The 100 Acre Wood

Pretty.

I have become the proud owner of 100 acres of Canadian shield.

Nothing on it but trees, rocks and moose poop. Lots and lots of moose poop.

There is a road frontage, a couple neighbours across the road. In the back, nothing but Canadian shield covered with mixed forest, a couple streams, a pond and two small finger lakes that jut into the land at the back. Found only one stump that wasn’t left by beavers so I don’t think it has been logged in at least 80 years if at all. The surrounding land is privately owned and undeveloped.

It is far from flat. Somewhere in the middle, I saw it once, is a gorge complete with waterfalls, boulders and huge tree roots all covered with thick bright green moss. Perhaps a good vista to wake up to. I’ll get pictures when I do the topo.

There is the occasional boulder, my height to twice my height sitting on the ground with no discernible reason to be there. Glacial.

Super project, composed of endless sub projects. This is for starters…

1. Get tractor working. 1966 John Deere 710 Lanz. Loader, cultivator and two furrow plough. I’ll just need the loader. Needs work on hydraulics. A backhoe would be sweet. Looking into that. Also a log grabber. I forget what you call those. Buddy has an old articulating skidder for sale, a little smaller than the one pictured below. Big big. A danger myself and others. This is no deterrent.

2. Topography. I was a surveyor in an earlier life, I love doing topos. We have GPS now so surveying these days is probably as boring as watching paint peel. I can buy a GPS, walk the property, save tracks with lat, lon and elevation, dump it into my puter and do the math. Pricey Garmin unit arriving tomorrow.

3. Shipping container. They are ugly but they provide immediate bear proof lockable storage. A twenty footer harbours much less ugliness than the big ones. A friend suggested I paint trees on it so you can’t see it. With equipment on site I can ride up there on a motorcycle that uses half the gas the truck uses. It’s not exactly next door.

4. Access trails for four wheelers. Need road(s) but trails are easy and quick access to the property. Roads are going to need no small amount of engineering. Need topo coverage to design roads.

5. Roads. Parts of the property are fragile ecosystem. I love my new (to me) fragile ecosystem and will not drive trucks, tractors, four wheelers or motorcycles through it. This entails the building of bridges. I get to build bridges. Building bridges is fun but you should really identify a need for a bridge before building one. Because building a bridge you don’t need would just be weird.

6. Lumber. Shopping for a lumber mill. There are quite a few downed trees. Some are fairly recent some are rotten. Some cleanup there. Need lumber for road and structures. There are a couple mills I might be able to borrow until I find one I want. I could build to my hearts content and barely put a dent in the forest.

6. Buildings. One wood fired sauna. Other less important stuff like a drive shed, a bear proof house…

Lots more but this will do for now. Besides, it will probably all change next week because no plan is a good plan.