5 reasons we bought a home with acreage

  We downsized our house to afford to live in a home with acreage. The benefits of having room to roam are worth the loss of a few hundred interior square feet. In fact, I just came back from a 30-minute walk where I heard nothing but the sound of leaves rustling in the trees and the chirping of several resident birds. The best part of my morning walk: I never left our property.

My husband and I had long felt that owning a home with acreage was an unattainable dream. Then the homeowners association where we lived got upset that "unauthorized" persons were accessing the community pool in our neighborhood because some residents were leaving the gate propped open. Their solution? Installation of an alarm on the pool gate, which regularly pierced the ambient neighborhood noise we had learned to tune out. That was the day we decided to somehow find a way to live somewhere with space, peace, and quiet.
As we searched for a property we quickly realized that we could afford to either buy a house with the square footage we were used to or have the breathing room we craved in the form of increased acreage -- we couldn't afford both. So we downsized the house and opted for acreage and haven't once regretted our decision to trade some square footage for more acreage.
We had always loved the sleepy little town of Wimberley, Texas, and moving there would put us equidistant between Austin (where we were living) and San Antonio (where we like to visit). Five months after we first heard the shrill of the pool gate alarm we used part of my inheritance (a modest one -- I'm no trust fund baby) to put a 50-percent down payment on our little house in the woods on just under 5 acres.
Downsizing was a freeing experience. Here's why.

Outdoor expansion: Since we lost 500 square feet of house space (mostly hallways so we don't miss the lost space too much) we expanded outside of the house where we have ample room for a hot tub, a greenhouse, a hammock , and an area devoted to wildflowers where we plan to provide a monarch butterfly way station.
Privacy: We see trees as far as the eye can see out of every window. When I looked out the kitchen window in our old house, I saw my neighbor's laundry room window since the houses in our typical suburban neighborhood had a mere 6 or 8 feet between them. Now we can sit on our front porch and watch the road without being seen ourselves. We like our neighbors very much, but we can't see them and they can't see us. We all like it that way.
Room to entertain: Every year we hold our annual braai (rhymes with "sky"), where my husband, who is from South Africa, cooks traditional South African fare. We were able to significantly expand the guest list for this annual party to include our new Wimberley friends along with many other friends we have had for years. We built a rock wall with an outdoor grilling area at one end so we have a designated section for the annual braai; this area is larger than the entire lot that our former house occupied.
Wildlife: We have deer, butterflies, raccoons, squirrels, foxes, turkeys, the occasional porcupine (not so fun), turtles, and many birds (including the white-winged dove, greater roadrunner, scissor-tailed flycatcher, barn swallow, hummingbird, red robin, blue jay, warbler, painted bunting, black-crested titmouse, and mockingbird, which is the state bird of Texas). Our pets enjoy 5 acres on which to frolic and bring us gifts of things they find -- some not always pleasant.
Silence: Out here it is quiet. Really quiet. No traffic noise. No car alarms. No ambulance sirens. No loud music, except occasionally from the two professional musicians who live on our street, which we consider a bonus.

 Home, to us, is almost sacred. It's a safe haven, a retreat, a place to relax and to recharge. Our move to a house with acreage is the best thing we could have done for ourselves mentally and spiritually. A little unforeseen bonus: We no longer spend money on as many weekend mini-breaks to get away from it all. We already are.