Plans

My wife and I are planners. We have been talking about what we want to accomplish right away, in the near future, and long term. Sometimes if you look at the whole picture it can get very overwhelming. A friend asked me "how do you eat an elephant?" Her answer was "one bite at a time"

Here are our plans thus far:

Short Term,
 Fire wood we have about 1 cord on hand and will need at least 4 cords to get us through the winter.
Insulate the small porch so we can keep dry and canned goods in it as well as our extra fridge and upright freezer.
Clean up the barn, organize the down stairs, and seal up a window in the loft that is open and clean up bat droppings in the loft so we can store some of our belongings in it. The previous owner must have worked at a tile store as there are hundreds of tile sample cards and scrape tiles that need to be gotten rid of. as well as some useless furniture.
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1 to 2 years:
Garden plot, we need to test the soil and mark out a garden plot. plow it and then work in soil amendments.
Chicken coop and run, we want to have about 50 laying hens but want to possibly expand that to over 100 if the demand for eggs is enough to justify it.
Pasture for hogs, we want to have 1 or 2 heritage breed hogs on pasture to be butchered for meat. Although if there is a demand for pasture raised pork then we would want to expand that to 7 or 8 hogs.
Stocking the pond with fish and aerating
Rabbits are also something the interests us. We have done some research on raising rabbits for meat but need to do some more before we decide whether we will attempt to raise them.

3 to 5 years
U-pick, we have been talking about clearing 5 to 10 acres and planting fruit bearing bushes and trees to open up a upick operation. We have also discussed starting a 5 acre bird sanctuary to accompany the u-pick to make our farm a destination for locals to come with their families for an outing.
Hobbit holes, We have a pond that we want to stock with fish and on one end the bank is a large hill that would suit a walkway along the edge of the pond and having a couple of houses built to resemble the Homes of the Hobbits in from the movie Lord of The Rings. We could then rent them out to guests or use them as a guest house in the future.

Of course these plans will be changed and modified as we do more research and as money will allow. We have about two weeks to get the short term plans done before I head off to work for the winter.      

Stuff and more Stuff work and more work

After an uneventful trip to Red Deer and back with a trailer load of our stuff we began the process of unloading and setting up the house. Ever notice how much stuff you accumulate in life. The barn wont be used as a wood working shop for a while as it is full of stuff. I am Not a hoarder, all of my stuff has a use and will have a place once I get to build a shop. In the future, at least that's what I tell myself. My wife shakes her head sometimes but that is my story and I am sticking to it.

So with having to work and trying to help my wife set up the house there are still lots of things that we need to look after before winter starts. We need firewood for the winter, I need to insulate the small porch off the house, organize the barn a little better, but most important is do something with the bathtub. It really is disgusting to look at. We don't want to replace the tub right now but it is almost scary to think about using it even to have a shower. I found a product in a hardware store that allows you to refinish the porcelain and with a little elbow grease I was able to make the tub look almost new. All for only $60.00 and now I am not scared to get in the tub.

The Work Begins.

Well we got the keys. We were so excited to get onto our new place we drove up to Grande Prairie to spend the night as soon as we found out we could probably get the keys. We ended sleeping in the truck as all the hotels that would lets us take our dog were booked solid. I know call us kids but we have been talking about doing this for 4 years and could hardly wait.

Walking into the house it had been so long since we actually saw it we had to make our plans all over again. We definitely need to do some painting. The previous owner had much different tastes that my wife and I. The pink walls, switch plates, plugs, floor and trim in the bedrooms and the peach walls, cupboards, switch plates, plugs and floor in the bathroom had to go. I don't think she actually painted , just threw a can of paint at it and then spread it around. Although we did notice that she did brush on different colors of paint on almost every other wall and cupboard. My wife thinks I am mean because I commented she was probably trying to decide what to throw the next can at. You know I am all for originality but I just don't think a creamy purple and pale yellow compliment each other. Need to fix that too. After spending the first 4 days cleaning and painting we decide we had better go get a trailer full of our stuff out of storage. so we could actually sleep on a bed instead of the floor. I am not getting any younger and if I was to be able continue to move, a bed was next thing on the priority list. Plus I hate eating out as my wife is an awesome cook and take out was just not cutting it.

Ray

It Begins !

My wife and I have been dreaming, planning, talking about getting a plot of land and going back to a simpler way of life for 4 years. The only thing holding us back was we had to sell our home. The only problem was we lived on a golf course and nothing was selling. With the economy the way it was no one was buying and nothing had sold where we lived through a realtor since 2009. After being told by 3 different realtors over a 3 year period that we needed to drop our price to taking a huge loss we found Bryce and Penny Kander from Realty Executives in Red Deer. A mother and son realty team who thought outside the box and sold our home in a month and a half for our asking price.

Uh-oh. Now we had to find that perfect piece of land and we only have a month to do it. You know sometimes things just seem to come together. This would prove to be one of those times. We had been looking at land for 4 years but of course all of the parcels we had looked at were off the market. Looking at the M.L.S. boards we found 3 properties up by Grande Prairie that were close to what we were looking for.

And what were we looking for? Well we wanted at least 40 acres, a house that was livable, and well that would do. I used to run a renovation company doing almost any kind of renovation so we didn't need the house to be perfect, just livable. Every thing else that we wanted could be built after we got on the property.

We called the realtor that had 2 of the properties and talked with Jack for a while on the phone and set up a time to go up from Red Deer and have a look at the properties. While talking with him he suggested that he had another property that was close to the 2 we were looking at with him but it was priced 40,000 over what we wanted to spend.

The first property was bank owned as the old guy who owned it had moved into a nursing home and passed away. It was 75 acres, had a home and numerous out buildings, was in the middle of a grazing reserve, and had 4500.00 a year in oil revenue. As it turns out the old guy was a bit of a hoarder and every out building was full of stuff as well as having numerous dilapidated old cars, motorhomes, and old farm equipment. The house was in really bad shape with mouse droppings as well as what looked like dog leavings. At some point the well had quit working and he had put a cistern in the basement for water, the only problem, he had drilled a hole in the middle of the living room floor for the hose that fills it and strung it across the floor and out the outside wall. The final thing that made this property not going to work was a massive crack in the basement wall. The only way to solve the problems with the house was to light a match to it and start over. Even with the price at $154,000 it would be a real stretch to see this property being worth it

The second property was 44 acres with a shop and a older trailer on it with an addition. The trailer was in really nice shape and had been updated recently. There was a wood stove with propane furnace as back up. The shop was 20 x 30 in size with a wood floor wired for 220 but no heat. We walked the property and really liked all the mature trees and open areas. The price at $190,000 was in our opinion much more than the property was worth.

Now on to the property that was well above how much we wanted to spend. At $230,000 we almost decided not to even go look at it. But as we were in the area and were not going to look at the 3rd property until the next day we ended up going. This property had an older double wide trailer with a few upgrades, a 14x28 barn, a few outbuildings, and a 300 x 200 foot dugout. The inside of the home would need some renovations but it was livable with a wood stove for heat and a new propane furnace for backup. The barn really could not be used for animals but would make an awesome wood working shop with good storage in the loft. The other out buildings were all in usable condition and with the property being 87 acres it was a good size with most of it high and dry. The house also over looked a really nice looking lake. Both my wife and I looked at the view and agreed that it was a million dollar view. But still it was $30,000 over what I was willing to pay.

The next day we met the realtor for the 3rd property we had booked to see and drove out to the 160 acre parcel with a house and 20 x 30 shop. The house was small but laid out well and would work for what we needed. A wood stove with propane back up would work well, the kitchen was probably the biggest room in the house which suited us just fine. The shop was heated and had 220 wiring and the dirt floor could be finished with concrete in the future. Walking the property with all of the mature trees and a 25 acre field in hay was exactly what we were looking for. And at $180,000 was with in our budget. We talked to the realtor and decide to put in an offer and finally settled at $167,000 as a purchase price.

On the drive home we called our mortgage broker and discovered with a property of this size we would need 25% down. Uh-Oh. we could probably do 15% but that would be it. Now what? Why oh why wouldn't they tell us that before we went to look. They knew what we had in mind before we started looking, they also knew how much money we had to put down. 1 month before we have to be out of our house and a major set back.

All the way home we talked about the different parcels, their pro's and con's. Right away the first and second property were eliminated. The 87 and 160 acre properties would be the best suited to what we want to accomplish. Could we come up with 25% down? What about the 87 acres with that view, the fish pond, right off the highway, and everything else that it had going for it. Would the owner come down in price. By the time we got home we had talked ourselves into the 87 acre parcel. If we could get it down to a price we could handle and the appraisal came in so we would have enough equity already in for the amount of cash we had to put in,  it could work.

Penny Kander and our great mortgage broker had to jump through hoops to get it done and it for sure didn't happen over night. In fact Penny let us stay for over a month in her cottage at Red Deer Lake until the deal finally went through. We moved onto our acreage at the end of September and we are enjoying our view of Ray Lake everyday. We have a lot of work to do but look forward to see where this journey will take us.