I know it may be difficult to believe, but our home really is on the horizon. I apologize profusely for the hiatus; we have much to fill you in on. But first, a very important pond update. Drumroll, please! This is what we’ve all been waiting for, right? How long did it take us to fill?

One year, 10 months, and 10 days. The first water we collected in our pond was July 29, 2024. The day the water level first rose to the main drain was June 8, 2026. A very wet April was largely to thank; the land saw more than 7 inches of rain that month—nearly twice the average April rainfall in Iowa. The first 3.5” of rain in April brought the pond level back up to where it had been the previous August. Every subsequent storm brought slow but steady rise. Ready for some pics?

I had every intention of this being the final pond post; however, as with many things on the homestead, plans change. I initially wanted to talk about colloidal clay, pH, alkalinity, jar tests, flocculants, pond stocking, pond dye, and more, but that will all have to wait. In due time, my friends. We’ve shuffled up our priorities list yet again, and we’ve moved the house build to the very top.

Since last fall, we’ve changed gears in a big way. This whole thing began more than a decade ago, and we’re not getting any younger. We realized we’re now a few short years away from being empty-nesters, and our needs/wants on the house front have totally changed. We don’t need a giant, empty house to clean and maintain, nor do we want the huge mortgage to go along with it.

As our patience for saving for the ever-growing cost of the house build waned, so did our desire for most of the things we originally wanted. We realized we’d rather have a smaller, shorter mortgage and the more modest house that affords. We didn’t lie dormant over the winter, no; we spoke with our builder and architect and redid our plans again (third time’s a charm—so “they” say).

We edited things way, way down, consolidated the “must haves” list, and unburdened ourselves from the thought of taking on a soul-crushing, 30-year mortgage in our forties. We have one of those builders who always says he’ll “do whatever [we] want,” and he means it. He penciled us in for a Spring 2026 build, and we waited for a new bid.

Yes, I realize we’re already past Spring 2026, but what construction project doesn’t run behind? After three months of sitting in a stack on someone’s desk over the winter, our plans still hadn’t been looked at by the structural engineer our builder normally uses. So, as any good builder would do, he found another structural engineer who was familiar with insulated concrete form (ICF) builds and could give his stamp of approval in a shorter amount of time. After a lot of back and forth and the mysterious disappearance of that engineer from the firm, another three months had passed and that engineering company withdrew from the project. It’s not anything that can really be helped, and it’s not worth getting worked up about before we even start. So instead, we go back to the original engineer with our tails tucked, hoping he takes pity on us.

In the meantime, we’ll try to get a revised bid so we can secure a construction loan. We originally purchased the land in the spring of 2015, we built the first driveway and Morton building in 2022, we repaired the pond dam and built the second driveway in 2024, and here we are in 2026 finally planning to build the house! It’s almost difficult to believe we’re actually here. Our (my—if we’re being honest) dream-home binder has grown a ton over the last decade, but we’re now armed with a lot of pre-decided answers to a slew of unasked questions about choices. We know what counters we want, what faucets we want, flooring, paint, you name it. Everyone likes to tell us how difficult building a house is and how much stress it puts on a relationship, but we’re ready. We’ve had a lot of time to prepare, and this step feels really overdue.

Since our last post, we’ve acquired a drone.

We also want to set up a couple trail cameras to put together some time-lapse footage of the house build, and of course, we’ll still take our token progress photos from particular vantage points throughout the whole thing too.

Ok, I just couldn’t resist one more series of pond photos. We’re completely enamored with it actually being full!

Stay tuned for lots—and I mean LOTS—of house updates. Buckle up, because we’re taking you all on this ride with us, and I don’t care if you get motion sick; slap on a scopolamine patch, pop a sublingual ondansetron, and get ready for some twists, turns, and probably choppy waters.