Last night I signed a lease for a farm up in the mountains.
It is a very nice place, on 10 acres of southern exposure up in a valley near Conifer. It is also very peaceful and quiet, which is something I’m in dire need of after the last five years here in Aurora.
It is ‘horse property’ with a four stall barn and several fenced pastures, and with Zeze’s girlfriend around I might just get myself another horse. Kalira, the name I will use for her from her WoW character, is a practicing blacksmith and equine care professional – it’s what she does for a living. So even though I won’t have a lot of time for a horse and will require something weekend ‘turn key’, with her around the animals will get the care and attention they require while I get to do a lot of riding on the weekends.
The house itself is a large 5-bedroom place with flagstone floors, foot-thick brick walls, acres of wood, and this extremely cool round dining room… The house proper was a massive dairy barn back in the 1920’s and was converted into a home in the 60’s. The very cool dining room was originally the silo for the barn. It all makes for a very cool place to live.
I was up there last night and spent some time outside in the cool and quiet surroundings. While the ‘dark’ had Zeze and Max a bit ruffled and there was talk of more outside lights, Kalira and I talked some sense into them once they had adjusted to the darkness and were able to note that the stars give plenty of light.
Zeze, from Virginia and Max, from Texas, are going to be quite funny come October as neither are ready for what living ‘on the mountain’ entails.
The primary heat for the house in the winter is wood with backup electric baseboard heat just to keep the pipes from freezing. So I see a good deal of firewood splitting in my future – which is fine, it certainly won’t be the first time I’ve had to split two cords of wood in a weekend.
The only major down side to this is it is kinda expensive to live in the mountains, and it will be 36 miles, each way, to get to / from work every day… So I am paying for my better weekends with an additional 2 hours of driving every day – well, if traffic doesn’t suck it is only 45 minutes, but traffic rarely doesn’t suck.
So, yeah, hopefully this weekend I will have the few personal items I tend to keep moved 36 miles across town and up US-285 to my new home.
I’ll post some pictures of the ‘stead in the next few days when I’m up there before the sun is down.