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Several years later, the adventure continued. A fleet of large trucks and vans drove into a field a quarter mile down the road from us, and several days later, a new farm magically appeared, complete with horses, barns, wooden fences, and a house. Yes, the house took a little longer to complete than a few days, but the transformation was almost immediate. From the knoll on the hill near our farmhouse, you could now see yet another house not too far away. At one point, Audrie came running into the house. “Jack, you’re not going to believe this! Come and look at this house!” We drove up the road and pulled over at the entrance. The new farm house looked surprisingly familiar; in fact, the floor plan and style so common to post-antebellum Virginia farm dwellings was identical to ours. “They’re building our house! I found out it was the couple we met that day we moved in.” What can you say without being rude? The value of land is obvious on one level, but our farm is so much more than simple economics. Beyond the dying septic system, the peeling paint, the sagging fences that need constant mending, the foundation that cost a small fortune to repair, the barns that can’t be saved, and the other countless problems, there are daffodils that bloom like clockwork that were planted perhaps a hundred years ago, there are fruit trees that are discovered by accident, there are wild finches that sing to our domestic finches on the screen porch, and there is a spirit of time and peace in our old sagging house that doesn’t inhabit new homes.