Having spent many years on the road, a short stint living in La Hulpe, Belgium, then a three year go at living in my home town of Billings, Montana, it just made sense to put down some roots near a major airport on a place that I could get away from city life and unwind.
We were inspired by a farm house that we rented for two summers in the late 2000’s. Whilst at Glyndebourne singing we were lucky enough to live at the most charming farm. A grass tennis court, and old horse named Frosty, a large (cold) swimming pool, WW II bunkers, an apple orchard, pastures for sheep, mushrooms galore and a straight shot to the South Downs Way trail which would lead us to the Seven Sisters Country Park. It was absolutely idyllic and we were hell bent on recreating something akin to it in the US.
I knew that we needed to be near a major airport and near a city where I would (hopefully) sing a lot. While perusing the internet I happened upon a small ten acre farm for sale about one hour from the Lyric Opera of Chicago and one hour from the O’Hare airport. After giving it a once over Cara flew to finalize the paperwork in 2010.
The minor work that I had envisioned has become a full time job! There isn’t a room in this house that I haven’t touched or redone in some way (to be honest I did hire someone to do the upstairs for the kids when we first moved in and someone to transform the utility basement into something more functional). Even with those improvements, we have been hard at work redoing the work we had done.
It is a one room school house first built in 1857 and after a fire burnt it to the ground in 1915, they rebuilt it into what is our living room and main part of the home today. A kitchen/utility basement was added on in the 70’s and a garage and master bedroom/bathroom were added on the 80’s. An old four stall barn and four stall stables were part of the purchase. Everything needed work and what I estimated to be a series of small projects turned into one huge project after another until this past summer when our stables was finally converted into an opera studio. This has been a labor of love! (We still have to knock down and redo the barn.)
After first moving in we were “gifted” 5 Bantam roosters. If you know anything about roosters, you never want this many, let alone only roosters without hens. So we purchased some of those, tamed and culled the rooster hoard that was terrorizing Cara and the kids and decided to get some bees to boot.
We have gone through quite a bit of a trial and error with chickens, ducks, turkeys, bees, and geese. We even had a miniature donkey for a few weeks, but with my work schedule, young kids and their schedules, a wife doing double duty as mom/dad/chauffeur/cook/cleaner and so much more…we eventually ended up having a bunch of chickens and bees (although the geese are still haunting us and one duck survived the coyotes).
Although we haven’t achieved the same farmhouse status as we dreamt about from England, we have made a little oasis for our kids to grow up in. They have learned so much about hard work, chickens and bees, chores, building and pitching in, and they have a place they know as home.
We still have so much to do, but I am happy for a little respite from constant building. YouTube, books and trial and error have guided me along the way. I would say that I am a decent builder now…not great by any stretch of the imagination, but decent.
We have a little stand outside of our driveway in which we sell eggs and honey with the occasional veggies and fruit during the summer months. We have been host to a ton of wild life; beavers, raccoons, possum, coyotes, fox, geese, ducks, an otter, snapping turtles, carp, crawfish, skunks and much more! I love it.
I’ll dig into some of the finer points of wrangling chickens and suiting up to get honey, but for now, I am content.