The last couple of weeks we've been getting much more serious about finding some acreage and living on it. We also want to be as self-sufficient as possible, for financial reasons as well as ecological reasons. So I'm going to try to remember (as well as an ADD person can) to journal about the whole process, as much for my benefit to keep up with what we've done and what we want to do, as to share the process.
So, to kick the story off... we've looked at several pieces of land so far. The first two were offered by a mother and son team, not real estate agents. The first one we looked at was 30 acres with a small, old house on it. I first talked to the mother, who told me her son could tell me more about it. So, I call the son. He tells me we can go look at it anytime, nobody lives in the main house. He said there was an old lady who'd lived in a small house out back for years and something would have to be figured out about her when the property was sold.
So last Tuesday we drove out there. The first thing we noticed when we got out of the car was the dogs barking inside the house. Nobody living there? Hmmm. I called the son and asked him what was going on and we find out that he was talking about an entirely different property. His mother had a sales contract on the property we were on and there were people living there. Fun!
We had already driven by the property he meant for us to see on the way up, so we went back to it. This was also 30 acres, but it had a large brick farmhouse on it. It was vacant and unlocked and we had permission to go in, so we did. The "fixer-upper" had a sagging roof, water damaged ceilings upstairs and down, water damaged floors upstairs and down. We haven't entirely discounted this property yet, but besides the work the house needs there's the issue of the lady living there. She may well have lived there long enough to have squatter's rights. There are also high voltage power lines going over the property, making at least 7 acres useless not to mention the possible health hazards of living near them. They are a ways from the house site but we'd have to find out how close is too close. The tract is also part of a larger 160 acres, and it hasn't been subdivided yet according to the public record, so we don't even know which 30 acres are included... The house is bigger by far than we need, and part of what we want to accomplish with this is to be in a smaller house. Even when the boys are here, this is too much house. Also the existing house is probably only worth scavenging for building materials, like bricks and beams. The property does have several outbuildings on it, as well as a very small primitive house (former slave quarters?) and a neglected but repairable shed-barn type building. The old lady lives in what was probably the original farmhouse, a small one-story clapboard house with a few outbuildings near it.
After we left there we looked at a 17 acre tract with no house or improvements other than being mostly cleared. It also had high voltage lines on one side of the property.
After looking at listings online, I called a broker to see one property in Rougemont (pronounced Roe-mont). It's 30 acres with some cultivated fields leased out to a local farmer and some wooded acres. We met with the broker (who isn't the listing agent, but acts only as a buyer's agent) yesterday morning and followed him to the property. So that's how we spent Black Friday, not shopping for Christmas presents but shopping for land. :)
While we were walking the property (with permission of the listing broker) the stereotypical hillbilly guy comes walking out to see what we're doing. Turns out he lives on the property beside the one for sale, and is the seller's nephew. He says the property won't perk in spite of county and state officials both being out to test it. He said he'd buy it himself except for the fact that it won't perk because the land is all clay (for my non-US readers, this is a ground test to see if a septic tank sewer system can be used on land that isn't connected to public sewer lines. If you can't safely treat your raw sewage, you can't live on the land.) He said if someone did get it to perk he'd sue the county/state for not getting it to perk for him. He wasn't aggressive or mean, but it was obvious he didn't want anyone to buy the land. I mentioned the small pond on the property still having water in spite of drought for months. He said it wasn't ever very deep, maybe a foot even in normal rainfall. Then he said in normal rainfall all the property was wet and swampy. He kind of muttered that they thought the pond was spring-fed. I heard him say it, but Greg didn't catch it. I don't think the broker with us heard it either, as it was windy and we were standing in a harvested-out corn field.
There is no deeded easement, and the one access now is a dirt road several miles long that takes you past the nephew's not-so-lovely abode. We would try to get an easement through the neighbor on the other side, as they have paved road to within a couple hundred feet of the property. It's a bit farther than Greg wanted to commute to work (37 minutes according to Google but he's going to drive it in rush hour plus investigate alternate routes) and as far as we can tell cable tv/internet isn't wired out there yet. TV we could take or leave but broadband 'net access is a must for Greg to telecommute as often as possible. Other than those issues and getting septic tank allowance, and the nephew next door, it seems almost perfect for what we want. Assuming no other issues come to light, that is.
The property has two ancient tobacco barns (log cabin with clay daub and chink construction), an equally old house of the same construction with a stone chimney, a not-so-ancient single-wide mobile home, and a 10-year-old or so BulkTobac brand tobacco barn. The mobile home has been put there in the last 3 years as it doesn't show up on the latest satellite pictures.
Later the realtor told me on the phone that the seller's realtor said the nephew doesn't own the piece of land he lives on, it's owned by his aunt, the seller. The nephew has a lease with option to buy on the 5 acres he lives on. On his property we saw dozens if not hundreds of rooster houses, of the kind used to house fighting cocks. There are also at least a dozen old rusted out trucks and piles of junk. The broker that showed us the property said he told the listing broker that as long as the nephew was there she was never going to sell the property. We told him that if the nephew were to leave we would also buy the 5 acres as well, which he relayed to the seller's broker. No idea what will come of it, he's going to let us know.
After we left there, parting ways with the broker, we headed north instead of back south to Durham. We went to Roxboro and then on past town to see a 64 acre tract for sale. It was nice, but it was at least an hour's commute for Greg so it's not very high on the list.
The nice thing for us is, we're in no huge rush to move. We can wait out negotiations between brokers and sellers to find and get the best property we can afford. It would be nice to find land we like and buy it and move right away, but if we don't, that's okay too. Greg's been reading up on alternate building methods such as cob, rammed earth, straw bale and combinations of those. I've just finished reading Your Money or Your Life and am more determined than ever to move to a more self-sustainable life. I've realized that this means putting my aquaculture business on at least partial hold for awhile, until we can move onto our future homestead, but I'm (mostly) okay with that. I'm not giving up on it, I'm working to make it better and "greener" in the long run. I still have my broodstock and I'm keeping all the bubbletip anemones. I'll be selling all the coral frags I've made and consolidating down to fewer growout tanks. My business plan actually calls for us to find and buy land and break ground on our first greenhouse by March '08 and I may even still manage to meet that goal. :)
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