Spinning Alpaca Yarns – We Finally Found our Alpaca Ranch!

When I first started this blog, it was going to be about our search for land to build our alpaca ranch. It then became a knitting blog because we gave up on finding the

Our little piece of heaven

perfect piece of land. My husband wanted to retire to land near a lake and every piece of land we found had some sort of stumbling blocks. Many didn’t allow farm animals, like alpacas and even chickens, or restrictions said we had to build a house larger than we wanted, or the land was too expensive, and on and on. Every time we came close to buying a piece of land to raise alpacas, for some reason or other it fell through.

Now we are the type of people who believes that everything happens for a reason. I told my husband either we’d still find the perfect piece of land or maybe we were just supposed to find a smaller house in the city and retire there. Whatever we did, we knew we wanted to simplify our lives and downsize. When my husband came across this “subdivision,” the owner had died and the heirs just wanted to sell off the land at discount-so far so good. The pieces were large – 5.5 acres each, about a block from Lake Richland Chambers. Long story short, they accepted our offer on two adjoining 5.5 acre lots.

On this land, we can have one animal per acre and we can raise chickens – something I’ve wanted to get back to since we left my dozen hens in Oregon. Everything is just falling into place now, even though we won’t be able to actually move for a couple years. But now we own the land and we can improve it over time – put in a road, clear it off and map out where we want things.

Lake Richland Chambers is near by

In our new home, we’re going to embrace voluntary simplicity, raising and preserving our own food, installing solar and wind power and having a super energy efficient home.

I’d never heard of voluntary simplicity before but there is an entire movement growing around this concept. I recently read The Ultimate Cheapskate’s Road Map to True Riches: A Practical (and Fun) Guide to Enjoying Life More by Spending Less and it was an eye-opening book. People are stressed and multi-tasked to death any more. Many have struggled with debt and are buried under a pile of “things” that don’t bring satisfaction the way the commercials promise. People are looking for more meaning to life, meaining that comes from enjoying the simple things, like raising your own garden, sewing your own clothes, and enjoying your children and family time.

My 82 year old mom says these days they talk about the “new norm” where there is more unemployment and less money and people are having to learn to live on leiss.  In her lifetime, except for the past 20 years or so of overabundance, people have lived on much less. They lived on the money they had and didn’t go into debt. They did things for themselves as a source of both saving money and satisfaction. People are going back to that.

I see it as a good thing. If taxes and inflation go sky-high like many are saying it will, the only way to achieve satisfaction and fulfillment is to preserve the money you have by clipping coupons, raising your own food, doing more for yourself.

Here’s a great article on voluntary simplicity, They Can’t Tax Voluntary Simplicity-Yet!

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