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Here is more on Allison’s farm and the backstory..i am working on her town home for now but she plans to keep the farm and I hope to be a part of helping her restore it further and even the barns…. Barn restoration is much needed throughout the Midwest I have found out and very expensive.. God saves the barns!  Seriously, what a national treasure they are! But for now I just want you to hear the love this woman has for her family farm.  Roots matter y’all.  Her connection to this land just oozes so i want you to hear it in her own words.

“I grew up in a rural community in central Illinois. My Dad was an Engineer for CAT, but we lived in the country and went to a small church filled with the best salt-of-the-earth farmers. Close friends of ours lived on their family’s farm that had been passed down from generation to generation. We didn’t have a tv. I grew up reading the Little House on the Prairie books and dreaming that I was Laura on the prairie. I wanted roots, I wanted land. I knew about our family’s farm way up in Wisconsin. My Grandma was raised in Eau Claire and she could remember taking the sleigh from town out to her Grandparents farm (our farm). They had to stop halfway to water the horses and get fresh warm bricks for their toes. When I was young I did visit here, and I used to ask my Dad if there was any chance that the farm would come down our side of the family. (It had been passed down from father to son since homestead, but my family line was through a daughter, not a son.) I can remember him patting me and saying “No. There are too many Olsons.”

Family picture around 1911. My great-grandma Marie (pronounced Mary is sitting in front of the door with my grandma Olive Harriet on her lap.

This is the homestead document signed by U. S. Grant. His signature is the large one near the bottom.

“I talked about the farm when Glen and I were dating. My love for old farms, family history, land and all that beauty drove us to look for the perfect place throughout our early marriage. Glen is an entrepreneur.  He is the hardest working man I know and we moved all over, working and building our family and businesses. We have lived in Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Illinois again, Minnesota and finally Wisconsin. While in Minnesota he started a company called MyNextHome. It was originally a FSBO realty company. We started flipping houses the hard way. Living in them while doing the work ourselves and raising four small kiddos. We would move in, start renovating, work through to the end, God would bless us with a sale, we would move into the next house and start again. Our farm was our 19th home in 17 years. Then we got a phone call from my Dad’s cousin. His folks had passed away and they were going to auction off the family farm. I remember telling him “DO NOT AUCTION IT OFF!  We are coming down!!” In 2007 we moved to Eau Claire and into my dream home.

The Mills family . . . Chelsea 22, Lane 21, Gabi 18, Aidan 15

This little city instantly felt like home to us. After a couple years Glen was renovating properties to use as rentals and he remade the MyNextHome name into a properties and consulting company with a rental property side, a contracting side and a realty side. His company has grown leaps and bounds and I am so proud of him!!

         I love this place. Will be so hard to move out. Even for six gas burners and multiple bathrooms. The Farm is where my heart is. ️

And here it is … the farmhouse in town, more progress pictures coming..the open house is coming like a freight train..like two weeks y’all! I will be on a plane to St. Paul soon to help style it out…you midwestern girls watch for details and come see us!