We learned a television station in New England announced our contest this morning. As much as we appreciate the publicity, unfortunately, it is about two months too late!
We canceled the contest the end of November because we did not receive enough entries. However, Rock Spring Farm is for sale! Please let us know if you are interested in buying it.
The price for contestants and visitors to this page is $615,000, if you enter into a contract with us before we list the farm with a real estate agent. We will do that once we finish purging the clutter! The market value for the farm is a lot more that the tax assessment, so you would acquire equity AND a beautiful farm!
Since we canceled the contest, Randy and I are writing refund checks as quickly as we can; we want you to receive your money as soon as possible.
We are writing refund checks in chronological order. We just mailed checks for most of the essays we received October 3. The rest of the October 3 refunds will go out Tuesday.
A couple of you have said you have not received the checks we mailed several weeks ago. For whatever reason, the mail is incredibly slow. Your check still may be en route to you. Part of the backlog can be attributed to the Christmas rush; since we are two weeks into January that no longer seems to be a viable excuse. We used your envelopes, so the addresses should be correct!
Our bank charges a $35 stop payment fee. If we need to issue another check, we will deduct the stop-payment fee from the second check.
Keep in mind MANY essays arrived without SASEs and/or entry forms. We truly appreciate the trustee's conscientiousness and attention to detail, or we would have no record of your entries. We will process those entries last -- after we refund the fees for essays we received in early November.
Please be patient. Refunding the entry fees is complicated due to cross-checking, verification, and the sheer number of essays we received; it is not a process we feel comfortable handing over to someone else. Several people have offered to help, and we appreciate their graciousness.
Keep in mind that the people who entered the contest in April and May waited eight months for their refunds. Those who entered in October and November will wait less than four months.
