About a year ago, Al and I got the ball rolling for some big changes in our lives. Set to retire at the end of the year, Al wanted to move out away from the hustle and bustle of city and suburban life with it’s traffic and noise. Way out. We both love farm country, rolling hills, woodlands, rivers and streams, but we wanted to stay a little bit local for the sake of our extended family. I wanted a little bit of civilization nearby and a community that appreciates art and culture. We both love, love, love small towns.
After a lot of discussion and research, we decided that the Tecumseh area in Lenawee county seemed to fit our wants and needs the closest. Tecumseh is a town filled with friendly people, lots of antique shops and boutiques, good food, wineries, a brewery, art centers and galleries. We came to love the town more every time we visited.
So, last February we began looking at homes and properties with an agent, trying to find just the right spot and combination of house and property. We wanted a mid sized house, not too big, on a larger parcel of land, but not too much to take care of. There was actually quite a long list of features that were ‘must haves’, but we were able to find just the right place in late spring. Unfortunately, in the bidding war, ours was not the winner, so the search went on. And on, and on.
On July 14 last summer, a new listing not far from Tecumseh popped up that just looked awesome. A nice sized piece of property at 2.36 acres (3/4 pi), it had trees, it had a pond, it had a pole barn and an attached garage, ranch house, not too large, vegetable garden, rolling terrain and on a paved road. Too excited to wait for the week-end and afraid we’d have to compete with others bidding on it, we went out to see it the next evening, made an offer immediately and got it before anyone else had a chance.
Things worked out well for both us and the previous owners- they needed time for their new build home to be move in ready, we needed some time to finish staging our condo and sell it. Our plan was to move all of our personal items and clutter to the new place for a nice clean look, completely paint the interior of the new place, sell the condo, then move all of our furniture and us into our new lives. We got possession of the place on September 23rd, listed our condo on October 3rd and sold it in 8 days. After finishing up the interior painting, we were able to get everything moved in before we closed on the condo in mid November.
After unpacking all of the boxes and putting everything away, we settled in to our new home in Clinton just in time for Christmas. We have a list of projects for the house, our first one being to add lights and electrical outlets in the basement for my new studio. That was completed last week, so I’m up and running again, ready for new work and new projects in our new home town- Clinton, Michigan!
Just a few miles north of Tecumseh, Clinton has it’s own art center that is in the process of building a new 3 story structure right in the heart of downtown. I sat in on a recent meeting and they have such exciting plans in store for it.
If you are wondering just where the heck we are, Clinton is south and west of Ann Arbor, on the edge of the Irish Hills. US-12 goes right through downtown. It’s a beautiful area, we love it here already and are looking forward to living here on Three Quarter Pi Farm for many years.