Mul-Acres

As some of you (oh faithful readers) might know, John and I purchased 25 acres of land out in the Oakanagon area recently. We had visited the property back in November, and since then the roads have been covered in snow, so we had not been back since our initial visit. The roads are plowed up to about 3mi from our property, so in the winter the only way to traverse those last few miles is by snow shoe, cross country skis, or snow mobiles.

Our property is at 3900ft elevation, so the snow typically does not melt out until early May. This year was especially cold, and we were told by a neighbor that she wasn't sure if our land was accessible yet. We had planned to all go out there for the first time this past weekend, but because of this news John went out solo. Frankly, I wasn't really excited by the idea of driving 4.5 hrs with a fussy 3yr old just to then hang out in the camper by ourselves for 2 days while John hiked over the snowy roads to the property to survey, build a fire pit, etc. So Isabella and I stayed home and hoped for John that he would make it all the way out there.

Turns out he got lucky and the trip was timed just right. The roads were quite muddy, as if the snow had just finished melting. So he was able to get to our property and setup camp.

Before John left, we joked about how little time we had spent on the land before buying it. John said "Well, if I get out there and decide I hate it, we can always sell it!" Turns out those fears were unfounded. John called me on his drive back and said he absolutely fell in love with the land all over again. Apparently there were tons of birds, owls, deer, and other wild life. The creek was peaceful, the trees were plentiful and of many varieties, while at the same time there were nice clearings so that you could still navigate through the property freely (without getting choked by constant brush). Here are a few pics -

We had plans for John to meet with a licensed Forester so that we could have a Forest Management Plan done. The county requires this if we are to continue to be zoned Forest Land, which basically means that if we follow the plan given to us (for proper maintenance and thinning of trees) then we get a crazy amazing break on property taxes.

So John walked the land with Judy, or Forester, and she commented on what a huge variety of trees we had, both in age and species. She was genuinely surprised and impressed with how nice the property was, and made specific comments to that effect. Let me tell you, it's a good feeling when a Forester tells you that your forest land is especially nice. Yay! Judy said that to get classified as Forest land, you need at least 150-300 trees per acre, which she said we easily had, so that means we own thousands of trees. Yay again!!!

After walking the land with Judy, John proceeded to one of his planned tasks for the weekend, which was to build a fire pit in advance of a big camping party we are having in a couple of weeks. Here are some pics of Ellie helping john to dig the pit, and of the resulting product. I can only imagine how satisfying and peaceful it was for John to relax by the fire in the pit he built, on the huge piece of land that we own - just him, ellie, and the creatures of the woods. No nearby campers to kill his camping buzz.

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Lastly, John spent some time doing a general survey of the land and the available infrastructure. We actually found out after we bought the land that it had even more infrastructure than we realized. Before buying the land we knew the land had barbed wire fencing, a couple of sheds on a huge concrete pad, a well, and a septic field. We found out later that the land also has a 1000 gallon holding tank (so that you aren't limited in your water pressure by the 2gal/min speed of the well pump), all kinds of pipe laid underground (to connect the holding tank to the building site with the concrete pad and sheds), spigots in multiple useful locations, and a long gravel driveway/road from the main road through our gate (so that it's easy to get campers, trailers, equip etc to the building site and to other places on the land). Basically, this land is all prepped for a cabin. Even if we don't build a cabin for a while, the work that has been done on the land makes it much more usable. Trust me, a big piece of forest is no fun if it's all brush/trees with no clearings/paths. We've been on land like that, and you can't even navigate through it.

All in all, we are tremendously excited. We can't wait to share our forest wonderland with many family and friends.