The Farm Renovacy.

The Farm Renovacy “I love this place! All this sunshine! But how are we going to find your uncle’s farm? I mean, you only went there once when you were about three. I don’t suppose you remember the way.”
Marietta’s enthusiasm for trying something new was one of the things Tim had liked about her from the first time he met her, right back when they were both nine years old and at the same summer camp. “Don’t you trust my superpowers? Actually,” Tim went on, “I thought of that tiny problem ages ago. Behold the solution!” “The mountains? The trees?” But Marietta was laughing. Tim always made her laugh – that was one of the reasons why he was her best friend.
“No, oh doubting one. This building. The town Hall – sacred repository of records since the dawn of time. Come, and venture into its bowels with me. Fear not! I will defend you from attacks by deranged staplers, steer you safely past the coils of red tape that wait to engulf the unwary…Onwards!” They headed off together towards the imposing double doors. “This doesn’t look like it will be too expensive. And I need something to drink!” For once, Tim’s normal sense of humour had deserted him.
“That wasn’t quite what I was expecting.”
“No. Are you – are you okay with...?”
“With learning that Uncle Hector had died? Well it’s a bit of a shock, but it’s not like it’s really bad news. I mean, I haven’t seen him for twenty-odd years.” Tim fell silent. Marietta looked at him sympathetically. Okay, so Tim hadn’t been that well-acquainted with his uncle, but Hector had been his last living relative. And seeing as Tim’s parents had disowned him some years before their death, really Hector had been his only relative.
“What about his wife? Mildred, did you say she was called?” He took his empty mug back to the counter before he answered her.
“She died about ten years before him. And that must have been about the time my parents moved again with their jobs – and the mail never got forwarded and half of it was thrown away. Which is why we never heard. And when Dad didn’t go to the funeral, didn’t even send a card – and he and Hector were so different anyway…Uncle Hector was farming mad, and Dad just wanted to climb the corporate ladder. Mum too.” He was beginning to recover.
“No wonder I was an only child. I bet they had to schedule a meeting just to conceive me… ‘I have a window on the 9th of July.’ ‘No good, darling, I’m in Arizona. How about the 21st of September?’ ‘Tokyo conference. And then there’s all the end of year stuff. How about Christmas?’
“You are a September birthday,” Marietta pointed out mischievously. “Well, the farm is mine. But the paperwork to claim the title will take all the money we’d earmarked for this holiday. And the guy said tomorrow was the last day to put a claim in. Noon tomorrow – that’s the deadline. He said he’d be there at seven if I wanted to do it, and we should just get in under the wire.”
“That was nice of him.” Marietta’s impulsive, try-anything-once nature rose in her. “Let’s do it! We could spend the summer on the place, tidy it up, give it a lick of paint and then sell it on. You can make a killing doing that. And there’s things to do here – there’s some good gig locations: we can still have fun on the way as well.” “Are you sure? I must admit, I would like to – like to have somewhere for a while that’s a bit family-ish.”
Tim’s childhood had been spent at (expensive) boarding schools, summer camps, winter camps, and occasionally in whichever grand but sterile apartment his parents were calling home. Career had been everything to both of them – and when Tim had said no, he wasn’t going to go into the family consultancy business, they had been furious, felt betrayed.
“After all we spent on you? Why do you think we had you? You were to take over eventually. Well, that’s it. We wash our hands of you.”
It wasn’t often Tim showed this side of his personality, this desire for family. “Let’s give it a go! We were just going to drift this summer anyway.” She was all sunny optimism, plus a desire to give Tim a chance to have something he’d always wanted.
“What can go wrong? What have we got to lose?” They slept in the car that night and then Tim spent the morning in the town hall, while Marietta went round the town, checked out the likely gig locations (after all, this was their holiday!) and ended up fishing near the piers. Talked into it by a chatty old fisherman, who’d lived in the town all his life, knew everyone, remembered everyone, was plainly pleased to have someone to talk to and to fish with, lent her his spare rod…She dropped Hector’s name into the conversation and he came out with a flood of reminiscences.
“Amazing what he did with that farm. First one round here to have a tractor, to see what you could do with it. His oranges – they sold so well, and his lemons: made a good penny off those. Good soil too, with what he ploughed into it. Of course…” and then he was cut short by someone calling his name.
“That’s the missus. I’ve got to go! Leave the rod with Joe at the newsagents – tell him it belongs to Charlie, and he’ll get it back to me.” And he trotted off to the woman waving to him, at a fair lick.
This looked promising, Marietta thought, fishing peacefully in the sunshine. “This is it? But it can’t be…” The deeds had described the farm as flourishing, and the taxes due on it certainly reflected that. The weathered clapboard of the farmhouse had been bleached into paleness by the sun. Walls and roof were gone. Marietta wandered over to the little enclosed area in the corner of the farm, but Tim went into the house. Stairs that led up to nowhere, an empty doorway, a desolate garden. But what Tim saw was a fireplace. Hearth and home. Something that had been part of his grandparents’ lives, his father and uncle’s childhood.
“And now it’s mine,” he thought. “And I could be the one to light a fire in it, make a home here once again.” Marietta covered her face and wept by the tiny graveyard. Their lovely holiday gone: they’d both have to go back to that hot and dusty city and look for temporary jobs. Their holiday fund gone too – all the fun they’d been planning. Back to Mrs McCready’s lodging house for her and Tim’s even drearier room for him. “Don’t cry.” Tim had never seen Marietta cry before – at least not like this.
“Look – this was a thriving farm once. I bet we can make a go of it again.” He looked down at the graves by his feet. Hector Dale and Mildred Dale. My family, he thought. I will make a proper home, here, where my family once lived. “Let’s give it a go Marietta. Let’s see if we can bring this place back to life again. There’s water here – maybe with some proper irrigation, some sprinklers…” And a week later they were planting their first seeds of what was hopefully going to be a thriving farm – one day.
Tim had been to the town hall and got the taxes reduced, on the basis that this was not a flourishing farm at all! They’d be raising them again, but only in proportion to the value of the farm.
They had sleeping bags with them, they’d found an old fire-pit at the back of the tumbledown barn and Marietta had sacrificed a few more boards from it to make a couple of chairs.
It was a crazy venture, Marietta thought, but they might just achieve it. And Tim was her best friend, had been for years. This was what you did for your friends – helped them chase after their crazy dreams. In the little family graveyard Tim had buried his parents’ ashes, spent the last of his money on two headstones for them, brought his family back together on the old farm that, one day, he hoped would be a family home for himself. And maybe his children too…

Special rules for this one: You can set the age to whatever you want.
You can set the seasons to whatever you want. I made it for Lucky Palms so I gave them a long summer and a short winter.
Try and fulfil as many fun wishes, like going to a gig, as you can. They’re young and this was going to be their holiday!
The fireplace has to stay – Tim’s attached to it.
Tim needs to have a family!

The gravestones are in Tim’s backpack – you can put them in on the farm if you like playing with ghosts, or stick them in the cemetery if you don’t.
Full rules at the beginning of this thread.
http://forums.thesims.com/en_US/discussion/920867/the-renovacy-challenge-a-new-and-short-challenge#latest
Download the lot here:
https://www.thesims3.com/assetDetail.html?assetId=9204434