About face

A campfire lunch in our woods overlooking the muskrat pond.

After a dozen years of forking manure, weeding, putting up hay and firewood, squeezing teats, enduring mid-west heat and humidity, picking off lyme carrying ticks, killing cute animals, and having spooked horses run off to destroy yet another expensive piece of equipment... I was ready to give it a rest.

I was done waiting for Godot; peak oil, impending economic collapse... you name it.  Come what may, I was ready to again assume the simple life of dependency that the vast majority have chosen. I was ready to fall into the arms of industrial civilization, sell my remaining life for an inflated west-coast mortgage, and endure insane Washington traffic.

On the plus side, we would again be near the mountains and ocean, so Henry would get to experience the wilderness that was so important to me for most of my life. We could go backpacking, skiing, sailing, kayaking, crabbing... all good things. More fun, less work -- at least on weekends anyway.

We put the farm up for sale late last year, and found an Amish family who wanted to buy it -- complete with all equipment and much of the livestock.  A great situation for us, as we knew they appreciated what we've cobbled together, and also great because we didn't need to worry ourselves with selling off everything separately.  Nobody would be bulldozing the barns and building a McMansion.

With this in mind, in January we placed an offer on an old Lopez Island farm house -- imho the nicest of the ferry-serviced islands in the San Juan archipelago at the north end of Puget Sound. As it turns out, the home inspection did not go well. When the sellers refused to make any concessions, we walked. Just about that time covid-19 started to make a few headlines.

Still looking for homes, I began to wonder if moving might not be such a good idea anymore. As the coronavirus spread continued, it soon became readily apparent that it wasn't. Though we hadn't seen much of interest come on the housing market, a "good" house came up a few weeks ago, but I simply couldn't see making an offer on it. I feel better about that now, because it just sold for $65k above the asking price. Yes, the Puget Sound region is still going insane. I'm hoping that things may calm down a bit once this virus has taken its toll.  Prices here in Michigan will fall as well, but they don't have as much room to drop.

In the meantime, I'm awfully happy to be sitting where we are, on a farm where we can produce our own food, fuel, and hay. The current "lock-down" simply provides justification for all the things we've been doing for these many years.  Rachel and Henry are both home now that schools are closed, though I'm still working for the time being.  Michigan just announced lockdown yesterday, as the state reported 1300 cases. Being forced to "self-isolate" actually sounds pretty nice here.

As I suggested in February, I think there will be significant economic repercussions from the virus, well beyond the shortage of toilet paper and hand sanitizer. I've seen modeling which suggests that the virus will be problematic for another 18-24 months. As a perennial pessimist (or realist, as I like to think), I see the economic mayhem lasting well beyond that, but I have a fantastic record of being wildly wrong on a lot of things. On the other hand, just like a stopped clock, I'm bound to be right, eventually.

So the window of opportunity for living as if it's still the 20th century may be riding off into the sunset. Buying a house on credit, or loading our possessions on a semi to haul them 2500 miles across the country may very well be a thing of the past. If so, we're about as well situated as we could ask to be. If I'm wrong (yet again!) and "Saudi America" rides in to rescue us all from a return to civilizational sanity, I wouldn't mind sailing out to Patos Island one more time.