Scouting the Perfect Property

Way back when, before kids, we were living in Oshawa and dreaming of a place in the country. There was kind of an unspoken promise that, in exchange for me moving back from Calgary, we'd get the hell out of Dodge. Oshawa was a great place to grow up (and one day maybe I will ;o)) but I'd had enough and didn't want to spend the rest of my life there. So we started looking for a piece of property.

We weren't too picky but there were a few must-haves on our list. Like, oh, water. A reasonable commuting distance to the 'Shwa. Acreage. And, hmmm, I guess that's about it. I remember when we found this lot, wandering over to the neighbours' place and asking them about their well. Being city-folk and having limited knowledge of wells, we figured we'd better ask around about the water (limited knowledge, by the way, translates to not-a-clue). I should tell you that we pretty much live in the middle of a swamp. And there are bullrushes on our property. And I can just imagine what the neighbours thought about us but they kindly invited us in and told us about their artesian well. They also mentioned that years earlier, when they were raising cattle, they had hayed the property we were looking at. They knew the lay of the land intimately. And they knew we'd have no problem with water.

So here we are. When the well went in, they measured the flow at 13 gallons a minute; three or four times what we needed for a mortgage. The drive to work is within reason for both of us and we have the most wonderfully, if somewhat useless, rolling five acres along the road. The wee little pines and cedar that had seeded to the north of where the house now stands, have grown beautifully in the eleven years we've been here and form a perfect windbreak. The hills are winter playmates for the kids and their toboggans. And the people next door are the greatest neighbours anyone could hope for.

The best, though, is the surprises. The stuff you don't look for when scouting but end up making you really thankful that you found this spot. Running north and then east behind the house is a runoff. There's not always water there but it's wet in the spring, and we curse it. The kids love it. My floors don't. The lawn tractor's been bogged down in it a time or two and the kids have learned a couple new words. But every winter, there's a melt that's followed by rain, and we get this...the most fabulous natural slide any city kid could ever imagine. You can't skate on this one; the grade's a bit too steep but it sure is fun with boots on. And do the toboggans ever whip across it.

Out behind the property, on what we call the back-forty, is some swamp. And you just know, if the runoff looks like this, then there's a pretty amazing skating rink out back...

~Liz