Closed on the Land

Jon and I are so excited! Yesterday we both took the day off to close on a 37 acre land purchase. We have been working on this for several months now and it has finally come to fruition. It has been so hard not to talk or blog about it (except with family). However, we did not want to say much until we knew it was going to happen.

Creek Winds the Back Border


It is only 30 minutes away from where we live now in my home town where I grew up. My brother lives only 2 tracts away and my younger sister and our oldest son also live in the same town. I spent the first half of my life trying to get out of that sleepy little town. Now, as I’ve gotten older I miss it and long to get back there. We will not be moving there right away. It is unimproved with no house on it. I know that makes it more difficult, but this is an ideal location for us and a gorgeous piece of property. Our goal is to build a home on it and move there in 5 to 6 years. This would give our youngest time to finish high school without having to change schools.

Although we will not be moving there immediately, it is close enough that we can start working on it on our days off. We are hoping to have an apple orchard there as well as many other “homesteady” things. It would be to difficult to plant a veggie garden on our new land until we are living there, but we can definitely get some trees and grapevines going in the near future.

It has a long gravel driveway with a gradual incline that takes you back clear out of site from everything! The driveway is a part of our property and not just an easement. We have a 60 foot wide strip that we own from the road back to the main portion of our land.

View at the Top of the Knoll at the End of the Driveway

It is so quiet and peaceful and so much privacy. There are several logging roads that make it easy to navigate the land.

Logging Road Leading Deep into the Property

It has been cut for timber about 15 years ago and there is a lot of areas that are pine thickets where they have grown back on their own. There will be areas we need to clear for our plans, but there will also be areas where we will keep wooded, but need to thin out some of the pines for the hard wood to have more room to grow.

It also has a large creek that winds along the back property line.

Can you tell I love the creek? That was only a short section of it. This creek is large enough that back in the day it was used to run a mill. The land rolls down toward the creek with some steep spots in places.

Most of the area along the creek the timber is large and old and has never been cut. There are some gorgeous trees. I don’t have any good pictures of them yet.

The weather yesterday started off early with a little freezing rain and snow. Later, after the closing it had turned into rain off and on. Even with the dreary weather we just had to “put our feet on it” and slop around in “our mud”.

Then we did a little target practice. We generally go to an indoor shooting range because we did not have any place of our own to shoot. Now, we do. Jon hadn’t even shot his new 18 inch Mossberg 12 guage shot gun hit got for Christmas because you cannot shoot them at the indoor shooting range.

We are truly blessed.

 

The Land Series:
Closed on the Land
Exploring the Land
Bulldozing a Patch of the Land
Clearing Land the Hard Way
Clearing the Land – Finally a “Little” Progress