Day One: The Tranquility Ranch

December 5, 2021 – Gabe and I just came back to Columbus from our first weekend at the farm. What a great time we had. I am so excited for the future.

First let me catch you all up. My last post was on Oct 26, before I closed on the property. I was crossing my fingers that everything would go through and the closing would actually happen. I did close on Nov 12, right on time. We had one little hiccup. A few days before, my lender called to tell me they had “forgotten” about the Veterans Day holiday, and they would have to put off closing until the next week because the banks would be closed. My realtor and I were both pretty mad: how does a bank just “forget” about a bank holiday? I was Ok with waiting until the next week; I didn’t see that I had a choice. But then my usually mild-mannered, soft-spoken, kind and gentle realtor starting sending emails to my lender and went all “Karen” on her. He gave her so much grief, with each message more hysterically furious than the last, that finally my lender said, “Ok, ok, we can make it happen on the 12th.” Yay pushy realtor! Thanks, Brent.

The rest of the closing went off without fanfare. I agreed the buy the seller’s gator for $3500 and their Billy Cook training saddle for $750. Then I just had to wait until I got possession, Dec 3. That was a long wait – but not as long as the wait for closing.

Finally, finally, after what seemed like an interminable wait, 2:30 pm on Dec. 3 arrived and I left work, picked up Gabe from school, swung by the house to pick up Arwen, and off we went to Somerset. I was so excited; I felt like a kid on Christmas morning. We got to the house just at dusk. We went inside, and…. were kind of underwhelmed. The movers had left just a few hours earlier, and they did not clean up after themselves. The place was pretty dirty. There was trash of unknown origin in the basement and the garage. But we found the gator and the saddle, and both were in good shape. So, we started cleaning. Gabe vacuumed the entire house with a vengeance. I scrubbed down the kitchen. Gabe tried to start the gator but could not get it going. Arwen enjoyed running back and forth between machine shed and house. By then we were both pretty tired. Feeling tired, disappointed, and just a tiny bit grossed out, we ate canned soup for dinner and crawled into our beds. Neither of us slept very well.

Saturday – now, Saturday was a good day. We woke up when it was still dark, sort of driven by the need to clean things. Gabe made pancakes and we ate them sitting on the back porch, wrapped up in our sleeping bags, watching the sun rise. We noted that people drive down Hwy 668 pretty fast and that the road noise is pretty loud. I hope that when the leaves are on the trees in summer that road will be quieter. We could see the lights of Somerset across the ridgetop from our porch, and we could hear the neighbor’s cows bellowing waiting to be fed.

The morning was devoted to cleaning. We shampooed all the rugs in the house with my rented RugDoctor. Life was much, much better after that. I took down all the awful balloon window valances in the bedrooms. I think this lady was still living in 1987. I knocked down some shelves in the back bedroom – Gabe’s chosen room – that he said he did not want. We opened all the windows, turned on the ceiling fans, swept trash out of the basement, and life started to look up again. For lunch we went into town to return the rug machine. Lo and behold that day just happened to be the annual “Ye Olde Towne Christmas Festival” in downtown Somerset. We got burgers and fries from a food truck and strolled through Christmas crafts for sale while we waited for our meal. Later that afternoon there would be a Christmas cookie contest, a parade with Santa, and a tree lighting ceremony. I felt like I had walked into a Hallmark Christmas movie. In the hardware store on the square we had a nice long conversation with two guys who work there, whose names I did not happen to catch. One is a neighbor of mine. The other is family friends with one of my other neighbors, the Sweeneys. He says if I ever need any help, to call the Sweeneys and they will help me out. Good to know! Our last stop in town was the gas station, to fill up our 5 gallon can with gas for the gator.

Back at home we set ourselves to figuring out the gator. Gabe learned that it has to be in neutral for it to start. Once he figured out how to start it, Gabe was off to the races. He pumped up the tires, looked at the oil, and drove it up and down the driveway about 1,000 times. He drove me down to the old barn to check it out. Not much was left inside, except for hay all over the floor. I was glad I did not have a lot of junk to deal with there. We spent a good hour cleaning out the track for the lower barn door. I thought I might want to park my horse trailer in there, so we needed the door to work well. While we were working a guy in a pickup truck pulled up, hopped out, and introduced himself to us as our neighbor Carey. We talked for half an hour or so and we exchanged phone numbers, and again he offered to help us with anything he could, he was extremely nice, he grows hay in the area and said he would be able to help me with hay. I’m not sure if he means sell me hay, or help me harvest mine, but either way will be a big help.

Our work at the barn done, Gabe, Arwen, and I took off toward the woods for a hike around the property. We were disappointed to find that people have used my ravine as a trash dump. It was quite sad. Now would be the time to clean it out, as with no leaves you can really see ALL the trash. Maybe I can pay a group of high school kids or some other group to clean this up for me. As we walked further, the entire fence line along the woods has got trash of some type along it – old fence panels, concrete block, old bent-up farm machinery, empty propane tanks, barbed wire, you name it. What a bummer, because eventually I would like to clear these woods with goats and use them for grazing. But before that someone will have to take some serious hauls to the scrap yard.

But our walk across the pastures was great. The grass is in really great shape. There is even some clover. The fencelines are incredibly clean. I was left with an overwhelming sense of being given a great gift but also a great responsibility to take care of it. I hope I am up to the task.

We circled back to the old barn and hopped into the gator once again. Gabe sped us home along the road. He was having the time of his life. Arwen, on the other hand, did not think riding in the gator was so great. I had to grip her in my arms in a bear hug to keep her from leaping out along the road. We were probably going 20mph, so an unplanned leap on to gravel at that speed would not be pretty for a dog. Hopefully she will get used to riding in it, or she is going to be really tired running along the road next to it.

Back home I stood in the horse barn and stared at the walls and tried to think how I could rearrange things to suit me. Gabe was running the gator up and down the driveway again. We decided to clean out the horse barn and spread the manure that was left there. Gabe pretty expertly backed the gator into the barn aisle, we found two old pitchforks, and we cleaned up what we could. Then we drove out into the pasture and I had Gabe drive really slowly while I pushed old manure and bedding out the back. I think I got a little too excited about the whole project as I really smelled like horse manure afterward.

As we drove along, I saw a sagging fence line. I asked Gabe to drive back up to the house and bring me my ratchet set. Gabe was very happy to comply (while we were working on the old barn door earlier, he offered to drive back up the house to get me a Coke). Then, Gabe and I fixed the sagging fence line together, tools in the bed of the gator, sun setting behind us, both of us smelling like horses, Arwen running around us in circles in the grass. It was an incredible moment that I want to etch into my memory. To do this work, and to share it with my son, is everything I have hoped for.

Saturday night’s dinner was frozen pizza eaten in our folding camp chairs on the now very clean living room rug. We shared the one remaining Coke. With no internet, no computer, no TV, all that was left to do was crawl into bed and talk until we fell asleep. We had some nice convos about life as a 15 year old guy until sleep overtook us.

A great, incredible, wonderful, gratitude-filled Day One at The Tranquility Ranch.