For now we still have two homes, a log home on 10 acres in the Berkshires and less than a quarter acre in the Villages.
Up north we have a 50 horse power diesel Kubota tractor, a Gravely zero turn mower, a push mower, chain saws, leaf blowers, a weed wacker, two all terrain vehicles, a log splitter, a brush hog, a York rake, a snow blower, and of course a plow set up for the tractor. Maintaining the property is one of our primary activities and we still love it for now, but it gets harder every year as we age, especially the winter stuff. The payback is that we can spend a weekend at our home and never have a car go by our driveway or see anyone, except the occasional moose, deer, coyote etc...
In Florida there are sooooo many fun things to do, we don't want to wast any time doing yard work so we hire people to take care of it for us. Weeding the garden and pruning the hedges is our only yard work task and we enjoy the pruning, but not the weeding. Our biggest adjustment in Florida is the lack of privacy we are used to. We found a house with an overgrown preserve in the back yard. I imagine the view from our back yard was spectacular 20 years ago, but now it still provides privacy and we didn't have to pay a huge premium for a view. We love the sounds of the frogs, birds and other critters coming from the preserve. The houses on either side are much closer than we would prefer so we planted podocarpus privacy hedges on either side of our birdcage/pool as a buffer. The hedges provide nice visual privacy but don't block conversations or music. For now, it is not a problem as one of our neighbors is almost never in Florida and the other never goes outdoors, but things change.
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