I keep telling myself that. And it’s probably not too late, though I have so many questions on my mind and I’m not sure if I’m ready to give up so much of my life to dedicate to a fixer upper and homesteading.

It’s a path not taken 🏞 one of many I’ve chosen to skip in my life. Do too often I take the easy way out? Probably yes, but also I see myself 13 ½ years out from age 55 when I can early retire and have time for projects like this in a community I actually love. 13 ½ years to accumulate market growth and save the each week.

Truth is the more I look the more I see problems. 🌾 Even that hayfield it comes with is choked with milkweed and probably saplings as apparently it hasn’t been harvested since the eviction a few years back. My friend from high school who used to harvest it must have heard I’ve been looking at the property as she keeps popping up in my Facebook feed. I’m sure she’d like access to the land again. And the foundation issues and potential bad well and septic worry me. Probably though for the $150k plus another $50k in repairs – I’m just assuming the leach field is bad and the well is crap and foundation needs a bunch of tearing up – it would be a pretty good homestead. And my current apartment is such a dump. But I want to still travel and not put so much time and money into the homestead right now. And the pasture is full of trash – overgrown with brush and the old farm dump despite what the agent claims is still full of tin cans and glass and other partially burnt garbage.

I’ve just been keeping busy. 🌸 I enjoyed the ride from East Greenbush to Nassau and back again. Thacher Park was nice yesterday as is watching the sun set from Kooning Hill and Holt Preserve tonight. 📚 Before bed I need to check out the remaining seven books I have in my queue for Hoopla before my 10 June borrows expire for the month. Then I’ll have a bunch to read and listen to through the third week of July – at least the start of vacation when I can then get additional titles – truth is I get ten more titles for three weeks starting July 1st but I like to save new borrows for later in the month.

Got socks 🧦 and two more pairs of shorts at Wally World 🛒 besides groceries and sparklers. 🎇 I realized that I might want to get the propane filled before four more nights of camping 🏕. I still am not fully decided between Vermont – Forest 71 Somerset Airfield and going back to Piseco-Powley. I do like the Potholers and it’s going to be warm but the National Forest I can stay for four nights in one campsite but I’m going to need to get ice 🧊 midweek regardless. Plus I want to get pot this week to smoke 🚬 and I know your not supposed to do that in the National Forest or bring it across state lines.

After a hot and humid summers day it cooled down a lot 🌇 and I’m up here alone watching the sun set from Bennett Hill and the Holt Preserve. My old neighborhood is nice but it doesn’t give me that feeling of the deep rural country I often travel too. 🐮 The hills and hollows aren’t as big, the houses 🏘 too close together. I mean that homestead is close to the highway and an easy commute to the office in Menands but it would be noisy on summer nights with trucks roaring down the hill with their Jake brakes roaring. 🚚 I mean someday I do want to have a place to call home and homestead but I still want to travel and explore while I’m still young 🧒.

Dinner was nice with the folks 🍠🐷🍍, grilled ham, pineapple and sweet potatoes. It’s good to spend time with them as you know it might be the last time you see them. So many times in your forties you say goodbye until next week and that week never comes. I don’t belabor all who I know are lost from this pineapple.

At any rate, 🌇 there are some nice places to watch the sunset now from Holt Preserve now that they cut some trees 🪓 and built some benches. It’s getting dark now and I got to get home and unpack my wash and bike.