Goodbye to Bellville
We closed
on the Bellville house on Monday, June 23rd. Allow me a brief remembrance of how active
Divine Providence has been in our lives.
Kelly and I
had been trying to buy a small farm for about three years. Every time I went to a bank to try for a
loan, they basically laughed me out of the room once they saw my income. And I can’t really blame them. The first time I went in, I was just out of
college and I had made about $3000 gross income that year. She definitely thought I was cheating
on my taxes.
The next
year, I found out that as a sole proprietor the banks won’t lend to you unless
they see three years of consistently good income.
So when we
had three years of consistent income (not good, but consistent)
we went back again and had a loan officer who felt she could actually get us a
loan. We were very excited. Initially she told us that we could get a
loan for around $75,000, which would have been great. The next time we talked, it had dropped to
around $60,000. Then it was around
$50,000. By the time she actually got
our tax papers it was implied that the best she could offer us was around
$35,000.
Major
depression set in.
We were going to have to settle for
another apartment or stay with the in-laws for at least another year. Now that probably doesn’t sound too bad until
you realize that the move to Bellville was the ninth move of our married life
(which makes the move to Newark big number ten). We had hoped our next move would be our last
and now it didn’t look like that was possible.
Then we met Nathan.
He offered to loan us up to $50,000
at a whopping 0% interest! Where did we
meet this guy? Believe it or not, on an
online forum. I know, I know, red flags
everywhere. Obviously it was a scam… or
he was an ax murderer. Call me crazy
(I’m getting used to that by now) but as we talked with him on the phone and
via email we began to trust him. He had
serious convictions about our culture’s widespread lending at usury and wanted
to put his money where his mouth was (pun intended).
So, we went and looked at a house
in our price range on five acres… and walked away even more depressed. The place needed to be torn down.
We thought we’d never find a farm
in this price range, and despite Nathan’s extreme generosity, we were still
stuck.
Then, because Bakers have a
reputation for resilience, we tried one more time. The house was just at the outer limits of our
geographic range (we wanted to stay within 30 minutes of our parish) and it was
only on three acres (which was a little less than we wanted) but the pictures
on the website looked pretty nice.
We did a walkthrough and fully
expected to find another atrocity. But
with each room, the house got bigger and nicer.
The kitchen was remodeled. Both
bathrooms were remodeled. There was a
new electric service and new wiring throughout the house. There was new plumbing throughout the house
and new vinyl siding and all new windows.
There was a one-car detached garage where I could put my pottery studio
and an awesome old barn (probably more of a carriage house) that still had the
old mangers downstairs and a good space for a woodshop upstairs. There were Amish neighbors and lots of great
pasture. And, we found out later, an
enormous apple tree and a pear tree with the most delicious pears I’ve ever
eaten. Listen, I am not joking, we made
16 gallons of cider, 8 apple pies, and 1 apple crisp just from the one tree on
the property and tons of apples were wasted and those pears were delectable!
It needed quite a bit of work, even
though so much work had already been done.
About a third of the house only made it to the demolition stage of
remodeling and needed quite a bit more work and the roof was pretty tired. We also didn’t know if the plumbing had been
winterized properly or if the well or septic was functional, but we took a
risk, borrowed the money from Nathan and put a whopping $50,000 bid on the
house (It was a HUD home and the asking price was $49,000).
I know right? Who finds a house like this for that kind of
money?
So we bought it and got to work
painting over the hot pink walls in the bedrooms… my boys were not going to
sleep in a pink bedroom with electric purple trim… seriously. We checked all the water and had a team of family
members do a deep clean on the whole place.
The well was awesome and the septic worked fine. The more neighbors we met, the better we
liked the place. We had an awesome next
door neighbor who saw that we didn’t have a riding lawn mower and mowed the
whole place for us all year and never asked anything more than a beer for it
(in fact, I don’t think he even ever asked for that). He just wanted to help. He also did probably a couple of thousand
dollars worth of auto work for us for a couple of six packs. Great neighbors, and a good homestead. What more could a guy ask for?
We set down to dreaming. We even drew up a map of the property with
all the farming endeavors we were going to do there over the years. We planned out the orchard, the goat pasture,
the pig pasture, the Mary Garden, the vegetable garden, the vineyards, the
berry patches, the hay and grain fields.
It’s pretty amazing what you can get on three acres if you are
creative.
Then all this happened with the
Children of Mary, which I wrote about in the first post, and we were left
wondering what on earth to do with this miracle-farm in Bellville.
We weren’t sure at first if we were
supposed to sell it, or if we even could.
The market is horrible right now and we couldn’t afford to take a
financial hit on the house. We thought
we’d probably have to rent out the place, but that scared us a bit because we
knew that it needed a new roof and would likely need a new appliance here or
there and the furnace would need work in the winter and I was basically
shutting down my tile business to move to Newark and how would we pay for it
all? And how could we find good renters
who wouldn’t trash the place?
Well, we put all that on the back
burner and decided just to work on moving and getting the cabin all set up and
we would figure out Bellville when the time came.
Then one day a neighbor pulled into
our driveway. She’d heard through the
grapevine that we were selling the house and hurried over to see if this were
true. Her daughter had tried to the buy
the house when we got it and they were apparently still interested. She emphatically asked that we not make any
decisions to sell it to anyone before she talked to her daughter. We said we wouldn’t.
Ten minutes later, she pulls back
into the driveway and asks if we would consider a cash offer.
No sign in the yard and without
even trying we got a cash offer for just what we wanted for the house, ‘as is.’
If that’s not an expression of
Divine Providence, I don’t know what is.
Between what we already had in equity and what we made in the sale, we
have enough to pay off the remainder of my student loans (Kelly’s are already
paid off due to the generosity of her parents) and have a little left over to
help us through the next few months of transition.
In the beginning of all this, I
wondered why on earth God gave us that miraculous farm in Bellville if He only
wanted us there for a year before He called us down here. I understand a bit more of it now. He wanted to help us absolve our debts so
that we could live without that bondage.
That was certainly part of it.
But I have a theory that there is more to it.
I think a large part of His giving
us that farm was so that we would have something to sacrifice. We had gotten very attached to the farm in
Bellville. Quite frankly, I thought I’d
die in that house. When you plan to stay
in a place that long, you get attached quickly.
For the first few weeks after Mother’s invitation I went through waves of
excitement about the possibility of moving to Newark and waves of depression
about leaving the land I had already begun to work and love so much. But if I hadn’t had the farm, I wouldn’t have
had anything to offer Him in this move and I probably would have questioned my
motives for moving here. If we had been
in an apartment or with the in-laws and were made the same offer, it would have
been a simple yes. A house on a hundred
acres with the Blessed Sacrament and holy Sisters for neighbors. No-brainer.
Give up the farm that God miraculously provided and that you already
love to come here… makes it substantially more difficult.
Jesus told the rich young ruler to
sell everything, give it to the poor and come follow Him.
Jesus called the Apostles to leave
their homes, their businesses, and their families and come follow Him.
He asked us to leave our beloved
farm in Bellville, the business that I had become so proud of, and the parish
we called home. It’s nothing compared to
what He asked the Apostles to give up, but it’s something. And even if it’s only a little sacrifice, I’m
glad I had at least a little something to offer Him.
In His Heart,
Wes
In His Heart,
Wes
