When I think about the beginning of us, budding dreams, and where the idea for Uproot and Adventure came from, I think of a 1900’s Virginia farmhouse. It was a quirky place to say the least, no central air conditioning in an area that easily reached above 100° F in July, currently occupied by a large mouse family, and with a locked attic that we did not yet know about. But that quirkiness seemed par for the course because the way we came to be renting that sweet house was a little unusual too.

It was spring of 2020, and I was looking for housing closer to Stephan, for 6 months we had had to make the, hour at best, trek through the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel, which was notorious for killer rush hour traffic, whenever we wanted to see each other. Things were getting serious, and I had finished my travel nursing contract in Newport News, so the time felt right to start looking for housing closer to him.

One random Sunday, we had driven out to a less city like part of Virginia Beach in my ‘94 Chevy Blazer, just enjoying time together and the beautiful scenery that wasn’t the packed apartment buildings, and overpriced rentals I’d quickly gotten tired of looking at. I felt a little desperate at this point, unsure I’d ever find anything that felt like it could be home. I’d even put out a post on fb searching for a place to stay, “looking for something unique”, it read “even a refurbished barn will do”. And then I saw it, a blur through the car window, a white two story house with a long gravel drive, its own tiny front porch, and a handwritten “For Rent” sign in the yard.

Stephan was intent on finding coffee at the time, and that man focuses in when he’s in need of caffeine, so all I got was a quick glimpse as we whizzed by, by that was all it took to entice me, I wanted to know more. We pulled into the towns one, charming, refurbished, home-turned coffeeshop, and I mentioned to Stephan the sign I’d seen, and the house behind it. We both agreed that anything that big, on property was likely to be out of my price range. We decided maybe we’d go back by it sometime for fun, but all we had time for by then was to grab a coffee and head to our appointment back in town.

We got our caffeine fix, headed back to Old Red, and Stephan went to turn the ignition… nothing happened. This wasn’t too shocking as my car had become a bit temperamental with age, so we sighed and headed back into the coffeeshop to ask around for a willing soul with jumper cables. A few failed jumpstarts later, and we found ourself sitting back in the still car, waiting for a new battery from a AAA driver an hour away, with a now canceled in town appointment, and nothing to do but talk. And dream.

I don’t know what would have happened if my car had’ve started right up like it did 75% of the time, but I imagine I would have thought about that little white farmhouse once or twice again, come back a week later to find the sign gone, and eventually settled into some mediocre place in the city that would be, minus the family of mice, but also missing the space for dreaming the farmhouse came with. But that wasn’t what happened, and I’m so glad, because that ole dead battery gave us just the pause we needed to say “what if!?”, and by the time the AAA driver pulled up, we had decided to drive back to the farmhouse and at least write down the number on the sign once we had a working vehicle again.

We did drive back by, peeked in the window, write down the signs number, which was sans a rent price (not something that made me feel hopeful). And that afternoon I made the call. God must have wanted us to be the people for that little house, because it happened to somehow be in a price range that was actually better then the places I’d looked at in town, and the agent we spoke to said we were welcome to submit an application as the last applicants had just passed on it because summer was coming in hot, and the lack of central air scared a lot of people in the south. Rightfully so, but we were young and optimistic, and didn’t think we’d mind sweating a bit, so I filled in the application, which included an agreement that farm equipment could drive across the property if I lived there, and turned it in.

When I fall for something/ or someone, I fall hard, and the farmhouse was no exception, Stephan was still a little skeptical about the idea of a 100 year old maintenance project, but I was sold. I kept my phone on at all times for an agonizing few days, and then we finally got the call that the house was mine, and the real dreaming began.