Beautiful blue skies and sun top it all off, although we are supposed to have rain tomorrow. We need the rain, though, so I can hardly complain.

Fall leaves seem prettier here than in most years, so that’s a plus, too. I’m not sure what combination of our very dry summer and the current weather caused it, but we seem to have a lot more red and yellow leaves instead of the usual brown and gold.

Yep, fall in Southwest Missouri. Can you tell that I’m getting myself psyched up for winter? Love those four seasons! Except when snow and ice are involved…

Gains on Your House are Protected

Here in this rural area, I do taxes in the winter as well as real estate all year long. Many times I have people, often times older folks who didn’t pay much for their house, come in petrified about paying taxes on the gain on the sale.

So here’s a simple way to remember the basics. Ask yourself:
1. Was this place my main home for at least two out of the last five years? It doesn’t have to be two years in a row, just two years total.
2. Is this the first main home I’ve sold in the last two years?

If you can say yes to both of these questions, you’re pretty much good to go. You get to exclude $250,000 of gain if you’re single, $500,000 of gain if you’re married filing joint. As a matter of fact, you don’t even have to put anything on your tax return about the sale.

Of course, if you have a loss, you get zip. Nada. Nothing, except true sympathy from me and none at all from the IRS.

Now of course, this being involved with the IRS, there are many and various nuances about divorce, deployment, property used for business, etc. Here in Southwest Missouri it’s also important to consider whether the home was on a working farm, since the farm part may have a taxable gain while the gain on the home is excluded. Always tell your tax preparer your entire circumstances so they can do their best for you.

But if you’re kind of a “regular” person, living in a “regular” house, paying tax on the gain on the sale of your home is one tax worry you can cross off your list.

Tax disclaimer here: I’m not giving full tax advice on this blog. Instead, I try to highlight some of the basic tax issues that come up in real estate. Always check my information with your own tax preparer to get the most current, accurate tax advice that is best for your personal circumstances.

Dear Seller, I don’t want you to give it away either, since my share of nothing would be, guess what, nothing.

But I do want you to sell the property and get over this hurdle and onward to the next thing in your life. Every month you don’t sell is costing you money, and worse, time. Time you can never get back once you’ve wasted it.

They say real estate is all about relationships, and it is. I would like my real estate relationship with you to be happy, relatively short and very successful. Who knows, we may even become friends! Or we may just remain business acquaintances. Either way is OK.

Hiring a Realtor is a little like hiring an auto mechanic. You want one that’s competent, one you can trust, one you can like. But you hope that your dealings with them will be short and simple!

If you really do want to sell your property, you can call me and request a no-bull estimate of what I think you can get for it and how long it’s likely to take. Call 417-316-1326.

In rural Southwest Missouri, trash day is whatever day you contract with a trash hauler to show up.

There is no city-run trash collection. You’ll need to find a private trash hauling service to take away the trash from your new Southwest Missouri homestead. Don’t be like those old Missouri homesteaders and tip your trash into a hole or burn it! That was probably not quite so bad back in non-plastic days, but not a real good idea now.

You can check the phone book, but many trash haulers are not listed there. As small companies, they’re unlikely to spend money on a Yellow Pages listing.

Instead, ask the neighbors around your new home, or simply scope out the trash barrels as you go by. Many of them will have the name and phone number of the trash hauler.

Call a couple of different ones and get prices. See if they’ll provide a barrel or barrels. Some will, and some will not.

We had an interesting experience with our first trash hauler. They showed up once, brought a very nice big wheeled trash barrel and then didn’t come back. Apparently we were too far off their route after all.

Anyway, when we contacted them about it, they told us to keep the barrel since it was more trouble than it was worth to come back for it. Well, alrighty then! It worked out perfectly. The company that hauls our trash now is very reliable and does not provide barrels anyway.

The moral of that story is: Make sure the trash company knows exactly where you are before they commit! Or maybe the moral is that if you get lucky, you might end up with a free trash barrel. Hmm…

Like many things in the country, trash hauling rules just take some getting used to. Consider it part of your new adventures in rural Southwest Missouri.

Oh, and “curbside” recycling? Fuhgeddaboudit. Come to think of it, forget about curbs, too. We don’t have those out here. Another day, I’ll talk about some of the places you can take your recycling.

Then I spent 20 years in various spots that mostly didn’t have winter.

Now here I am back in the Midwest, but considerably south of Nebraska. Everything here says “home” to my eyes: the trees, the terrain, the grass. But the weather just doesn’t cooperate with what my brain thinks should be happening.

It’s way too warm in the fall and early winter. Lettuce goes strong through late November with a few nights of cover. My peppers don’t give up the ghost until just before then. I dig my garlic beds for planting in late October.

Now, I’m not complaining, mind you. I am adjusting as we spend more time here in Southwest Missouri. It’s certainly nice to plan on picking salad for Thanksgiving.

But my brain still thinks: This is just not right.

However, when you’re working on your Missouri rural real estate search, don’t just think about these well-known areas when trying to find properties with proximity to public land. Missouri has plenty of other public land in the form of “conservation areas”.

These tracts of land are owned by the Missouri Department of Conservation, The Nature Conservancy, and other organizations and managed as conservation areas for various goals. Having them next to or near your land can offer additional room to roam, hunt, fish, bird-watch or simply enjoy having a bit of buffer ground between your land and the next inhabited property.

They start very small, less than 10 acres, and may go up to thousands of acres. Amenities range from absolutely none all the way to maintained trails, restrooms and camp sites.

In Lawrence County, by far the largest is the Robert E. Talbot Conservation Area at 4,360 acres. Talbot started as a small riparian buffer along the Spring River. More and more land was purchased over time to arrive at the current acreage.

Talbot offers hiking, horse and biking trails as well as various fishing ponds & lakes and hunting opportunities. The majority of the land is open, with some native prairie. There is also timber, as well as good bottom land along the river. Some of the bottom land is cropped on shares, and part of the crop is left as wildlife fodder.

You can find out more about Missouri’s conservation areas through the Missouri Department of Conservation website.

I have to take a moment and point out that this website is one of the best state websites I’ve seen. I refer to it all the time for information ranging from horticulture to hunting to forestry.

Anyway, back to the subject. You can start at the MDC home page and explore, or go straight to various information on conservation areas.
Missouri Department of Conservation Home Page
Conservation Areas Atlas (choose a region or county to see a list)
Zoomable Map of Conservation Areas
Prairie Area Maps. This document has great information but just on the prairie areas, not all conservation areas.

Enjoy exploring the world of Missouri’s conservation areas and check in with me for more information on Southwest Missouri rural properties. If you’re a current shopper, I actually have a 34-acre property in Mt. Vernon, Missouri that backs up to Talbot on two sides for sale right now.

Have fun and happy rural real estate hunting!

Nope, not our spring (I wish!). This is Big Spring, near Van Buren.

I can’t tell you how many times my husband and I asked “Is there live water?” when we were looking for property to purchase in Southwest Missouri. The romance of a creek, river or spring was also shaded with the practical idea that if something unexpected ever happened with our electric service, at least we’d have water to drink & use for household needs.

I hear this question all the time from my real estate buyers, too. It’s not such a silly idea, although to some it may seem to hint at a crazy survivalist mentality. When your water is being pumped from 400 feet down in the ground, it seems reasonable to ask what you might do if the pump wasn’t working.

The particular SW Missouri property we bought was vacant and had only been advertised as having a pond. But it was such a perfect property in other respects that we thought we’d go ahead and buy it. Lo and behold, when we were tramping through the woods as proud new property owners, we found it. Eureka! A spring!

An honest-to-goodness spring that had even been boxed in with concrete blocks, so we know someone had actually used it. We were so excited. I certainly wouldn’t drink out of it without treating or boiling it first, but it’s clear, cold water and it’s there all year. Our own little bit of survivalism, by pure luck.

Southwest Missouri is full of springs and you can find out more about them at the Department of Natural Resource Missouri spring map. Beyond the map, though, don’t be afraid to ask about springs on a property you’re considering. Particularly if it’s vacant and the agent is not familiar with all of it, ask for permission to walk the full property (please never, never do this without permission). You never know what you might find.

Meanwhile, I enjoy knowing that our spring is there. Now, about that food supply….

Forsythias bloom dramatically before they show a single leaf. A bush that appeared dead and dreary last week is suddenly, magically covered with bright yellow flowers. It’s just what you need to lift your spirits after a gray winter.

Once you’ve seen those yellow blooms, spring is definitely on the march. Daffodils and tulips, redbud and dogwoods are next. These are the big flowers though…easily seen and well-known.

I like the small flowers that hide in the woods and along the roadside. Plus, I like the flowers that tell me there’s going to be food later this summer!

I have to admit that the forsythia above is not my photo, since I forgot to take a picture of ours this spring. But the rest of these are mine, taken just by wandering into our woods a little ways here on our rural 40 acres in Southwest Missouri. Enjoy.

Spring Beauty (claytonia virginica)

Wild Dandelion (krigia biflora)

Wild Blackberry Blossoms Promise Tasty Jam and Syrup

On a spring day like today, I have to say that Grandpa might be inclined to load up the wagon at his Missouri dream farm and head back to the Cornhusker state.

It’s not prairie wind, but it certainly is wind. What’s that saying? “March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.” Around here, March comes in rather damp and goes out rather drippy. April, on the other hand, roars.

The prevailing winds in Southwest Missouri are from the south, and we’ve having 20-30 mph winds with gusts to 40. This is not just a one-day thing, it happens all the time in spring. Sure, it’s no hurricane, but if you live on a rural property on the top of a hill, it is undeniably windy.

My seedlings are huddled in the shelter of the screened porch. The chickens are hiding under a bush to save themselves the embarrassment of having their feathered petticoats blown about. And I am inside typing this little article and being glad that my real estate day today involves indoor inspections and phone calls rather than traipsing through the fields.

It’s a day to make you think about installing your own personal windmill (excuse me, wind turbine) for electricity. There’s enough power in the air this month to run our house for the rest of the year.

So am I going to run back to Nebraska? Hardly. But I wish I could tell my Grandpa about this. I think he’d appreciate the joke.

When I’m travelling through different Southwest Missouri towns on my various real-estate-related missions, I bring my farmers’ market schedule with me (yes, I know, I’m a geek). Some of the farmers markets are small, with just a few tables of produce, while others are always crowded and have a wide variety of vendors.

The farmers’ markets in the larger towns tend to be the liveliest, best attended and have the most variety. But don’t neglect the smaller markets, you can often find very interesting things there.

Here are just a few of the farmer’s markets in the Southwest Missouri area:
Webb City Farmer’s Market: This large market is held on Tuesdays and Fridays from 11-3 from May to October. In June-September, they also have a Saturday market from 9-noon. This is a very popular market. Webb City is just north of Joplin, and until recently Joplin has not had a separate farmer’s market, so the Webb City market is a big draw.

Joplin: Joplin now holds a farmer’s market from 9-2 Wednesdays and Saturdays in the summer in front of Memorial Hall. Notice that they’ve conveniently scheduled this on days when Webb City isn’t running, so you can get great fresh produce 4 days a week at one or the other of these markets.

Aurora: This market is held in Aurora’s Oak Park on Wednesday afternoons 12-5 and from 7-12 on Saturday mornings. About a dozen vendors, including the Madewell Meats truck are usually to be found here. Basic vegetables & fruits, eggs, and crafts, as well as at least one booth that includes lesser-known Asian vegetables & herbs, and one that sells baked goods. This is a fairly small market but worth stopping by.

Mt. Vernon: This is a small Saturday morning market on the Courthouse Square in Mt. Vernon, generally with about a half-dozen vendors. There are basic vegetables, some crafts, sometimes eggs. If you’re a local and you see the lady who sells sweet potato slips in the spring, stop and buy some. They produce huge and tasty potatoes. When passing through Mt. Vernon, keep your eyes open. During the summer, there are often individual trucks selling products along the Business Loop and Highway 39, including melons, honey, corn and more.

Now, if you feel the need to be a farmers’ market geek like me, you can print out AgriMissouri’s farmers market map.