It is such a blessing to obey God and raise your children in the country.  Sometimes, it seems impossible to do.  One option is to be a caretaker on a property.  That is what I was doing in Fallbrook on my mother’s property.  How I longed to live there forever.  I loved the creek that was only half a mile away.  I loved the orchards of lemon and avocado trees, and I loved the oranges, grapefruit, tangerine, tangelo, apricot, plum, peach, pomegranate, and persimmon trees.  The water bill was quite high during the drought.  In the summer the water bill for the trees was up to $700.00.  I could never afford that.  What could I do?  I began to pray.

Unfortunately, mothers don’t live forever.  My mother passed away on May 5, 2010.  I had been looking at properties for some time, and I began to search even more after she passed.  I didn’t want her to die so I could have an inheritance and find a country property of my own.  I wish she could see what I got, but that is jumping ahead.  My husband, Gary, had been dreaming about owning a section of land.  That is one square mile.  I thought 10 acres would be plenty.  In my search for property, I found this property that was 332 acres, and that is half a section.  It was raw land with a year-round creek and water rights.  It also had springs on it.  It was going for $199,000.00  I thought that was a bit much.  I kept looking.

My son thought I should look up north near his aunt, uncle, and cousin who had moved to Happy Valley.  I looked at land in Alturas.  If it had water, it didn’t have the water rights.  That wasn’t good.  It also gets quite cold there.  I looked at land back east too.  I loved the property with waterfalls.  I prayed for a property with a creek and if it wasn’t too much to ask for, a waterfall too.

Time went by slowly.  It was taking a long time to get the inheritance.   This was all providential.  After a year, I found a website trying to help Christians find country properties.  That same 332-acre property was there and it had come down to $99,000.00.  It was in French Gulch and wasn’t too far from Happy Valley.  I needed to go see the property, so I contacted a realtor, and he suggested two other properties to see.  I called my children’s aunt and uncle and they said that we could stay with them while we looked at the properties.

I had no intention of going with my husband,  My marriage was very rocky due to his addiction to internet porn.  I was ready to end my marriage and I was willing to go it alone with my children.  They couldn’t stand their stepfather anyway.  It was good that he could stay home to take care of the chickens and the two cats.  When I returned home, he once again talked me out of divorce, saying that I needed him.  He had a lot of skills for homesteading, but what a woman wants is a faithful husband that has eyes only for his wife.

I was now ready to set out on an adventure into something that I had never done before—- hunting for a property.  My children and I set out from Fallbrook California on the morning of February 20, 2012, and arrived late in the evening at David and Alex’s home in Happy Valley.  They got us all settled and we slept well.  In the morning on February 21, 2012, we were off to see the property.  I have a video for you to watch and I will also share pictures of our first day at this beautiful property that was soon to be our homestead.

PICTURES ARE BELOW THE VIDEO SO KEEP SCROLLING AFTER YOU WATCH THE VIDEO.

For some reason, the video quality is low and will be blurry if watched on a computer.  If it is blurry for you, try watching it on a cellphone.  The videos were taken using a Fujifilm XP underwater camera.  It is very noisy when zooming, so I tried to edit most of that out.  Following are pictures that I took that day of our first experience in God’s beautiful country.