My bride and I discussed and worked through 5 options when it came to the vision the Lord gave us and where God may want us to live.

First, obviously, was here in Maryland. Three other options were where the rest of our family lived: Idaho, Michigan, and New Hampshire. The last option was a more rural spot in Pennsylvania, yet to be determined.

You see, the vision was sustainable farming. To us, sustainable meant to learn to use everything God gives us where He’s planted us. It meant to learn how to reclaim, repurpose, and reuse, as much as possible.

We wanted to learn how to use all of our resources wisely and minimize waste.

We also see the farm involving community.

Through our discussions we agreed on a piece of property that would be able to support chickens and goats. Chickens for eggs and goats for milk. We also wanted it to be a south facing property to help with growing vegetables and fruit, as well as being better for using the sun for solar power.

Remember that word community above?  That was really the sticking point for us to stay in Maryland. The Lord had made us apart of several communities here. Work communities, ministry communities, family, friends, and church.

If we moved, we would be starting all over in having to rebuild these communities, so we decided to bloom where we were planted.

We have a family friend who is a real estate agent and also a believer. We told her what we were looking for and the search was on. She did happen to mention that what we were looking for and wanting to spend, wouldn’t be found in Anne Arundel County, but we searched non-the-less.

We researched what the county regulations were for keeping animals, so that helped us to narrow the search field to a home with at least an acre of property.

We looked at quite a few properties.  One of the other catch points was that we were using my VA loan, which doesn’t allow a home to be a “fixer upper.” After looking at several homes in our price range, we discovered, for what we wanted to spend and the loan we were going to use, we either needed to change the type of loan or raise our price.  We did not have 20% to put down, so that helped us to decide to stay with the VA loan, which meant we needed to up our price.

As soon as we raised our searching price, the property revealed itself.

Genesis 22:14

Abraham named that place God-Yireh (God-Sees-to-It). That’s where we get the saying, “On the mountain of God, he sees to it.”