Katz Sells His Farm

bedlam_farm_for_sale_jon_katz

“Bedlam Farm” ~ home of author Jon Katz and the back drop for his many books & HBO movie. This beautiful farmstead offers a gracious 4 bdrm Greek Revival home loaded w/ warmth & charm, offering beautiful views of the Black Creek Valley & situated on 92 acres of land. The quintessential farmstead, this property includes a grouping of restored barns, heated studio perfect for the artist, 15-20 acres of pasture, high quality fencing, & frost free hydrants for watering the animals. Country living at its best.

It seems that Border Collie arch-fiend Jon Katz is ready to move on and leave all the dead dogs he’s written about and buried on his “Bedlam Farm” in the past.  Eighteen months ago he was flirting with offering it for sale at $650,000.  His Realtor obviously demurred and he thought he’d get $475,000 but the property was actually listed for $450k.

Today the sizable acreage is still on the market for a full hundred thousand less.  And while $375k sounds like a steal for so much property (ghosts of dead dogs past not withstanding), the yearly taxes on the place are over $11,400.   That’s almost as much money going to a rural municipality which provides little in the way of services as you’d be paying in equity-building mortgage payments which are also a tax write off.

Although many of my past dogs have had great fondness for certain places on the land we lived on, I’ve never been able to bury their ashes under those favored apple trees or in the shade of the hedge because I’d hate the thought of leaving them behind one day.  They belonged to me, not to the land.  And while I entertain no fanciful notions of rainbow bridges or anything after life save the oblivion of death, there’s just something unpalatable about someone else’s dog taking a dump on top of the final resting place of my cherished companions or their remains being carted off to some landfill when some new owner decides to put in a pool where the orchard used to be.

So for now, the dogs travel with me in their little tins, and perhaps when I’m gone and cremated we’ll all share the same vault in a wall somewhere.  Not that it will really matter since I’ll be dust then too.  But today their dust has symbolic value to me as it serves as a tangible reminder of their physical presence in my life and the very real living memory of them I carry in my mind and feel in my soul.

That’s something that you just can’t buy and you certainly can’t sell it either.

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About Christopher

Christopher Landauer is a fifth generation Colorado native and second generation Border Collie enthusiast. Border Collies have been the Landauer family dogs since the 1960s and Christopher got his first one as a toddler. He began his own modest breeding program with the purchase of Dublin and Celeste in 2006 and currently shares his home with their children Mercury and Gemma as well. His interest in genetics began in AP Chemistry and AP Biology and was honed at Stanford University.