Tuesday, February 25, 2014

A Little Background

A man out standing in his field

As we, not so patiently, wait for June to make our move to the property and start our build I thought a little background info and pictures would be a great beginning.

Ed and I have dreamt of moving North and living off the land for many years. At one time we even considered heading to Muskoka as a stop over to our final destination. Even going as far as to apply for work which thankfully did not pan out. You get what you need when you need it and that job was not in our best interests. We travelled around checking out various properties from Muskoka to Haliburton to Timmins but never quite found the right spot. Our best method for searching turned out to be the internet. I would google "unorganized township land for sale" and see what was out there. Some were far out of our price range. Others were in areas we would not even consider living. There was no quick way to find these listings so we just kept looking... and looking... and looking.

There was a nice 200+ acre place (much more than we needed) that I looked at many times but it was far too expensive at over $100k. Then we started looking through Dignam listings online. We'd see some interesting properties in areas where we had looked previously and began to think maybe we were not going to be able to find land suitable for us in an unorganized township. Then one day I saw a Dignam listing. It was more than our required 10 acres but the price was reasonable. It didn't list as an unorganized township but the topo map was familiar. This piece was 75 acres right beside that $100k property which was listed as being in an unorganized township. Since this was definitely worth exploring further a call was placed to Dignam. They answered, nope, not in an unorganized township. That was still not sitting well, so a call in to the District of Cochrane gave us the answer we were looking for - land west of the Frederick House river is in an unorganized township. The sellers did not know what they had, which was lucky for us as unorganized land is gobbled up quickly.

We set out on our 10 hour trek to see if in fact this was the property of our dreams. I would like to say that we knew right away this was it but the fact is a long drive with no real map of our destination (Ed left that at home) set me up as a huge negative Nellie by the time we arrived at the property. The 13km drive in off highway 11 with the road turning from paved to gravel and narrowing so much that I did not believe a snowplow could possibly drive this road meant when we got to the destination I did not even want to get out of the car. We could not plow ourselves out of this place and I did not see any reason to look over the property at all. Ed, ever the optimist, believed what he had been told - they plow the road. So off he went. He looked it over and came back trying to get me onboard. We looked over the area heading down to the Frederick House river at the end of the road. It was gorgeous!
Our view of the Frederick House River
We spent enough time looking around that someone came down the road. Turned out to be dinner guests of the only other person who lived this far up the road. We stopped them and asked do they plow this road in the winter? The answer was affirmative. THAT was the best news! My negativity delayed us just long enough to get the answer we needed to hear. We returned home, I in a much better frame of mind and purchased the land. We returned to the property two weeks later and camped for a couple of days. We have been up a few times over the 2 years since that purchase but not for any longer than 4 days. Now as we prepare to leave at the end of May it is with the dream of possibilities and a palpable excitement for the journey.

We hope that documenting our trials and tribulations will help others to live their dream.