After many years of taking vacations to Colombia to visit my wife's family, and sometimes looking at farms for fun, we needed to dedicate a visit to only look at farms for sale. This would take time, and since I was working 2 jobs the only decision that made sense was to send Ana back home, by herself, and hunt down our dream farm...if one even existed. So off she went for 3 weeks with a list in hand of all the farms we found online that looked somewhat promising, hopefully one would fit the bill. Once she arrived she immediately got to work visiting a few the first couple days, and we quickly realized that online photos weren't a great representation of what they really were like in person. The story was always the same, the land was great, but the house a mess...or the house was great, and the land was a mess. When I say the house was a mess, picture a home half falling apart, floors just cement and cracked, walls practically crumbling, roof barely on....basically a complete tear down or rebuild. When I say the land was a mess usually that meant dying coffee plants or so overgrown they'd need to be cut down anyway, or the land so steep you'd need legs the size of tree trunks to walk up & down them...not a promising a start to our search.
Being that my wife was born & raised in Santa Rosa de Cabal (where we wanted to find our farm) meant she had connections, the best being her family that has lived there forever as well. Her Uncle was one that turned out to be the savior as he was helping my wife in this quest for the perfect farm. How he helped was using his connections in town...picture a big park in the center of town where old timers just sit around and talk, watch people come and go, and get all the latest insider news about the town and people living in it. Thankfully my wife's Uncle was connected to these kind of people and heard about a few farms for sale not listed on the fancy "internet" or local papers....just owners telling some friends that they wanted to sell their farms if the right deal came along. So off Uncle went, looking on his own at a few of these farms and then thinking he might have found what Ana told him she was looking for...took a few pictures and showed her the following day. Ana looked briefly at the photos and thought, maybe, better she go look for herself before getting too excited, pictures have tricked us before.
She took the long and winding dirt road to the farm in a old Jeep Willy that are everywhere here (like Taxi's) and finally arrived to the farm her Uncle thought could be the one. As soon as the Jeep stopped the first positive sign hit her right in the ears.....the sound of water. A big river wraps around 2/3 of the farm (also it's border to other farms) and is so loud it's all you hear, well, except for all the birds as too (another one of wife's favorite things)which makes for a pleasant all around sound. She then got to tour the existing house on the property where the worker family was living (and still to this day, luckily, more on that later) which wasn't the greatest, but not nearly as bad as some others she toured through, workable at least. She then walked out toward the grass fields where the best part of the farm came into play, the view, the million dollar view that stopped her in her tracks as she gazed upon it's beauty. A spot where the river bends around the property then straightens out and runs into the distance, which is between two big mountain ranges creating a flat spot in in-between. Perfect. This was a view she's dreamed about since she was a child, so wonderful and peaceful, secluded but not too much, quiet but sounds of running water, all kinds of birds flying by, nesting, chirping and just being birds all around the property....this was it, this is what my wife Ana was looking for when she envisioned us finding a farm to build our dream upon. Not only all of this, but coffee too, lots of it and in good shape....potential income which we would need to make this dream work.
My phone rang immediately after Ana soaked all this in, to tell me the good news, she found our farm. I could hear the excitement in her voice as she described everything in great detail, I had no doubt this must be the one. Now the big question, well, to me it was...... how much? As I waited for only a couple seconds for her answer my mind raced through a dozen scenarios of how can we get enough money to buy this wonderful farm and be able to live there without being completely broke. Then she said the number......what? What was that again? Really? I couldn't believe my ears, the price was much lower than most we had looked at already...how can that be? Who cares right? I yelled out "buy the dang thing now!", Ana wasn't sure if I was joking or not. How could I be so sure by just her description, didn't I want to come see for myself or take more time to decide? Heck no.....why wait, I could tell from her description and joy telling it that I had nothing to worry about, I trust my wife with my life, totally and completely, if she really believed this was the one, I knew it had to be. Time to get the ball rolling. This was fate knocking and I was ready to fling that door open!
Next up....buying a farm in Colombia and saying goodbye to "home".
