After an entire lifetime of living in close quarters with neighbors who would never become friends and stretching the space of our Learn & Play studio from a few thousand square feet downtown to a 10-acre farm, living in a neighborhood just wouldn’t cut it any longer. Each day we would say goodbye to the beautiful oak canopy of our new little farm and hello again to the winding roads that would lead us back to where homes were too close, our home encroaching on stranger spaces, inches between us. Feeling crowded in, discontent, and annoyed that we had to hide our trash can like some dirty little secret or else receive yet another HOA reprimand, it was quickly becoming time to move.
Not at all the outdoorsy type, the stirring angst to abandon suburbia and retreat for the literal hills came on suddenly, starting as a simmer in the quiet of our daily routine until neighborhood Facebook group scuffles and crowded sidewalks brought the need to a boil.
I bounced the vision off my husband to see if he would catch it. Unsure if I even believed myself, I casually tossed out, “I think I want to buy some land.” Neither of us was truly convinced. What would we even do with land? We already had the large school property to maintain. Why take on something else? Where would I run in the mornings? Who was going to do all the mowing? Would we lose connectivity to friends with so much added driving distance between us? I had zero answers for any of these valid concerns but grew confident that we would simply figure it out. Our days of living in a neighborhood were numbered. If you know me at all, you know my favorite mantra is “How hard can it be?” This move certainly put that idea to the test.
After weighing the cost and doing some silly wrangling with HOA regulations, we settled into the search for where to plant this idea and see what home would harvest from it once this seedling of a dream was realized.
Free afternoons became occupied with long drives, dreaming out of windows, walking vacant fields, and scribbling down the addresses of abandoned orange groves we inched past. The kids were excited. After all, we weren’t just moving from one home to another; we were looking for something forever. For just us, at first, but soon this idea became contagious. Recognizing the same itchy need for land and space in my father’s restless idling within his fenced-in backyard garden and the kindred longing for a slower, nature-focused childhood in my sister-in-law, with just a few shared photos, invitations to drive around with us, and depictions of a life lived together, our dream widened to include some of our absolute favorite people—handpicked neighbors with acres between us but just close enough.
About two years and hundreds of miles of driving in circles later, we found a bit of acreage that checked all the boxes for each of the three families: mine, my parents’, and my husband’s brother’s family (that’s a mouthful).
Now, missing ingredients before breakfast is not a “dash to the grocery store” ordeal. We can count on our neighbors. With my parents just steps to the right and my sister and brother-in-law steps to the left, my little ones can scurry between our land to gather any needed items. When the kids are looking for a game of kickball or full-court pick-up, we don’t have to travel to a park—they run next door to invite their cousins outdoors. And when I look out the window, I don’t see rooflines or feel claustrophobic, stuck between stucco structures and panels upon panels of white plastic fencing. There are oak trees and treehouses and swings that face the sunrise. And there are neighbors here who aren’t really neighbors at all. They are family.
Whenever I mention that we live on a bit of acreage with my parents and sister/brother-in-law tucked in on either side of us, the response is always one of both wonder and amusement. Well-meaning sentiments like, “If only I liked my family that much,” “I could never,” or “How do you even afford to do a thing like that?” are the general spectrum between noisy and incredulous responses this declaration garners.
Yes, yes, I like my family very much. Yep, it was expensive, but planning takes care of that. And yes, it’s surprising what “nevers” we can upend with a little ingenuity and intentionality.
Living on the land, after all, was a dream of mine and no one else’s within my family, at least at first. But once the vision was cast and the logistics laid out, little convincing was required. It just made sense. We were never meant to live life alone. Independence as the American dream is a lie. Collaboration, someone to lean on, a sister to sit on the porch with while our kids play between our homes, kids having dinner at the table of their grandparents—this is the true dream. That our children live life so surrounded by love and connection that anything else feels foreign.
