Series of Events that Led to the Biggest Life Decision Ever.

Then... We Sold Our Farm and Moved to the Caribbean...

You know, just 6 months ago, like, August 2021, we had a 20 acre farm… complete with honeybees, donkeys, ducks, geese, quail, chickens, rabbits, some koi fish, and of course, Benjamin, our cat. We started watching this show called Caribbean life. Have you heard of it? It’s on Discovery+. You know, I thought there would be a lot more animal shows? Isn’t that what the Discovery Channel was like, okay… Yes, I am showing my age. The Discovery Channel used to be like, way cooler. Alright, off topic.

So, we were watching this show, Caribbean Life, and it kept showing us the US Virgin Islands. Like, I knew they existed, but… they never occurred to me, you know? Like even a remote possibility of anything, really. Totally not on my radar. Basically it’s people buying houses in the Caribbean, like, House Hunters. Holy Cannoli the houses were so cheap, like what?!? (Spoiler: We found out later, probably too late, that we were watching very early seasons, and houses were NOT that cheap now in 2022… lol)

We watched a few episodes and I was like, dude! This place seems awesome! That night, I basically did all the research I needed to do to move to St. Croix of the Virgin Islands! I found a house, plane tickets, etc etc. And then, I came back to reality and burst my bubble. Listen, it needed to happen. I was totally going off the rails. But, I cried, a lot. Why do I hype myself up when I KNOW that this isn’t going to happen?? I thought I would get it out of my system, but it super backfired.

I suffered for a few days at the hand of my very own mind. We kept watching. I kept brooding. But, thankfully Dan (that’s my husband, did I tell you that yet? Yes, that’s the husband) thought that it seemed like a really interesting place too, but he was NOT going to move there unless he visited first. So after confessing to him all my plans of moving there, and immediately bursting my own bubble (all within a few hours… lol), we decided to plan a trip.

This trip was going to be awesome! We found a place to stay, for two weeks, and we booked it! We invited my mom and step dad to come with us! This cut the cost of the place to stay, by half. We were planning to get a rental car, lined that up, and bought tickets for Spring 2022. Woohoo, we were going to go on a real vacation, were were splurging too, mostly because we weren’t able to celebrate our 10th anniversary the way we had planned, thanks Covid.

We would take that two weeks and explore and try our best to see if this was a place that we would want to move to! We just needed to find a farm sitter. It didn’t take me long, somehow I got a great farm sitter lined up. But immediately afterward, anxiety set in. Like, the debilitating kind (I have super bad anxiety, you guys, no fun).

What happened if somehow she let Benjamin (the cat) out, and he get hit by a car?
What if he got out and she couldn’t get him back in??
What if she lets him out on purpose because she may think that cats should be able to go outside?!
What if I never saw my cat again!?

ALL of these what ifs came up. Mostly surrounding Benjamin. I felt confident anyone could take care of the farm animals, but absolutely lose trust in nearly EVERYONE when it comes to my cat, save for like 2 people. Okay, 3, if I count my husband. Ha. Which sometimes I am not even sure about! (hahahaha). I love this dang cat like my own child! I got him from a farm as a sickly bobble headed little thing that we had to nurse back to health, and while he is a pain in my tush, he is also the best cat in the world.

Right, so anxiety is at an all time high, I tell you what. I was crying often, with fear. It was absurd! Positively over the line worry, not that it wasn’t placed for a reason, we did have a dog get hit on the highway, and since that happened, Benjamin was no longer allowed outside. I wont tell you the amount of trouble that decision got me in with the husband, but, it happened.

Let’s backtrack just a little bit to help you more understand my frame of mind. Let me paint you a picture.

It had been a rough year. I had been diagnosed with ADHD in dec. 2020, so at the beginning of the year my doc and I were experimenting with ADHD meds to see which could help me. Of course, I have the super rare side effect of the meds making me incredibly depressed, scary depressed. Of course! *rolls eyes*. So I lose almost half the year to depression. Thankfully I started seeds, even though it was like pulling teeth. (I gardened back then!)

It’s year 2 of Covid, right, and everyone is just completely exhausted of all the back and fourth bs that was happening in Oregon, and just missing people in general.

Not only that, but Central Oregon is going through the worst drought in 127 years. People’s wells are drying up. My friend went without well water for months and had to truck in water for her farm animals! It was a lot of stress and worry. Would our well run out too? If our well ran dry, we would never be able to sell! It had no indication it was going to run dry, but you just never know. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened this year, but maybe the next, or a couple years down the road. Now… that is stressful.

Next, summer comes, we have record heat in late June, when for basically the first time ever, Oregon got over 100 degrees f, everywhere. And hotter. And hotter. Western Oregon got to nearly 120f, Central Oregon was a little cooler with a high of 115. But, we had chickens die on those days, because it was just too hot, no matter what we did (which was everything we could, btw).

It stays with highs of over 100 degrees in Central Oregon for a month. Holy crapola. That was so rough. Yea, it’s the high desert, yea, we see at least 100 degrees a few times a year, but, this was way more than usual. (The donkeys loved it, by the way).

So now we are in August, which was typically the warmest moth. And, damn, we’re just tired. Tired of worrying. Tired of taking care of the property. Tired of being out in the middle of no where. Tired of everything needing to be done all the time with no days off. Dang, we were just tired.

Now this is a little sad, but it was a huge revelation for us, Dan looked at me and said “I think it’s time for me to give up on this dream.” Yes, sad, right? Heartbreaking! But we were both realizing that this dream was quite a bit more work than we wanted to put out right now, and dang, we are so tied down to one spot, it makes even seeing family 4 hours away next to impossible. And… did we REALLY want to do this when we’re old?? It’s a lot of work taking care of animals and 20 acres in the high desert. I was under constant stress, worrying about all the animals I loved so much. And I think I was just, on the edge of completely losing myself.

This was when we decided to just move there (here).

Dang, we were moving to St. Croix of the US Virgin Islands!

The decision was solidified when on August 31st, we had our first hard frost of the year, which landed us approximately a 60 day growing season. Even less, cause no plants do anything when it’s like 105 degrees plus!

This feels like a natural place to stop.

I can’t wait to tell you about the next part of this adventure.
It was a lot, I tell you, a crazy amount of everything.

Stay Tuned, I felt super inspired to write this the other night, and I do promise the post I promised about watercolor brushes will come out soon! I have so much to share with you. It’ll be grand!

In the meantime, if you want to learn a little more about me be sure to read this and this. If you happened to enjoy this true life account of what lead to our biggest life change yet, please be sure to subscribe with that pretty blue button above, and you can always find me over on Instagram and Facebook!