SELLING THE FAMILY FARM

I have another radio show & podcast called THE FOLD. You can find it on Spotify. My October 2024 episode included some excerpts from my personal journal. For the full clip, search THE FOLD on Spotify. In the meantime, I wanted to share a sample of what that episode was about.
“Later today, I will see my grandmother’s farm with an unsightly blemish… a ‘for- sale’ sign… in the front yard. I’m the Realtor for the estate, & I will be conducting an open house. Envisioning strangers crawling around and poking their noses into the deepest crevices of the sacred home that was only ever my grandma’s feels like such a gross violation.

How am I to handle the inevitable negative comments?

“Ugh, there’s no AC.”

Well, you get a couple of intrusive & loud box fans, and line them up in the entryway like my grandma did!

When I was taking promotional videos of the house, the scripts seem lame and salesy… Lackluster for the real selling features that I had to suppress. “The fireplace offers a handsome focal point to the light and bright family room.” What I really want to say is, “When I was four, I pushed my cousin Josh, and he cracked his head open on that brick right there.”

Every corner of that house is deeply ingrained in my mind as special and important, you can take a picture of any spot, and I will have a story to tell – complete with smells and sounds – describing the full sensation that takes over me.

THE STAIRS…
… My cousin Josh and I play ‘superman and bunny’ – a game we made up one year circa 1987 that coincided with that year’s Halloween costumes. The game was ridiculous – an ongoing and repetitious skit of a bunny that needed constant rescuing off the stairs. That year, my cousin Tara was a baseball player. I have the iconic picture of the three of us lined up in my grandmother’s living room in front of a record player that spanned the entire wall.

THE KITCHEN…
Sitting with both my grandparents for dinner. This is one of the few clear memories I have of my grandfather who passed just before I turned 7. With the intention of getting some attention, I speak to a little invisible friend that I pretend hides in my shirt. Periodically I whisper into my shirt collar “Not now… ssshhh!… Be quiet!” And I look up apologetically at my grandparents, giving me a puzzled and almost concerning look.

THE LIVING ROOM…
… The Christmas tree placement was never up for debate or experiment. It was and always will be in front of the living room window. Every Christmas, for a far back as I can remember, has the tree tucked in just that position.
Across from it on the other wall is a perpetual location of grandma’s organ. I can ever so clearly hear in my head, the very distinct sound, the soft thud of the knobs & keys as they get flicked on or off… What they did exactly I’m still, to this day, unsure. But I enjoyed flipping them up and down into various positions & combinations & seeing if I could detect how they changed the outgoing sound. I can feel how the black foot pedal pushed back against the bottom of my foot as I maneuvered it.

THE DINING ROOM…
… My grandmother sat at her chair by the eastward window… The one where her birdfeeder stuck out of the ground. We start a birdwatching journal. This dining room table was the surface of countless Phase 10 games, puzzles, plates of homemade holiday fare – rolls with soft butter… small cubes of cheddar cheese and dill pickles cut into shortened spears.

THE UPSTAIRS BATHROOM…
… Bathing with the memorable smell of what I can identify now as caress soap. I remember the bottle of shampoo in my mind – a spring green color with a floral label. If I ever find it in a grocery store, I’ll buy it & forever keep a bottle in my bathroom just to take the occasional whiff.

I can go on and on and on… For some reason, I feel that I need to write down all my memories. Just like you can’t sleep with a growing to-do list building in your mind. The only way to be unburdened is by putting it on paper. Even after all this writing, however, I don’t feel unburdened… I feel like the selling of the farm is selling my memories.

I don’t want it sold… I could buy it myself and keep it forever. But I know… I know… Logically… Owning or not owning the farm won’t change the memories. Owning the setting won’t keep them alive in my mind and heart any more than not owning it.

Maybe keeping the farm would be a detriment to my memories … Like seeing someone in a casket after they died. Once that happens, all of your memories of their face now includes that one disturbing snapshot of them postmortem.
The next day at the farm, I’m walking through the house. I’m not a clumsy person, but I keep dropping things. My keys… my phone… it’s noticeable & distracting. I throw these words out into the universe: “Gramma! Are you trying to tell me something?! Should I keep the house? Am I supposed to buy the farm… Is this a sign? Give me a sign! “
I later told this story to my hairdresser as I was getting my hair done. I told her about constantly & uncharacteristically dropping my phone. She said my grandmother may have been telling me something. The message maybe: “I can’t hold onto everything.”
I can’t hold onto everything.

At the open house, we had 48 groups through… Not four… Not 40… Not 48 people… 48 groups through the house in two hours.

I only cried once when super kind Realtor looked at me square in the eyes and said, “Wow… Selling a family member’s home must be really hard.” Yes… It is… Very hard.

Maybe it’s best that I don’t know who buys the house… Like going to a funeral and not seeing the body one last time. If you do, it’s that version of them that sticks – the one without the laugh lines or the hair done just right. A body without a soul is almost unrecognizable as the person you once so intimately knew.
The house… stripped of the organ… stripped of the dated light that hung in the entryway that reminded me of a bug… stripped of birdfeeder outside of the dining room window… a house carcass stripped to the bones isn’t the one I was meant to see. I’m supposed to remember a different version – the one with the pineapple patterned brown couch and round table with African violets maxing out the surface space and umbrella & wooden cane propped in the corner under the light switch.

I want to… But I can’t hold onto everything… So, at the open house, I talk to the people and answer their questions. I cringe at the one buyer who asked if there are, any township regulations that would prevent him from having his butcher shop business there. “You have to check with the township” is what I said… But I wanted to say is, “No! You can’t behead pigs in a bloody apron in the same room that my grandmother stores her fragile ceramics!”
Time has moved on and now I have to catch up myself. She doesn’t store ceramics there; she stored them there.
Nine offers are submitted with more promised to come in. One offer is selected. I don’t know the buyer, but I find out that she has a horse & plans on getting a pony for her daughter. Maybe it would be a silver pony like my cousin Ashley‘s – creatively named Silver, by the way. Maybe it would be a 13-hand sorrel pony like my first horse, Cierra. It would feel good to see horses in grandma’s pasture again.

Closing is in less than 30 days. I can’t hold onto everything. I can set it down, or it will slip away but either way – I can’t hold on. The new owner may or may not paint the brick… She may or may not use the room to store ceramics… She may or may not oil the squeaky pantry door.
I don’t set it down.
Nor do I let it slip away.
Instead, I give her the keys… and my blessing to make it her own. The pony in the pasture won’t be Silver nor Cierra, but there will be horses in the pasture once again.
It will always be my grandma‘s house, but no longer for sale… No longer an empty carcass of a house, but rather a second life of a home.

EPILOGUE
Two days before my grandmother’s very first heavenly birthday, the final documents were signed removing the family farm legally from my family’s possession.
Meeting the buyer wasn’t like seeing a dead body at a funeral. On the contrary… meeting her was healing. She wore opal earrings – a likely sign of her birthstone. I ask her & confirm that she shares a birthday month with me, my mom & my grandmother.
She looks forward to meeting my family – her new neighbors – & wants to be “the type of neighbor from whom you can borrow a cup of sugar.”
She makes homemade pies & is especially proud of her crust. I tell her that my grandma made really great homemade pies.
She gets my phone number & has since shared pictures of how well her Ollie’s carpet scrubber did getting the ceramics paint out of the upstairs hallway carpet. I’m glad to hear this & show the pictures to my parents.
She also shares pictures of the new living room color – now teal. Although teal is my current favorite color, I’m not so excited to hear this & won’t be sharing those pictures with my mom.
The buyer is open & kind. She wouldn’t mind at all if I asked to sit quietly for a bit in her barn’s hayloft or maybe even recreated the Easter picture on the front porch… her front porch… with my now-grown siblings & cousins.
There will be horses in the pasture AND scents of homemade pie crust wafting from my grandmother’s kitchen once again…

I’m Always Here & Happy to Help!

Katina Hunter
Team Lead for the Katina Hunter Team with Coldwell Banker
724-888-9020