We planned to retire in our home in Southern California. We spent many years remodeling to make it just what we wanted, with an amazing master bathroom, huge laundry room, and custom built kitchen. We built raised garden beds, an adorable chicken yard, two aquaponics greenhouses, and beautiful flower beds. The weather is amazing and it’s close to family – why would we want to leave?
I’m in a bunch of gardening and homesteading groups on Facebook, so it wasn’t unusual when the listing for an available property popped up in my feed. “Oh, that’s beautiful,” I thought of one particular property in Southern Oregon, “but our lives are in California.” The image of that listing wouldn’t go away and a week later I tracked it down to take a closer look. Then I mentioned it to Pops. After some soul searching and admitting that being near extended family that we only see on holidays is no reason to ignore our dreams, we started researching our options. A year later we found the area we wanted to relocate to, and six months later we closed on our property.
So I ask again, why would we want to leave perfect weather and easy access to anything and everything a person could want? Because we’ve outgrown the size of our 1/5th of an acre lot. Because we’re paying over $300 a month just for electricity (the average low winter temp in Los Angeles is 50F in the middle of winter). Because the air in the Pacific Northwest is clean and the grass is green. And because we just might be able to be debt free by the time we retire.
This blog is to document our journey in developing and achieving our dreams. I plan to set it up as more of a scrapbook with “this is what we did/learned”, as opposed to an educational how-to, cuz how can we teach you when we’re learning ourselves? We’re experienced gardeners (for our warm, dry climate) and have experience with chickens (in our warm, dry climate), and Pops is an amazing DIYer, but we’re new to everything else – like livestock, rain, wildlife, mud, building from scratch, ice, septic systems, rain, travel trailers, rain…
Maple Creek Farm PNW 