first things first.

First, things first. My name is K.K. and I live in just outside of a small town in rural North Dakota. The town is about 40 miles northwest of the sprawling metropolis Fargo. Ya sure ya betcha! I live on a 6 acre farmstead with my husband, our three dogs, three horses, three barn cats and a Shetland pony. The house we currently live in was ‘built’ in 1920. I say ‘built’ because we actually aren't’ really sure when it was built. And from the information we got from a fellow who lived there for 40 years, it sounds like the house was pieced together from a few other buildings. The current house is about 1,500 square feet and in true old farm house fashion not very well laid out. The rooms are small, and some ‘updates’ have been done… poorly. The main floor heaves all over the place, nothing is square, dust blows in 12 months of the year, and to say it is poorly insulated is an understatement.

Our current home...if you look closely you will see flying monkeys in the background.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my house. But there are just too many problems with it. We've had a leaky roof, there is questionable wiring,  frozen and busted pipes in the ‘laundry room and the previous owners had dogs, which isn’t a problem, but they have done some damage to the house, then cheap laminate flooring was thrown on top of it and now my dogs think that the kitchen is their personal bathroom. It’s disgusting. They are house trained in every other house…except mine. I've tried everything under the sun to get rid of the problem, but it’s deep in the wood and then covered up with thin flooring. We would have to completely rip out the flooring to fix it, and then before we put new flooring in, we’d have to replace the beams in the basement, and while we were in the basement, we’d probably have to dig a new basement because ours is damp. We have four… yes FOUR sump pumps in the basement and they are running all the time when the ground isn’t frozen. People’s eyes bug out of their head when I tell them we have four. They thought they had it bad with two sump pumps.

Now we were faced with the decision of what to do with the house. We could stick hundreds of thousands of dollars into fixing it up, adding an addition, and attaching a garage, but at the end of the day we could put all that into the house and would still have a house that doesn't make much sense. So we played with the idea of building a new house on the property. We weren't sure if that was the route we wanted to pursue because everyone says building a house is the leading cause of divorce in this country. But we found a builder that we liked, and settled on a plan that we liked. I say settled because it wasn't exactly the house of my dreams, but it would be just fine. I had been on the phone with them a few times and everything seemed to be coming into place…until they told me “oh, you know? I talked to my boss, and we decided that we don’t want to build outside of Fargo… We've found that our customer service just isn't up to par when we have crews building so far out of town...” and blah, blah, blah, excuses, excuses, excuses.  So I called a few more builders and no one was willing to build out in our area. Well no one in our price range that is.

So what the heck were we going to do? Enter Fargo flood buyout homes. Fargo is located on the Red River, which is the only river in North America that flows north. DON’T quote me on the fact that it is the only one that does, but I know that it does flow north. We have had some MAJOR flooding. I've had friends that had to evacuate their homes and then lost them to the river.

I've filled my share of sandbags...Okay so this is about 1,000,000 of them and I didn't fill ALL of them...

I've helped build sandbag dikes, and I've filled my share of sandbags. When the flood is a coming, everyone gets together to try and save their city. But with the massive flooding we've had in previous years, the city of Fargo was looking to a more permanent solution to it’s citizens building temporary sand bag dikes. So in recent years they have been buying homes located along the river, with plans to build a permanent diversion to keep the rest of the city safe. I’m not sure if you are familiar with the topography of North Dakota, but it’s pretty flat on the eastern side. When the river is flooding, it can just kind of keep going.  So the city and county has been offering residents along the river, 110% of the assessed value of their home to buy out their property. Then the city or county holds auctions for people to buy the buildings to salvage or to have moved. It gives people the opportunity to get a heck of a deal on a ‘new’ house while recycling a building in the process. Many of these homes go on to become lake homes, or hunting cabins, they also become farm houses, while some can’t be moved or aren't worth moving so everything inside is salvaged.

We had played with the idea of buying a flood home a few years ago, but it just wasn't the right time. Well we decided that maybe now is the right time. Follow along on my journey to get my ‘flood house’ moved out to my farmstead! It’s been stressful, but I keep telling myself…it will be worth it, it will be worth it.