What we didn’t know at the time of our first visit to the Wade Fitzwater Farm was that I was pregnant!
As the weeks flew by that Summer we made several weekend trips back to the farm to pick up the surveyor’s plats and to further explore the various parcels that would be for sale.
Each trip I was more and more affected by all day “morning sickness” and frequently had to ask Jim to stop along the side of the road for me to either puke or pee or both. But we had SO much to be excited about! Having another baby and the possibility of finally finding our country property!
Whenever we visited the farm, we would always stop at the farmhouse to check in with the family. They shared family stories with us as well as information about the area in general and its history. We also learned more about how they were planning to sell off the property. An auction had been scheduled for the end of July. The auction would be open to the public. The structure of the auction would be that each parcel would be auctioned off individually. Then after they had gotten winning bids on all the individual parcels - the auctioneer would offer the entire acreage to a single buyer for the sum of all the winning bids.
Jim and I had secured the funds for the purchase of property from our home equity line and eagerly anticipated the auction. We tried to figure out how much we should expect to pay per acre for this type of property. No one could really give us much guidance and pieces we had looked at in the past had varied widely in their per acre costs. In the end, we looked at some of the smallest parcels and figured we would just go with the Que Sera Sera approach that we had been using all along. We would bid until we reached our established not to exceed number and see what we could do!
The weekend of the auction we stayed again with Victor and Sally. Paula and Greg joined us. A parade of cars and trucks kicked up billows of dust as people made their way over the road up to Fitzwater Farm that Saturday morning. We arrived and joined the crowd of folks milling around in the farmhouse yard. We hadn’t been standing there long when I heard someone calling my name. It was Arnice, sitting inside the house at the open kitchen window. “Where you been, girl?” he asked. “We thought you’d be up here to join us for breakfast!”. We chatted for a few minutes more, with him asking how I was feeling (by this time they knew I was pregnant) and telling me that they really hoped we would be some of the people who would own a piece of the farm by the end of the day.
My memories of the actual auction are pretty fuzzy. I remember being hot, queasy and excited.
The parcels we had decided to bid on came up early because they auctioned the parcels smallest to largest. Jim made our bids and we “won” the two parcels we hoped to buy. Then we waited. All the rest of the individual parcels were auctioned. Then, the final phase of the auction began. The auctioneer explained to all gathered what we had already been told - that he would now open up bidding on the approximately 500 total acres to a single bidder. The bidding happened quickly and the gavel dropped.
A single buyer had purchased all the acres being sold off.
The man giving the winning bid was someone we had met before in regard to other properties, Paul W. Paul was a local realtor (as well as wearing many other hats) and a real character. Jim took off after Paul to see if we could buy the parcels we had bid on from him. But Paul was gone. We left the auction feeling sad and discouraged, but we hadn’t given up yet.
For the next couple of weeks Jim tried to contact Paul.Jim left messages that were very specific about what parcels we were interested in and emphasized that we could pay him what we had bid in the auction. We were hoping that would entice him since we had actually bid the highest per acre dollar amount of any of the bidders in the auction on any of the available parcels! Finally, Paul called us one evening and said he had one parcel left on the Fitzwater Farm and if we wanted it, we had to tell him by the next day. He identified which parcel it was and we pulled out our copies of the surveyor’s plats. The parcel was almost double the acreage we had bid on. It was a part of the farm that Gloria called “The Point”. She had told us that her family came out to that part of the farm for picnics and family gatherings because of the beautiful views. Its borders included a portion of the state line between Virginia and West Virginia and abutted the George Washington National Forest.
Jim and I had not even considered this parcel. We had thought that all of these attributes would mean that it would be so desirable that it would be out of our reach financially. We had only looked at it once or twice during our visits. Paul told us what he was asking for this parcel. It was a little beyond what we had budgeted, but not by too much. We told him we couldn’t give him an answer by the next day but that we would go up as soon as possible to see it again and would be back in touch.
So we made another trip over the roads that were becoming so familiar. We talked all the way over about our dreams of what this place could be for us and our family and friends. We arrived at the farm and drove out over the pastures to “The Point.” Honestly, it was pretty much a foregone conclusion by the time we opened our car doors and stepped out onto the grass that we were standing on what would become our little piece of
Almost Heaven.
We closed on the property at the end of August 1990. And our adventure began!
