Ok, so it's been a while since I've blogged and honestly, no one notices because no one visits. And that's fine.
Life rolls along merrily and not so merrily. But I'm still here and I'm still getting up everyday and doing life.
We decided to take a chance and apply for a mortgage to buy a farm here in Oregon. Turns out, we have zero credit, so we were denied. I'm 50/50 about this. Part of me *loves* the idea of being invisible to the credit world. We owe nothing, we borrow nothing. When we sold our house a year and a half ago, we paid off all our debts and have lived debt free since. We didn't really think about the ramifications of this. Quite honestly, I ignorantly thought if you didn't use credit, your score just became a good one and you went on with your life. Not so. If you don't use it, you lose it. Which means no one will loan you money for anything. Which I have no problem with. I don't want to be a slave to debt ever again. But here's where the other 50 comes in.....we also don't have $250-400K to buy property either. So the rub is, without having any credit, we can't get a mortgage to buy a farm.
So thus, here we are, getting ready to sign a lease for another year in this rental. I don't love living here. I don't hate it. Our only source of heat in this house is electric cadet heaters. Last winter was terribly cold. Power goes out in Portland a lot. With no alternative heat source, we have to come up with one ourselves. My husband wants to put in a wood stove. Ha. I told him not to bother asking the landlord because he won't even let us have a garbage disposal. He's not gonna let him install a wood stove. LOL. We also live next door to a trailer park - which on the surface was quiet and clean - but as time has gone by, we've had issues with the one trailer next to our fence. Long story short: we think the woman might be a prostitute. Domestic fights. Police. Search dogs. On and on. Nothing that directly threatens us, but is super annoying.
So I got to thinking about my life here in this rental and how I've resisted making anything permanent. My garden is in boxes. My chicken yard is all movable. Everything can be packed up and moved if need be. But if we are going to stay here for a while, maybe I can do more to keep myself busy with farm things. I got a book from the library on keeping bees. So I thought I'd see if that's something I'd like to do. We have 2.5 acres of blackberries....kinda think bees would make the most amazing honey from that. However, I don't know much about beekeeping, so I'll read and learn what I can first for a while.
In the meantime, we've been instructed to get credit cards. Which I loathe. 2 credit cards - one each. Spend $30 a month, pay it off each month and build our credit back up. After a year, maybe we will have good enough credit to get a mortgage. And perhaps even have saved up more for a down payment.
