It's been a while since our last post, and a lot has happened. We spent some of the summer off and on looking locally for another property to purchase, and nothing really was available with the land we wanted and in the right location. Ken was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with his job, and as it looked like we wouldn't be able to find a property within commuting distance, he started to look for job opportunities elsewhere in NY. There was one possibility near Ithaca, but it didn't pan out.

Sometime in July I was browsing the Mack Hill Farm website, and suddenly was overcome with a feeling of homesickness for NH! I'd lived there for 10 years and always wondered if I'd ever get to go back. On a whim, I did a job search and up popped a couple of opportunities, which I sent to Ken. He applied for both, and one of them contacted him within a couple days. The rest is history. He had a phone interview, then flew out for an in-person interview, then was offered a position, negotiated his salary, and accepted the job!

Now, we had to find a place to live, somewhere we could keep our sheep and continue the farm. I found a buyer's agent, gave him some properties I'd found on realtor.com, and he also did some searching. We took a weekend and went up to NH, and the last place we looked at just felt right. It has between 11 and 12 acres, in a town with no zoning regulations, and it was partially cleared about 15 years ago, so some of it is not quite fully forested. It will be a lot of work, but so was our current place, and we've made a lot of progress in a couple years. We felt fortunate that this place was available, because there's just not a lot of properties with significant acreage available, unless you've recently won the lottery and can afford something really expensive and ready to farm.

Ken is now in NH, renting a room for a couple weeks until we close, and I'm in NY, holding down the fort, and trying to keep the house clean for showings. After we close on the NH house, we'll move the sheep and some of our housepets, keep packing little by little and hope to find a buyer for our NY house.