The first "retirement farm"

We began our search for the "retirement farm" about four years ago after my husband was transferred from Northwest Arkansas to North Central Arkansas.   We already had 160 acres that bordered the Buffalo River corridor.  The only problem with it though was that it was just too darned steep.  We knew that we wanted to raise cattle again and it's difficult getting up and down those hills.  You're either going up or down those steep hills.  Now don't get me wrong, we loved that place.  We originally purchased that place about 1999.  We knew that we liked that beautiful area and needed a place for the guys to hunt and found this place that was 120 acres.  It had an old house and a barn on it.  We purchased it and then were able to add an adjoining 40 acres to it.  We let a neighbor tear down the old house and we put up a log cabin. 

We were involved with the building, but we didn't build the whole thing.  The man we bought the logs from knew how to notch the corners and frame in the windows.  We helped as we could.  We then had another local man build the fireplace for us.   We hired another local family that does metal roofs to put ours on.  It was a fun place to go for the weekends. 

We also had the carpenter bring over his portable sawmill and mill some of the cedar to be used for planks inside the cabin....it always smelled so good when you first opened the door....just like a big cedar chest!  You can see that we used it on the gable ends over the fireplace.

Please excuse the mess, this picture was taken while moving stuff around.  this shows the inside though.  It was all open with the bathroom door to the right.  We hadn't added a kitchen yet and were only using a hot plate and microwave for cooking.  We had a small dorm size fridge and it all worked pretty well.   The loft held an iron bed and we had a ladder to climb up there. 

Our water source was a spring that had originally  been piped up to this house site.  Before we had purchased the property, a mobile home had sat there, so a septic tank was there also. 

This was also already on the place and just need a little repair to stop a leak.   Tank filled from below from a spring and then was piped up the hill to the cabin. 

I do miss our little cabin on the hill.    We put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into the building of that thing!   We also had a lot of good times there, but we realized that we didn't want to spend our years on those hills, although they are beautiful!