Church House Pictures

Here are 3 pictures of the main room in the church house, makes up the living area, eating space, and kitchen.

99% of everything you see in all these pictures was already in the house as part of the purchase. We'll have a lot of clothing and stuff to take to Goodwill once we start clearing out the bedrooms. You can see we had a fire in the wood stove as it was in the 40's here and very cold inside- the stove did a nice job getting the main room up to the low 60's by the time we were ready to wrap up for the day.

Here's a shot of the sink, you just don't see orange like this anymore!

The next pictures show the metal spiral stairs up to the loft that runs about 75% of the length of the church. The close up pictures of the light show that it was originally an oil or kerosene fixture that was converted to electric some time ago.

Here's a picture standing at the back of the loft looking back to the stairs, you can see all the stuff that was left up there, there are a lot of old chairs, tables, and beds along with a collection of other "treasures". We found some fishing gear, some magazines from the 60's and early 70's, books, and there are a couple of large, truck inner tubes inflated and ready for the river!

There is a lot to go through and clean up but looks like this would be a great spot to spend some time in the summer. We're still figuring out how much we'll want to change- we know we'll want to improve the stairs coming in to the church on the front- maybe a deck along with the stairs as it would be a great place for to watch that water go by and hold a grill.

More as we move along, enjoy.

Church Property Update

Donna and I closed on the church property earlier this week, sale went as planned with a few bits of interesting information learned along the way. Turns out the listing was incorrect and there are actually two pieces of property that totals about 1/2 an acre instead of the original 1/4 acre we thought it was setting on. There was an interesting story and background about how there came to be two properties divided by the "Old County Road" that crosses through and allows access to one more >200 acre property beside us.

We had 65 degree weather the day we closed so I brought a kayak and took a quick tour on the river and looks like it is going to be great. Very little current at this point so was an easy paddle up stream (towards Romney) and looks like there are some nice riffles about a 1/3 of the mile in both directions that I saved to explore another day. If we get another nice day, will have to put a kayak in under the Romney bridge and float to the church, looks to be about 5 or 6 miles. If you look at a map of the South Branch of the  Potomac near Romney, you'll see what's called Hanging Rocks about 5 miles north- these rocks are very close to the property to give you an idea where we are.

Here's a couple of pictures from the water, you can see the Hanging Rocks in the second picture.

Next post will show some pictures from inside the house.

We Bought a Church

Well, not exactly. Donna and I made an offer yesterday that was accepted
this morning on an old church built in 1897 that was converted to a
river camp sometime in the 1940's. Pictures below. It's on a quarter of
an acre on the South Branch of the Potomac about 7 miles from our house
outside Romney.

We've been watching for river front property since we moved here but
those we found either didn't have good access to the water, were too far
away, or were on converted farmland where the sun would drive us crazy
in the summer. This is a small lot but has a relatively easy walk down
to the water so should be great for fishing, canoeing, kayaking, and
just hanging about. The church is rustic but has working well, septic, 2
bedrooms and a big loft. Wood stove for heat but don't see it being used
in the deep winter. It's being sold as is with the furnishings so might
find some surprises too! Property is easy to winterize from what we have
seen after meeting with the current owner.

We hope to close before Thanksgiving, in the interim, I'm doing some
research to learn more about the property and history of the church.
Looks like it was active starting in 1897 and was sold from the church
trustees to an individual in 1940. The current owner's father bought the
property in 1955.

More as we learn more but thought we'd pass along an update to those of

you that follow the blog.

Miss Kitty

Update- just realized this didn't post from a couple of months ago so add it now.

Miss Kitty, the cat who adopted us when we first moved to Leesburg over
13 years ago died on Monday. The photo shows the plague I cut to put
near her grave- she is buried near Miss Sally on our property.

Miss Kitty showed up to live under our deck when we moved in to the
house in Leesburg in 2001. She was at least a year old and had been
spayed and decided she liked being with us. Over the years, we put a
shop door in to my workshop so she could get out of the weather, then
later, the shop door was in to the garage. Finally, Donna decided she
didn't need to be an outside cat anymore after an altercation with some
other critter so she moved in to our family room.

When we moved to Romney 3 years ago, Miss Kitty decided that our
basement would work out fine and lived here- 3 meals a day and an
occasional rub or scratch. She was always a bit standoffish but
tolerated our dogs and seemed to be happy. We were sorry to let her go
but decided it was time.

Sparklers

Dolores, Donna, and Paul with sparklers last night for the 4th of July.

Hay Barn

We decided we wanted to get some additional hay storage so we can bring in a larger supply for the alpacas. We have 9 animals now and like to buy hay when it's readily available in the summer. Because our barn/pasture is behind the main house and we can only use a small tractor or skid steer to drive there, we can only move 6 or 8 bales of hay down there at a time and just seemed like a big process to make 2 trips (90 minute round trip each) to pick up 100 bales of hay, then have to move them down to the barn where we have covered storage in another 12 or more short trips with the hay on the tractor.

The new barn should store 175 or more bales and we can drive the trailer right up to the doors and unload a lot more quickly to get the hay out of the elements. We'll still have plenty of storage at the barn but can load there at a more leisurely pace, we are retired after all!

We decided to buy a barn already constructed, this one is 10'x20', double doors at each end so we can load/unload easily and get to the hay we've had on site longest at any time without moving bales. We purchased the barn from Placka Buildings (Placka), they are a local business who we've used before and would recommend them if you need a barn. This one is from a new supplier and is a post and beam construction with board and batten siding to match our other buildings.

You can see from the pictures the barn is sited north of the solar panels we installed but still easy to reach with the truck/trailer and other vehicles. We modified the original building to add some additional ventilation since we are storing hay.

Enjoy the pictures.

New Resident

A few weeks ago, this young cat arrived at our place and has decided to
stay. Not sure where she came from, maybe was dropped off by someone but
she is one of the most friendly cats we've ever been around.

We're feeding her but also hoping she'll remain an outside cat that we
can teach to hunt mice in the alpaca barn- we'll see if that works out
or she just becomes another mouth to feed. Donna calls her Little Miss
and I've been calling her Miss Squeaky since her meow is really high
pitched, don't know where we'll end up.

She loves to follow us around when we're outside, if you get down on the
ground to weed or work on a tractor, etc., she'll be on your lap.Spends a lot of her day on the front porch just outside the door.

Enjoy the pictures.