Welcome to Garner Ridge: A Different Pace
For a long time, I thought I knew what our “forever home” looked like.
After 38 years in healthcare—and a second cancer diagnosis—my husband, Keith, decided it was time to retire. We moved into a beautiful new home in a gated subdivision with a lake. It was new construction, lovely, and by every reasonable measure, exactly the kind of place where you settle in and stay.
At least that was the plan.
It didn't take long before Keith started talking about the country.
He wanted more space. More quiet. Less traffic. He wanted to be able to walk outside and feel like we were truly away from everything. We talked about it, looked at properties online and entertained the idea of what life outside town might look like.
But talking about moving and actually moving are two very different things.
Then, quite unexpectedly, a realtor showed our house.
And we got an offer.
Our first reaction wasn't excitement.
It was panic.
Suddenly this hypothetical conversation we'd been having about moving to the country had become very real, very quickly. We had sold—or were about to sell—the home we thought we'd be living in for years, and we had absolutely no idea where we were going.
We had been watching properties online, though, and there was one I wanted to see immediately. I had a feeling it wouldn't stay on the market long.
So we went.
And almost from the moment we arrived, we knew.
Finding the Ridge
There are houses you have to talk yourself into.
You start mentally moving walls. You decide you can live with the kitchen. You tell yourself the location isn't that inconvenient. You make a list of pros and cons and try to determine whether the good outweighs the bad.
Garner Ridge wasn't like that.
We loved the style of the house. We loved the setting and the location. There was a pond, pasture, a greenhouse and even a chicken coop.
Everything about it seemed to fit a life we hadn't quite realized we were looking for.
We didn't have to imagine what the property could become.
We could already see ourselves there.
It felt like our dream home.
And somehow, in the midst of an unexpected offer, a hurried house search and a considerable amount of panic, we'd found it.
View of the house and greenhouse coming up the driveway
More Than a House
What I didn't understand then was that we weren't simply buying another house.
We were changing our lives.
Garner Ridge has become one of those rare places I genuinely don't want to leave. When I'm away, I find myself looking forward to getting home. There is always something happening here, although “happening” has taken on a very different meaning.
It might be collecting eggs. Watching something bloom in the greenhouse. Seeing what has wandered up to the pond. Sitting outside longer than we intended. Starting another project. Cooking dinner. Watching a hummingbird discover the feeder. Or simply realizing how wonderfully quiet it is.
Our days haven't become empty.
They've become full of different things.
Recently, VIP Jackson Magazine featured our home and titled the story “A Different Pace.”
I can't think of a better description.
Because Garner Ridge isn't really about 16 acres, a house, a pond, a greenhouse or a chicken coop.
It's about the pace of life we've found here.
Farm fresh eggs from our “ladies”
Welcome to Garner Ridge
That's what I want this blog to be about.
I'll certainly share the house. And the chickens. And the garden. There will be food and gatherings around the table, decorating projects, fishing, travel, things I'm loving and almost certainly a few projects that seemed like much better ideas before we started them.
But underneath all of it will be something bigger.
This is a story about this particular season of life—about realizing that sometimes the plan you thought was permanent isn't, and that what comes next can be even better than what you had planned.
We thought we'd found our forever home once before.
Maybe “forever” isn't really the point.
Maybe it's finding the place that feels exactly right for the life you're living now.
For us, that's Garner Ridge.
And these days, whenever I have to leave, I mostly find myself looking forward to coming home.
Jolene, our Great Pyrenees, standing guard