Sourwood Farm 411

Sourwood Farm is situated on 3.2 acres of land inside the city limits of Raleigh and about 5 - 8 minutes from downtown depending on traffic. Here's our view as we approach downtown from the south (our direction). I'm not sure when this photo was taken but the skyline won't look like this in a year or two. Several new towers containing condos, office and retail space are either underway or planned. We've also got a new convention center coming along. Imagine a couple giant cranes in this picture and you have a better idea of what the skyline looks like right now.

So Sourwood Farm is not exactly way out in the country. It's definitely in the burbs - hence suburban homesteading.

Your next question might be how did we manage to get 3+ acres so close to downtown Raleigh? That question has an interesting answer, and no, we are not millionaires, not even close. For several years we lived in a 900 square foot house at the end of dead end road bordering a woodland valley with a small creek running through it. On the other side of the valley was a Raleigh city park. One day we noticed that someone had nailed a large sign to a tree in the woodland near the edge of our lot. The sign informed the public that the land behind it was to be sold at a tax foreclosure auction.

We had always wanted a bit of land and figured either we try to buy this through the auction or we make plans to move because whoever does buy it is probably going to build a bunch of houses on it and we'll no longer live at the end of a deadend road. I called the contact person listed on the sign to get the details.

The interesting thing about a tax foreclosure auction vs. a mortgage foreclosure auction is - at least in this case - the seller is trying to recover unpaid taxes not unpaid mortgage debt. In this instance the back taxes due on the property amounted to $12,000 - so this is where the bidding was to start. Long story short: we were the highest bidder at the auction and ended up getting the land for less than 1/3 of the tax value.

We built our house on the property about two years after buying the land and have been working on a variety of suburban homesteading pursuits ever since. If my memory serves me correctly we bought the property in early 2001 (yeah, I just checked the tax foreclosure sale sign again and that's right) and moved in to the house in 2003.

We chose the name Sourwood Farm due to the many sourwood trees on the property. Some people plant these trees as an ornamental species but all of ours are natives. An interesting thing about native sourwoods is that they just about always grow with a leaning over habit - most of ours are at a 70 - 50 degree angle from the ground. The leaves turn a nice deep red in the fall. The wood is very dense and heavy. Here I am using a sourwood log as a post for a handrail I built to accompany a set of stairs leading down to our creek.

I think that'll wrap it up for now. Before I go, egg update - nothing to report we've had the hens for 8 days now and still no eggs - hopefully soon.