It is an interesting thing to behold when fate/divine providence/chance rears its head. As an example, let me relate the following story.

Last autumn, we had made plans to move to a new farm. Well, not really a new farm - it's been there for quite some time and conservation of matter dictates that it will continue to be for the foreseeable future - but a different farm. Some friends own 82 acres and were going to be building a new house farther back on the property. We were arranging to buy their current house and some additional acreage. This was to be a Good Thing since this is the farm where SWMBO is the manager and trains horses and with whom we have some joint venture type things going. But it was not my preferred situation since SWMBO and I have wanted to build a house for about 10 years.

We talked to our neighbors about whether they would be interested in purchasing our place but they chose not to. Anyway, numerous factors conspired to put all of this on hold and we moved forward with our lives and proceeded not to think about it again for a while.

So - all of that backstory leads up to this:

About 2 weeks ago, there came a knock on our back door and our neighbor said that he knew of someone who may be interested in buying our house and farm. We arranged to meet with him and went into a cleaning frenzy :-) and our minds immediately jumped back to the possibility of building our house. The guy and his son (who would be the primary resident in the house - the father would be using it as a way to get out of the city and play/hunt/whatever) really liked the place and said it is exactly what they are looking for. Fast forward to last night, when I received a call and, in a large nutshell, it's all done except for the legal mumbo-jumbo.

Now we just have to find some place to live. ;-)

We're beginning to look at possible building sites, the most likely of which is on yet another part of our friends' farm, albeit with much less acreage. In the interim, we'll most likely be living in a trailer on that farm. That doesn't thrill me but I suppose it's better than a cardboard box, although the square footage is roughly the same.

On a slightly sad note, however, is that I also decided to sell him my 1948 tractor that I was going to restore (someday). I didn't really want to but it was the wiser thing to do. My 8N topic will be going away and I'll most likely start a topic to document the house building process when the time comes.