I’m not expecting a miracle, but I will not turn one down either.
On Tuesday one of my neighbors called me and said that it was crazy that we didn’t know about all these conditions before-hand. I agreed but didn’t know what to do. I don’t know a lot about home transactions (I’m learning more) but everything should be disclosed by escrow. It’s kind of their job. This permit was not within our documents. I called my escrow officer and they sent me this
And said that should be good enough that the permit should not be valid any longer. In fact the guy who signed it there at the county in 2017 is speaking with planning on our behalf to get everything figured out. So hopefully this engineered foundation for my home will just go away. That would save a lot of money and several months! Here’s hoping…
Steal and nod (how I’m learning to grow fruit)
Since there wasn’t much to say about the land, Hannah and I started thinking about what we’d like to put on the land. I have a grand scheme (other than the olives) but that needs some more work before I’m ready to announce it. Instead, I want to grow all kinds of fruit trees there. But before… let me tell you about a place we visited in Ireland, Kylemore Abbey. It is the picture at the beginning of this post. I took the picture with my phone camera!
The place is gorgeous and has a fantastic café!
You can look more into the abbey here. But what I’m going to talk specifically about is some of the interesting things I found at the Victorian walled garden.
The garden has been there for a very long time. It was built with a hedge so that workers could work without being seen. The walls of the garden had fruit trees in espalier style facing to the south. That way the sun in the wintery months would warm the wall and keep the tree warmer. This would provide greater fruit for longer time. In Ireland where it rains so much, they cherish the sun! This is sort of a crude solar panel for the tree!
I liked the lattice that was built here. Not sure how it would be used.
So far Hannah and I have looked into planting orange trees. We will likely plant all the varieties listed here (Navel, Valencia, Clementine, Tangelo, Cara Cara, Blood, Bitter, Bergamot, Lima, heirloom navel). I was planning on planting only the edible ones, for juice or flesh. But since I will later have olive oil, perhaps some of them would be useful for infusing oils.
The Bergamot oranges are green and look really cool!
Next up we’ll be looking into our other fruit trees we want to plant. I will need to lay out my land to make sure it’s used to it’s fullest. 5 acres is a lot of land. But just because it is there, doesn’t mean I should waste it.
If anyone has ideas of how to pick varieties of fruit or interesting ways to grow them. I would love to know!
Also, if you want more details about the garden and Kylemore abbey. This website had as good a description as you can get without visiting in person. Lots of pictures too!
All things about your land purchase should have been disclosed and readily available to the buyer. So, I hope everything will work out beautifully. My son lives in Missouri and has the smallest lot in his neighborhood – 5 1/2 acres. Not a fruit tree on it, but so beautiful. We only had a third of an acre in CA but we had lemon, tangerine, orange, peach and apple trees. The weather in CA is more conducive to growing things. Always planted a lovely garden of vegetables as well which our neighbors always enjoyed. We were always in WY doing theater but one year our neighbor froze some of our corn for us and we were delighted. Why did we plant a garden when we knew we weren’t there to reap the harvest? HK thought it was important for our children to prepare the soil and go through the process. May you reap your harvest in MANY ways my dear friend!