The Banana Belt

Sexton Road is in West Sebastopol, in what we were told is the “banana belt” of western Sonoma County.

This information came from a very chatty handyman we ultimately decided not to hire, which means it may be either local wisdom or something he invented while standing in our driveway.

According to him, the banana belt is a miraculous pocket of weather where you can grow anything. 

Anything.

Bananas?

Probably not.

But the general idea was persuasive.

The property already had pears, apples, walnuts, blackberries, roses, grapes, cactus, more apples, an Asian pear, and a plum tree. It was less a yard than an unsupervised fruit bin.

And Sexton Road sits just off Bodega Highway, the road that carries you west toward Bodega Bay and the ocean, which is only about thirteen miles away. Around us were vineyards, apple orchards, sustainable vegetable farms, roadside stands, and restaurants serving things like rockfish tacos, breakfast polenta covered in edible flowers, local honey, artisan bread, and breakfast wine.

Breakfast wine was especially reassuring.

Clearly, we had arrived somewhere civilized.

We had been told the property needed some work, but it appeared fundamentally sound.

Livable.

A little tired.

In need of love.

This was perfect, because we were also tired and in need of love, and therefore seemed well matched.

The orchard needed attention. The greenhouse required repairs before anyone could safely enter it. Some trees needed pruning. Some structures needed improving. There were areas of the property where nature had clearly resumed ownership.

But none of it looked impossible.

We could live there first.

We could explore.

We could drive north to Willits, wander through the redwoods, visit the coast, learn the towns, eat the breakfast flowers, and take our time deciding what the house should eventually become.

There would be no need to rush.

This belief would not age well.

The location felt nearly perfect.

The high school was ten minutes away.

The junior high was nine.

The hardware store was ten.

Downtown Sebastopol was ten.

Santa Rosa was thirteen.

The bay was twelve.

The ocean was thirteen.

The nearest farm stand was six.

Everything in our new life appeared to be ten minutes away, including produce, lumber, teenagers, and the Pacific Ocean.

The house also faced south—or south enough—and because of the strange curve of California in this region, that meant we were essentially facing toward the ocean.

Each morning and evening, fog rolled over the hills to the south and spilled into the valley below us.

It drifted through the trees, softened the landscape, and coated everything in moisture.

This was deeply important to Erin.

Erin likes moisture.

Erin likes clouds.

Erin likes the atmospheric suggestion that rain may arrive at any moment and remain for several months.

Western Sonoma County also gets actual rain.

Lots of it.

This was one of the major reasons Erin and her parents pushed so hard for us to purchase the property. After years of drought, wildfire smoke, intense sun, and the ever-present Colorado sensation that the entire landscape might ignite while you were taking out the recycling, fog and rainfall felt luxurious.

The property was originally listed for around $1.1 million.

We first decided not to make an offer.

Then we deliberated, reconsidered, panicked, fantasized, calculated, and eventually decided there was no harm in offering $900,000.

There was, of course, another buyer.

There is always another buyer.

The other buyer was offering full price.

We were not.

This seemed like a meaningful disadvantage.

But the property was being sold under difficult circumstances. The owner, Ann, had moved into memory care, and her niece was managing the sale. The costs of Ann’s care were beginning, and the family needed the house sold quickly.

This created an opportunity.

Our strategy was simple and, in retrospect, astonishingly bold.

We would offer $900,000, close in ten days, and conduct only well and septic inspections.

For everything else, we would rely on the seller’s disclosures.

The disclosures would be our guide.

The disclosures would tell us what we needed to know.

The disclosures would protect us from surprises.

Please remember these sentences.

At the time, however, the logic felt almost spiritual.

What could possibly prevent us from acquiring this small Eden?

The property had been neglected, yes, but neglect was not the same as ruin. We could restore it. We could care for it. We could make stewardship our purpose.

We would become sextons in the original sense: caretakers of sacred grounds.

The land would be our church.

The orchard would be our congregation.

The greenhouse would be repaired at some later, financially responsible date.

And the whole place would offer a life utterly unlike the one we were leaving behind in Lyons and Boulder: less expensive, less frantic, closer to the earth, farther from disappointment.

Sexton Road also appeared to offer the possibility of going partly off-grid.

It had its own water.

It used propane.

We could add solar.

We had a greenhouse.

We could grow food.

We could collect rain.

We could become self-sufficient.

We could live freely and independently, relying on the land and our own ingenuity.

We had no meaningful experience doing any of this.

But this seemed like a detail.

The more expensive the outside world became, the more seductive the fantasy of self-sufficiency appeared.

At some point, “living off the grid” stopped sounding like hardship and began sounding like freedom.

We still assumed we had no chance against the full-price offer.

Tom and Robin, however, were adamant that we remain in the game. They suggested we raise our offer, perhaps to $950,000, and use our ability to close quickly as leverage.

Of all the properties Grey and I had visited during our tour of California, Sexton Road was only the second place that felt genuinely special.

Not merely attractive as a structure.

Not merely affordable by California standards.

Special as a place. 

There was something about the valley, the trees, the fog, the slope of the land, the quiet, and the way the property seemed removed from the world without being far from anything.

The house itself was humble.

This was how we described it.

“Humble” is a useful word in real estate because it can mean small, dated, oddly built, neglected, or something you are actively trying not to examine too closely.

But the house could wait.

The place was what mattered.

This would be our new location, our new project, and our future.

Then we received the news.

Our $900,000 offer, with us covering certain expenses and closing quickly, had been accepted over the full-price offer.

The other buyers needed three months.

We needed ten days and almost no inspections.

Speed and ignorance had prevailed.

We had purchased Sexton Road for $900,000.

It was essentially all the money from the sale of our Colorado house.

But we would have no mortgage.

This changed everything.

We began calculating.

No mortgage payment.

Insurance costs cut almost in half.

No Porsche payment.

No Porsche insurance.

No more Colorado heating bills that could reach five hundred dollars a month in winter.

No more cooling costs.

No more water bills.

No more snow.

No more 103-degree days when the outdoor furniture became too hot to touch and sleeping was impossible. 

In one dramatic move, we estimated we could reduce our monthly expenses by as much as $6,000.

That was roughly $70,000 to $72,000 a year.

An entire income.

Without earning more, we would effectively be making more simply by no longer shoveling so much money out the door.

This was, to me, perhaps the most seductive part of the entire plan.

The property was beautiful.

The fog was romantic.

The orchard was meaningful.

But savings were intoxicating.

For one brief moment, everything in the world seemed right.

We had purchased our forever home.

We had escaped the mortgage.

We were moving toward the ocean.

We would live among fruit trees.

We would become the sort of people who knew when plums were ripe.

And as we rushed to pack our house in Lyons, we could almost forgive the mounting tension, the urgency, the exhaustion, the fighting, and the increasingly fragile state of the family.

Soon, we told ourselves, everything would settle.

Soon, we would be saving money.

Soon, the fog would roll in.

Soon, we would become different people.

Meanwhile, Sava was going through an enormous upheaval of her own. She and her boyfriend, Kelly, had bought a rabbit together - without asking us. He had also given her a promise ring. They spent nearly every possible moment together during our final days in Colorado, becoming more attached precisely as the deadline for separation approached.

The rabbit, unfortunately, had not been included in the moving plan.

Neither, technically, had Kelly. 

When we first began discussing California, Sava had been one of the strongest advocates for leaving. She was done with Colorado, she said. She wanted a new beginning.

But by the time the move became real, California no longer felt like a fresh start.

It felt like something being taken from her.

She was leaving her boyfriend, carrying a promise ring, and worrying about a shared custody rabbit that had no obvious future home.

The move that had once represented escape now felt like injury.

This made the final days more emotional, more volatile, and far more complicated than the version of the story in which a family cheerfully loads a truck and heads west.

Still, once we were finally on the road, the trip itself felt extraordinary.

We were driving west.

Toward the ocean.

Toward green hills.

Toward vineyards, fog, fruit trees, and breakfast wine.

Toward a house we had barely inspected.

Toward Sexton Road.

Toward our new life.

Everything ahead of us felt possible.

Which, as it turns out, is not always the same thing as good.