the old Anderson place

I swear sometimes I live in a bubble.

A week ago, we knew nothing about the house in the country and so we went on a treasure hunt. First stop was to the keepers of the stats, at the Yolo County tax assessor, first upstairs to look at the plot maps and then down to the records department where we tried fruitlessly to wade through the maze of recorded deeds.

Uh oh. The main screen disappeared. How do you pull up the deed again when you click on the names? You really can't just enter the address and have it pull up the property's history? Your files are really organized by family name?  You really charge $10 for the first copy?

On the 2nd trip to the health department (the first time was to drop off a well water sample for testing), we were looking for past permits to piece together some history on the place. The LLC that bought and flipped it has no data, and it was BofA who sold it to them, so we were pretty much on our own. Things were looking a little grim until a man came in to drop off a permit request.

You want to find something out around here, just ask a farmer. It turns out this random guy is in the septic business with all of his brothers and their wives. He knew the place, well enough to tell us all about the land and placement of the well and septic. It turns out he dug the new leach fields in 2006. We couldn't believe our luck. Really.

He's also a volunteer firefighter and has lived here all his life, so he had lots of advice on how to research the history of the place. Just ask old Mr. Krull, who is a neighbor to the south. We will definitely do that.

The permit gal said she couldn't divulge many details since we didn't own the place, but there was an original well company name listed, and she shared that. The hubs rang them up on Tuesday, and  reached a man whose father and he dug the well in 1985 and who still had the files. He had all sorts of information about the well, the pump, other nearby properties and the family.

Now that's progress! The hubs and he met today out at the old Anderson place and talked an hour more, and it confirmed our suspicions that the house next door was an Anderson house originally and is now slated to be sold separately.

A solid family of brothers lived here, and the kids after that, for over sixty years. Their paint is on the woodwork here and their patches are on the foundation.

Finally! A proper introduction.