Beginning to look for land in OK

[Homegrown_Tomatoes]

Anyone know of  land in or around Payne County, OK for sale?  Preferably within 30 minutes of Stillwater?  It has to be 10+ acres, pond is a big plus, as is perimeter barbed wire fencing.  Water and electric already on site is also good, but not necessary.  It looks like we will most likely be moving between now and Christmas... Yaahhoooo!  I don't care if we have to live in a travel trailer for a little while until we can sell our house here and close on land there..  Dirt roads are fine.  Nothing in town.  Pawnee area is nice, as is Ripley, or Perkins, or Agra... Absolutely will not pay more than $2K an acre (this rules out Stillwater proper) and for $2K an acre, it has to be pretty darn nice.  We'd like to have some open land and some wooded.

[Homegrown_Tomatoes]

DH is going down the 1st-2nd of next month and will hopefully bring back a listing of local real estate for sale.  Have to sell this place first before we can do anything about buying another place, so finishing up all our half-baked projects here is now a necessity instead of a hobby.  Hopefully, by the first of next month, we'll have it ready to put on the market... thankfully, houses move fast around here.  And this place has a big yard, which most places here don't, so hopefully it'll help it sell.

[glenn-k]

Have you tried the online searches, Homegrown?  Nothing beats looking though.

[Homegrown_Tomatoes]

Yes... have a "short" list of about 60 properties that I want to look at.    One of them I really liked, and it even had a neat old farmhouse, but then I was looking through the interior pics and found that one of the main rooms had a big custom OU carpet, and THAT would never do!  Furthermore, I really just want to build from the ground up... kind of sick of remodeling, and don't like having to live with floorplans someone else came up with... at our old house, you had to go through one bedroom to access the only bathroom in the house... always hated that.

[Sassy]

What is OU carpet?  :-?

[Homegrown_Tomatoes]

University of Oklahoma, Crimson and Cream... the "rival" school.  Hubby and I are both Oklahoma State grads, and the job we'll be moving for  is his professorship at state... it just wouldn't do to have Barry Switzer approved carpet... and not only that, it actually is a custom made rug with the big OU symbol right in the middle of the room and a crimson border around... it must have cost them a pretty penny to have made and installed, but it's an eyesore, and anyone who'd buy OU carpet probably did a lot of other dumb things to their house, too.  Now, if it were orange and black and said, "GO COWBOYS!" or something, I might learn to live with it.  

[Homegrown_Tomatoes]

And for any of you not from Oklahoma, who might get the two schools confused,  OSU is the school whose football coach recently went off in a press conference after a win and whose rant has been posted all over the internet in recent weeks with much debate about whether he was right to do and say as he did.  OU = Sooners and OSU= Cowboys.  Hopefully that clears things off a bit.

[Homegrown_Tomatoes]

Might get a chance to see a few of the 60-something property listings I've saved on realtor.com this coming weekend.  I took the house with the OU carpet out of my search... would rather just buy land free and clear instead spending years to redo stuff that other people did wrong.  Looking forward to getting down there Thursday and having a look-see.  Of course, can't buy anything until we sell this place, doggone it.  But we're getting close to being able to put it on the market.

[Homegrown_Tomatoes]

forgot to mention, I get to go with DH for his interview... Wasn't planning on it, but at least it will give me a chance to look around.

[glenn-k]

How did the trip go, Homegrown?  Find anything interesting? :-?

[Homegrown_Tomatoes]

I only ended up getting to look at two properties... both were really pretty, but both were more expensive that what I want to pay.  One was a farm with lots of outbuildings and good fence and frontage on the Cimmarron River.... the house wasn't much to look at, really, but it was clean and well taken care of, and fairly recently remodelled.  Had  a good dairy barn on the property which was being used as junk storage, but the building itself was clean and in good structural shape.  There were 25 of the fattest Black Angus cows I've ever seen peacefully munching their cuds out in the pasture, and the lady said that she supplements them a little in the winter, but the rest of the year they are just pastured.  There were two ponds... don't know if there were any fish in them or not, but with the Cimmarron River at the back of the property, there would be channel cat enough to go around, I'm sure.  There was also a well/septic/electric hookup in a separate lot for an RV to be parked... it even had a level concrete parking space and it's own entrance from the road.  It was all paved roads between there and school.  

The second one was 2/3 wooded property, 50 acres...It had an almost new double-wide on it... bigger than most regular houses I've been in.  Had a big deck on the front and another bigger deck around the swimming pool in the back.  Then there was a little house with gambrel roof and a sleeping loft over the porch as well.   The little house was wired, but wasn't completely finished inside and had no water hooked up because the woman who owned it said that she'd never see her son if she hooked water up to the little house.  The front 10 acres were long and narrow, and then at the back there was a big rectangle of about 40 acres.  Only 15 acres of pasture, and it was really healthy native tall grass prairie.  Didn't look like it'd ever been disturbed.  No barns at all, but two little cheapy storage sheds and the little house.  Had good perimeter 5-strand barbed wire, and a small pond that the owner said was stocked.  There was a good path through the front part of the property to the back (for ATV or tractors, maybe a truck) and it took me and the realtor (a man probably in his mid-70s) about half an hour to walk back to the pasture.  Lots and lots of deer tracks, so probably good for hunting.    The pasture was also fenced off with a few gates from different parts of the property.  It was really pretty, but I almost wish that there was just a clearing with a well...instead of that huge house.  The soil was really sandy every where I checked... however, it was a really pretty place and the day was beautiful for a nice long walk in the woods.  

The first property was only wooded along the river (lots of big pecan and sycamore trees) and there were immature fruit trees as well as some flowering trees in the yard around the house.  The second property was really too much woods, even though it was gorgeous.  My kids would've loved it (they were hanging out with grandma while I looked.)  The second property was a fairly mature cross-timber forest, mostly post oaks, mulberry, a few black oaks and black jacks, and very few if any cedars.  I also saw some hickory and black walnut and persimmon trees.  Overall, I liked it.  

[Homegrown_Tomatoes]

I think we'll have to look for quite a while.  However, if the realtor doesn't show us some land properties instead of all these others, I think we'll need to find another realtor.  The first place I would've really liked if it didn't have a house on it... it was nice that it had good outbuildings and fences, but I would really like to build my own house.  Partly this was because the lady had it decorated in a lot of clutter and frilly stuff... not my taste... it made it seem crowded and smaller than it was.  I liked the river frontage and the fact that the house was up out of the flood plain.  In fact, even with all the drastic flooding in OK this summer, the river never escaped its banks in that area this year.  The soil was really good and rich there, and ahh, the smell of cow manure in the morning.    This sounds stupid, but cows smell so much better than the big Tyson chicken houses or swine farms!

The other house would have been a good location for a B&B, but not really a farm.  The woods and the trails were really nice, though.

[glenn-k]

Some people go out and smell flowers.  You go out and smell cow manure, chicken houses and swine.  Bad cravings, eh?


I hate it when the real estate person has their mind made up what you need and won't listen.  

If you don't want to adapt to some one else's crackerbox, that's just the way it is.

[Homegrown_Tomatoes]

   I don't CRAVE cow manure smells... but it smells good in a funny sort of way... We always had cows when I was a kid, and I guess it just smells... homey?   Kind of like rain after a long dry spell, when you smell the rain coming from way off... it isn't like perfume, but it smells good.  Here, it rains a lot more, so rain just smells soggy and moldy to me, so I miss that rain-after-a-long-dry-spell smell... and here, you never smell cow manure, so it smells almost good.  Being as this is the dairy state, you'd think you would, but you don't.  I know it sounds absolutely goofy, but then you've gotta consider the source.  At least the houses didn't smell like manure!  C'mon, don't you like the smell of cow manure???

The first house was apparently like a lot of old houses that had started small and built on again and again.  The floors were on all different levels, and the lower part seemed to be on a slab while the original part of the house was on a crawl that was not very high off the ground.  It was full of beautiful oak veneered custom built cabinets in most of the rooms (all the bedrooms, the bath, and the kitchen and pantry.)  It was kind of a neat place, but I would have really liked to see it empty and see more of the possibilities (and likely more of the problems.)  The utility room was especially handy as it was actually utilitarian, unlike many I've seen.  It had the washer and dryer and hot water heater as well as huge built-ins on either side that served as a coat closet and pantry, and there was room for an ironing board to be set up and iron the clothes right away... that is if I actually used the dryer, which I usually do not in Oklahoma because there is no need with all the free solar and wind power available.   The front of the house faced north, which I was not really crazy about, even though the site kind of lent itself to that orientation.  I just always liked the front of the house to face east... something about sitting on the front porch with my coffee in the morning sunshine.  Anyway, the looking is the fun part.  Not so much the actual buying and moving.  I love to look at houses, though.  The one thing was that there were sandburs everywhere in the yard even though it was cut close; must have pulled a hundred of them out of my socks and pant legs when we left.  My kids would either have to develop tougher feet or start wearing shoes.

[glenn-k]

Homegrown, you are going to make me confess aren't you -- yes --I love the smell of cow manure, the fresher, the better.    I even have this little cow manure fetish ... not really -- I'm just making that up so you don't feel all alone.

When I was a kid I cleaned out my uncle's barn a time or two -- seems like he got my cousin too as he still complains about it sometimes.  My uncle would leave the cow manure in the barn until he could con one of us kids into cleaning it out for money.  It was a foot and a half deep if it was an inch.

We would work for days -- usually only one of us each year or so.  Uncle would generously give us a dollar or so for our effort.  He was rather tight.  Squeaked a little when he walked... but we learned a lot about hard work from him.

This is not the same uncle that taught me house remodeling -- he was tighter -- fed us and let us shoot the 30.06, but we really learned a lot of worthwhile stuff from him (and we got potty mouth from him too). :-/

[Homegrown_Tomatoes]

You know you like it, Glenn.  

Yuck, only cleaning the barn out once a year??? Ugh.  I used to feel sorry for my little cousins in SE OK because their summer job was always cleaning out the big chicken factory barns.  All the local farmers in their area had Tyson chicken houses and man did they stink.  There was one down the mountain from my aunt and uncle's house and boy did I hate it when the wind was out of the north there!  It was a shame because it is such a beautiful area... but it's hard to get away from that awful smell.  Tyson couldn't pay me enough to put one of those on my property!  After you cross the AR state line down there, it's compounded with the smell from the industrial turkey farms...  Why does anyone do that for a living???  You would have to be just desperate for money to destroy your land like that.  I'd probably have to "go vegetarian" if I owned one.  I knew a girl who grew up on a big dairy farm in Iowa and she went vegan (with the exception of her ice cream habit, which she just couldn't seem to let go of!) because of the way the animals were raised.  I worked one summer as a vet's assistant in the OKC stockyards, and I quit eating hamburger for quite a while after seeing animals that were going to the packing plant. (Unless it was some we raised because I knew our animals were always in peak health when they were butchered... the ones coming through the stockyards to go to the packing plant were sent on no matter how pitiful they looked as long as they were brucellosis free... there were cows with huge tumors protruding from their eyes and some that were just skin and bones and could barely walk down the chute.)  I never understood why anyone let them get in that kind of condition before doing something.  The eye tumors that Herefords are so prone to are easily treated but can be fatal if untreated... I just didn't see why people didn't take care of their animals, I guess.  Even now, if I want hamburgers, I usually buy round steak and grind it myself so that I know we're eating burger from one cow, not one made potentially of numerous unhealthy bovines.  However, I am really looking forward to the day we can raise our own again... and raise our own chickens and some bantams for Korean cooking.  I hate living in town.

[Preston]

Watching a video of a Tyson factory would make anyone go vegan.  I grew up around the smell of manure and can say it's nostalgic.

[Sassy]

We got 210,000 lbs of horse manure from the Yosemite stables about 3 yrs ago    What bothered me was the flies    Glenn would take his Bobcat & turn the stuff, bring me out there & stick his had down into it & try to get me to stick my hand in it to feel how warm it got...    His parents came for a visit & his mother just loved the smell, she said it reminded her of home - which was Wisconsin...  Glenn's mentioned before that they used to bank the sides of the house with manure during the winter to help keep it warm  

[glenn-k]

Yes, Homegrown - I love it.

The horse manure compost would get so hot that white smoke would come from it and envelop me on the Bobcat and go completely through my clothes.  There was no way to get rid of the smell except a shower and all clean clothes.

Horse manure is the perfect mix of carbon to nitrogen for making compost.  Add water and air by turning weekly to make soil in about a month.  More carbon - straw etc -- add chicken manure for nitrogen -- chicken manure needs more carbon to compost better.  

[Homegrown_Tomatoes]

That summer I worked at the OKC stockyards, I always tried not to stop ANYWHERE on the way home because I smelled bad enough that it could knock other people over.  I have long hair, so even my hair smelled like manure... it just absorbed it.  Anyway, I was also working on a summer ministry team, and driving home from the stockyards one day I saw the new pastor for the local AG church hand-digging a trench for the sewer line at the church and decided to stop and ask him if our ministry team could help.  He thought I was some kind of nut jumping down in that hole with him and reeking of manure... thankfully I pestered him enough that he finally let us come and help paint the building and lay the carpet for him, but every time I see him he reminds me of the first time we met and I was stinking like manure and wearing dirty overalls.  I guess I figured that he was digging a sewer line... maybe he couldn't smell the manure? :-/

[glenn-k]

That would have been a special treat.

[Homegrown_Tomatoes]

   OK, so in high concentration, it reeks, but a little cow manure scent blowing on the breeze never hurt anyone... now those big commercial feed lots out in the TX panhandle are another matter entirely.

[Homegrown_Tomatoes]

The suspense is killing me.   :-/ :-?  I hope we hear something this weekend as to whether we need to load up  and take off or not.  Keep stopping by the computer and checking email every ten minutes to see if DH has emailed me anything yet.  Generally I am a patient person... but gotta admit, I am having a really hard time this time.... ever since June I've had hope of this move taking place, and now that I know the decision will be made today, it is making it even harder.  My husband says I look like I got a makeover this summer because I've been smiling so much that I look different.  Hope is a funny thing... it does that to people.  I've almost got my entire sewing room cleaned out and packed today just from the tension of having to do something to keep from going nuts.  (Besides, I have three paid sewing projects that i have to get done before I can move, so I've got to get them out of the way.)  Well, guess I'm back to the cutting board for now... my mom called earlier and asked if we were prepared to put a for sale sign up in the front yard if we get the call today.

[glenn-k]

OK - so today is near over - any news?

[Homegrown_Tomatoes]

Nope, not yet.  Of course, we knew that it would be Friday at the earliest that we'd hear something, but most likely sometime next week because it has to pass the dean's office and a formal offer written  before the hiring committee would call.  We were just hoping that our connection inside the department would've heard what the recommendation was and would call to let us in on the details, but he's tried to remove himself from the hiring process so that there is no bias.  In the mean time, we're going to keep packing and working on this house until we hear otherwise.  Recruiters have been calling with other jobs in OK, but we're waiting until we hear from the university before calling them back.