Red Cedar

Apparently looking at land is a very popular topic among my friends and family as my stats have shot up over the last three days since posting about the property we looked at on the weekend.

So for those of you who read here, I would like you to know that OUR OFFER WAS ACCEPTED yesterday and we will own .35 of an acre as of July 19th! The property is just off the Princeton-Summerland Road across from Link Lake and in between Osprey and Secret Lake (down the road from the TeePee lakes, Chain Lake and a million other little fishing spots). These don’t have great swimming beaches or anything but they are clean, electric-motor only and beautiful – we’ve got a mind to throw a dock down on the crown access side of the property for swimming. About half the lake is private and half is crown, with logging taking place on the East side of the lake currently.

Clicking on the map above will take you to the Google map so you can see the area.

This lot is an hour and a bit from Keremeos, 45 minutes from Summerland, and a 40 minutes from Princeton.  The Kettle Valley Rail Trail is just down the street as are a myriad of hiking trails and logging roads that head off into various parts of the wilderness.

While the spot has some issues (serious slope, debris, no well) – the location is perfect and frankly, the imperfection of the land will make for a much more interesting property once we figure out where and how to arrange things. I’m thinking of possible rainwater catchment options for bathing and washing water (we can bring our drinking water in easy enough), and  posts and platforms are adequate footing for the small-scale sleeping structures we would likely build on the most sloped part of the lot.

We have a backhoe operator ready to come up and work with us in the first week of August during which time we would like to:

• put in a driveway that connects to the road (there is no way to drive onto the lot currently) – this requires a small culvert and filling in the ditch
• clear the collapsed cabin/outhouse/shed debris off the center of the lot – either remove it entirely to the dump or pull it off to the side for burning in the fall or winter
• dig a hole for a new outhouse
• start cleaning up the deadwood and cutting down the diseased trees (most of the trees are spindly pine with beetle infection)

By fall I hope we have an outhouse up, a driveway that can double as a flat space for tents, a firewood lean-to and a fire pit. Fortunately we are doing this with two awesome friends who are eager to get work started as well – so between the four of us we could easily make some good headway in preparation for building next summer.

Next steps? Pay money, take possession on the 19th, and drive up there on the 20th to meet with the backhoe operator and flag the property boundary. So exciting!

…. and it went a little like this.

We originally had a difficult time finding the lot because the “driveway” was apparently severed from the road by a drainage ditch some years ago:

The “small cabin on the back of the lot which has probably fallen down” is actually a giant debris pile in the best building site at the front of the lot:

In addition to the debris pile we found a tipped over outhouse and an unusable  shed:

Oh – and the gentle slope on the rest of the property turned out to be a little more like:

HOWEVER

• This is a 15,000 square foot lot
• It is at the end of the residential area of the lake – neighbours on one side only.
• Great hunting and trout fishing access within steps from the property (this is a literal measure – you can walk four steps off the back of the property into hunting territory).
• It is the cheapest thing for sale in Southern BC at less than $40,000 and only four hours from Vancouver
• Once the debris is cleared there is one very solid building site – while smaller sleeping cabins could easily be build on leveled platforms.
• There are peekaboo lake views which will be enhanced once the pine-beetley trees are cleared out of the way.
• The slope allows for a gravity-fed rainwater collection to the main cabin we would build.
• And best of all, it is a 5 minute walk down the road from the property to this:

Which has a sweet little place to leave your rowboat even:

And so WE’RE PUTTING IN AN OFFER with the hopes we can get some of the cost of cleaning the debris up knocked off the asking price – because its obvious that the realtor and the seller have no idea of the state of things up there (seller hasn’t been in more than ten years and the realtor has never been).

Yes, it’s a funny little lot with some issues. But it’s a workable lot, in a fabulous location, for an asking price of affordable — and so it seems that new project time will be upon us soon.

(All lot photos in a Flickr set here.)

I thought I had a post from earlier this week all loaded up and ready to go, but it turns out that I only crafted that post in my head and it didn’t actually make it into the draft folder yet. This is happening a lot these days. I spend an hour every day walking to work and in that time I think lots of thinks and compose many opening sentences – but when I walk through the office door I’ve got to get right to work and my time outside of the office is mostly spent doing work with my hands (a conscious effort to get away from the screen) – so a lot of these thoughts simply fly away.

But I’m not upset about that because the thinks themselves are helpful, as is walking like a maniac every morning, and I know at some point this will all come together in some amazing blog post of self-discovery.

For the moment, however, this is where things are at:

1. That whole feeling bad about myself thing? Yeah. So as a first step I told my partner about how I was feeling, and then I wrote about it here, and I also have mentioned it to a few women friends. That talking about it (as opposed to keeping it secret and shameful) has really helped. A lot! That was my stage one plan for tackling my bad feelings – share my story – and so far that’s working.

2. Stage Two of Project Self-Awareness has been taking place this week and involves making more eye contact and more small talk rather than assuming that no one wants to look at/talk to/know me.  That’s also lead to some great interactions, the kind I have shut myself down to for the last few months….. and I feel like I’m getting back to who I *can* be when I am feeling good about things.
3. Last weekend I played a show at the Princeton Pub and for the first time in twelve years I shut a room full of drunk men up by singing Diamonds and Gold on my own. If I can still do that at forty, I can’t be doing that bad.
4. There’s a piece of land that we can afford for sale and on Monday we are driving 8 hours round-trip to view it. It’s all I can think about this week because I have a feeling this might be the one! It’s only a third of an acre, but in a fabulous spot across the road from a little lake and within walking distance of four other lakes – and it’s a scant four hours from Vancouver. The cheap price means we can pay it off in a short period of time (we’ve got two other interested land-partners – but even without them we could afford it on our own and have it paid off in under five years). The lot is being sold at less than half its assessed value which is why we’re a bit frantic to get up there – it’s a very good price for the area we are looking in.
5. I finished a pair of capri pants last night and am one-sleeve-left on a pullover sweater (crochet). I am hoping that next week I will have photos of both to share here. The pants are a bit baggy in the crotch, but they do fit – pants being a pain because there are so many fitting points. I am thinking of drafting a pair to my own measurements to see if that helps since commercial patterns are always a bit of a challenge to fit. I *really* want to make my own trousers.
6. After nearly four months of walking 25 km per week I am feeling quite ready for our hiking trip to Berg Lake eight days from now. Not only am I feeling pretty fit – we’ve invested in some camping gear additions/upgrades this year and I’ve also got all of our dinners prepped and dehydrated. Totally feeling the trip coming on.
7. I’ve got a weekend of friends and family on the Island and am looking forward to getting out of the office this afternoon!

And that is pretty much what’s going on. Have a great weekend people!

I made a bit of a Craiglist score last night and have finally satisfied my desire for a Kitchen Aid stand mixer (at less than half the price of new). This came with all the original attachments, plus the slicer/shredder set and the ice cream maker. Of course I immediately put it to work on some egg whites left over from making ice cream last week (hence the blur in the bowl).

Our before-KA-stand-mixer belonged to Brian’s grandmother and has ceased standing (literally, it falls off the stand whenever the motor is running), my food processor is almost dead after 22 loyal years – and I like the idea of having one workhorse appliance instead of several cluttering up the cupboard. So this makes sense.

Below you can see my effortless egg whites which became meringues. I’ve never bothered with such things before because I hate beating egg whites to stiff peaks, but with the new  mixer I just dumped in the eggs and let the beater do the job. Incroyable!

(PS – if you don’t have Cream of Tartar you can use lemon juice instead. I learned that last night on the Internet.)

A brief post to track the first of the season’s canning. I’m hoping to keep a running tally so I can capture the total poundage of fruits and vegetables that make it onto the shelves in my bi-annual canning madness. So far this year I have put up:

• Rhubarb: Six lb. (Ketchup and stewed with raspberry jam from last year)
• Asparagus: Eight lb (Pickled)
• Apples: Forty lb. (Sauce)

One thing I’m feeling very smart about is the fact that I did my apples early using the end of last season’s storage apples. Every year we do a huge can in August and so I often miss out on doing apples because I am all canned out. Since we’re just getting started, and last year’s apples are very very cheap, thirty jars of sauce (flavoured with honey, vanilla and cinnamon – it’s my best batch ever) seemed about right.