth conversations with my cat, experimenting with sourdough recipes and basically just drumming my fingers until this snow melts away. As cabin fever starts to really get the best of me, I am reminded of how everyone keeps telling me to blog, so I guess now is as good a time to start as any!
Here goes…
Let’s begin with, How I Became a Farmer Florist, or more aptly, That Time I Bought a House and Never Wanted to Leave:
Several years ago my husband and I moved to Maine from Thailand because we were looking to establish a more permanent home-base for our nomadic, SCUBA-bum lifestyle (more on that later). Our intention was to buy a small house, get “nesting” out of the way, and then resume our life of weird experiences, delicious street food and diving with manta rays.
But oops!
Only a few weeks into our property search, on a whim, I convinced our real estate agent to let me check out a house that was not at all in our budget and the complete opposite of what we were looking for; namely a nice, small, maintenance free, low mortgage payment! But one of my favorite things has always been snooping through new spaces, so we looked, just for fun!
Long story short, we now call that house, which was not in our budget and the complete opposite of what we were looking for, home!
Due to some unforeseen factors, it turned out to be not as out-of-our-budget as we initially thought. As fate would have it, we suddenly found ourselves the proud, slightly bewildered (and mildly terrified) owners of an adorable 1816 farmhouse, 30 acres of woodland and a lawn that is unimaginably expensive to mow.
This was all a bit overwhelming and definitely a change of pace from what we were used to. My husband, who is British, hadn’t lived in the “first world” for any significant length of time in almost two decades and I had only fleetingly tried my hand at “real life” some years earlier in Seattle. Our comfort zone tends to be any environment in which we are totally unfamiliar, so I guess in that respect, homeownership actually kind of fit the bill!
But what happens when you are in search of a starter home and instead end up with something kind of akin to your dream? You never want to leave, that’s what! Also, side note, the vision you once had of your “dream home” suddenly changes drastically and you begin to have delusions of Martha Stewart level grandeur, conversely, home repairs are no joke… but those are stories for another time!
And so, in a quest to never leave the property, but also not end up delinquent on a mortgage payment, I dug up the back yard and a flower “farm” was born!
And that’s pretty much how it happened…
This was year one, there are a few bare spots in the middle there, live and learn, compost is your best friend!