We're here! We're back in New England! We're staying at a friend's home in New Hampshire while we look for a home in Vermont. It'll likely be spring before we find anything as it's the off-season for real estate here. We've looked at a few places, and even made an offer on one place, but we insisted on inspections.  The house failed every inspection we did, except the radon testing.  The septic failed, the well is not to code and the water heater and water softener aren't working, the pressure tank or pressure switch needs to be replaced. The foundation is crumbling and we got a tentative estimate to repair it of $40,000.  The windows frames are rotting and the windows are hazed from the gas leaking out so all need to be replaced. The roof needs to be replaced within 2 years. It needs a curtain drain and a retaining wall removed to prevent future damage to the foundation. The stone chimney needs desperately to be repointed and the furnace needs to be serviced. The owner isn't interested in negotiating, so we opted to walk away and get our deposit back.  

Karl is driving an hour and a half one way to work in good weather.  During a snow storm its closer to 2 hours. While we're very thankful for our friends' letting us stay here at their beautiful lake home in NH, we really need to be closer to his shop in Londonderry Vermont. Housing of all kinds is hard to come by and expensive in Vermont. We're trying to be patient, but it's not easy!

But looking at old New England homes, I am struck by how many of them have a pantry and/or a butler's pantry. A pantry or butler's pantry is important, almost vital to us.  Its as important to us as our kitchen wood range is, and if you know us, you know our kitchen wood range is something we must have in a kitchen if at all possible. We have our beautiful kitchen wood range sitting in storage, waiting to be put into a new kitchen when we have one. Any home we buy that doesn't have a pantry needs to have room to put a pantry in.  I don't understand houses that have very small kitchens with no pantry.  I mean, I get it that most people don't live and cook like we do, making bread from scratch weekly, canning and freezing and dehydrating, butchering our own meats, etc. However, don't people buy enough groceries for a couple of weeks at least? Where do you put it all? Where do you put all your small appliances? I have all the usual suspects like a toaster, crock pot, air fryer, stand mixer, etc. but I also have 2 canners, several large stock pots for cheese making, jam making, etc., electric roasters, two grain mills, vacuum sealers, mylar bag sealer, meat slicer, sauce maker, and so much more. We also keep a year's supply of food like home canned goods, 5 gallon buckets of flours, cornmeal, oats, sugar, honey, etc.   Its hard to find an existing house that has all the room we need.  We have no ruled out building a home from scratch to get the space we need in a home. 

We'll do a Vlog of our house hunting when things start coming on the market over the coming weeks. We're so used to living our lives by "the season" that it feels like we're missing something by skipping grafting and pruning season in the orchard this year, as well as maple sugaring season and we can't help but wonder if we'll be even starting seeds in the next couple of months. When you love the homesteading lifestyle, living this suburban life is driving me nutty!  I just keep telling myself that it's just for a little while longer and it'll all be worth it when we finally find a homestead we can truly make our own soon.