Serenity Valley Farm: The new farm!

It's been a week but the new farm is bought!!! I'm so excited. Been out there every day since closing doing all kinds of things to make it livable and functional. It's going to be quite the endeavor of work and love, but in the end it will be SO worth it!

The specs: 39.85 acres, mostly tillable (over half is currently share-cropped) with some pasture, a small hay field and a creek. 2 story 1905 built 2 bedroom 1 bath farmhouse with full unfinished cinderblock basement (which also has a shower and toilet). Fuel oil furnace with forced air heat. No AC. Approximately 9,000 gallon cistern. Jefferson Regional Water Authority water. Septic. Been vacant for about 6 years. Existing barn is approximately 60x30 and in poor to fair condition. Some of the beams will be salvageable but it's neither big enough nor set up well enough for long term use. Corn crib probably needs to be torn down sooner than later, but will have life through the winter as a place to park the Saturn so I don't have to scrape windows.

LONG term goals: Along with fixing up the house of course because it needs it, we want the facility to be a small show/training/clinic place... an education facility. We LOVE holding our current SVF shows at Twin Towers, but would love to see them move to the farm. They'll end up being a bit smaller in scale, but we could do one/month. We're looking at putting up an 80'x150' indoor arena (to be able to have indoor space that could accommodate a small dressage ring) as well as a 12 stall barn (for training and limited boarding). We haven't yet settled on an outdoor ring size, but ideally I'd love to see 150'x250' with lights. One of the dreams would be to run an "under the lights" jumper series during the summer. And of course we plan to make full use of the acreage to have plenty of schooling cross country jumps. And while our personal focus is in the english world, we are NOT opposed to hosting western or trail events in the future.

My hope here is to blog the progress as we get things accomplished. Now that I should be getting a new phone tomorrow (with hopefully a working camera) I'll be able to do that. In the meantime, here are the "before" pics. By estimation these are a year old and were taken from the real estate listing. ENJOY!!

PS. Blogger is being piggish about me reordering the pics... so you're getting them in random Blogger order. Sorry.

The Barn. The gate has disappeared prior to me buying the place (as has the horse in the pic). The barn needs SERIOUS work and thus has a limited lifespan -- basically long enough to get another barn built.

More of the barn and the driveway fencing. We're fixing up the fencing here and setting up this space for a paddock. BTW, the property line to the north is the treeline in the background!

Another of the paddock space between the barn (left) and the road (right).

Bathroom. Needs updates and work but functional for the most part.

Bedroom 2. Probably the worst looking of the wood floors.

Bedroom 1. Floors are only a bit better than Bedroom 2 and as a result, contemplating carpet in both instead of redoing the wood like I plan to do downstairs. Has a nice closet (door on the right) and a lovely built in (door on the left).

View from the back patio to the corn crib.

Corn Crib. You can't see it but the back wall is... missing. Yep... will be coming down but has been storing a full-size tractor for a few days so it should hold up enough to keep the frost off the windshield of the Saturn. Property line to the west is the treeline in the background to the left of the corn crib.

Living room. Beautiful built in and I love the big windows. Floors should refinish nicely.

Den? TV room? I haven't settled on what to call this room, but I like it. Big enough for the tv and a nice couch. LOVE LOVE LOVE the wood french door! And yes... those marks on the walls and ceiling are where the paint has peeled off.

Another view of the den... and more peeling paint. To the right is another doorway that leads to a VERY small hallway and the bathroom.

Front of the house, which face the driveway NOT the road (the road is across a paddock to the left). Fenced patio is a cement slab over the cistern. And do not ask me why they have random t-posts in the front yard.

Another of the front of the house from the driveway. The picket fence on the left side continues along the driveway.

Another house angle.

More house.

From the driveway, looking towards the house across the front paddock. Road is to the left.

Front paddock from the driveway at the "front" corner of the front yard, and looking towards the road. Treeline in the background towards the right of the pic is the creek bed.

Side of the house, showing the cistern patio and the spring house.

Kitchen. Unfortunately, the ceiling fan disappeared before I saw the house. We're now rewiring and moving it to make it a little more centered, but there will be a ceiling fan in this room (and many others actually).

Another view of the Kitchen

More kitchen. Currently the frig is plugged into the wall outlet on the left side of the pic. Doesn't leave a lot of space between the front of the frig and the front of hte stove so the fridge is moving to the off pic right side of the window.

Existing kitchen counters. Will try to salvage and maybe repaint?

Most of the kitchen and obviously taken with a fish-eye lens. Standing at the back door/stairwell to the basement.

LAND!!!

Almost the same shot as above.

More land with "stuff" that was left.

2nd floor "landing". Almost a room to itself. Closet is the door on the right. The 2 doorways on the left of the pic lead to the bedrooms. Check out the woodwork near the stairs!!