Part 3; After the Fair

While my husband and I dreamed about our little acreage, we were living on one income, I was staying home with the kids, we were settled. Up to that point in my life, my husband made my dreams come true, I had a wonderful husband who indulged my whims and needs, he went through endless amounts of paperwork and expense so we could adopt our two little girls, traveling to the other side of the world to fulfill my desire to be a mother. We were comfortable, not well off. Neither one of us had any real experience as a farmer, gardening yes, farming no.
On top of this Bryan had retired from the military and ended up with a job that put him on the road 5 days a week, suddenly I was a single mother who along with her daughters, missed the man in our life very much. How could we, in this uncertain economy, buy a farm, move hundreds of miles from our family and safety net, uproot our girls from the only life they had known. Well it turns out we could.
We left the fair with many ideas, Bryan is very practical and not prone to risk taking. I knew that in order for this to ever happen, I needed to make a practical plan. Time to hit the books.
I researched property, animals, farming options, animals and the list goes on. I then broached the subject with Bryan, only to find he was very open and receptive to the idea.
The fair happens in September, we thought up a practical 2 year plan. We would do our research, find the most affordable piece of land that fit our needs, make our move during the summer so the kids were not in the middle of school, learn as much about farming as we could from books, hands on experience, etc. It all sounded very practical, responsible and grown up. But as usual, the plan didn't quite work that way.
We scanned the Internet for land available in New York, Pennsylvania and occasionally Tennessee. We found many properties, some were amazing others were nice but lacking one of our requirements while others were one step away from The Grapes of Wrath.
Our memories went back to Wellsboro PA, it had many pluses, the only problem is that we hadn't actually ever been there, driving through didn't really count. My sister and her husband had been there for a golf weekend and they liked the town. They said it was picturesque.
At the urging of my mother, we decided to take a weekend and just go see the area. Reservations made, a list of properties created and off we went. Our reservations were in a town 15 miles away from Wellsboro, the list was only 3 properties, one of which we couldn't find, we really didn't have a clue what we were doing.