The Purchase

  We purchased the land in December 2009. This picture is looking east down the existing road about in the middle of the eastern half of the acreage. If you look really hard (I mean REALLY hard) you can just see a small pond at the end of the road. Oh well, at least we have some water.

This was pasture about 30 years ago, but was allowed to return to woods. And because it hasn't ever been managed, most of the trees are smallish (1-6" diameter). However there are a few very large and beautiful white oak trees that were most likely left standing when the pasture was first carved out of the forest. We aim to keep these. However, they are mostly hollow and lost a few very big branches in an ice storm a couple years ago. One of them is shown above in it's native habitat (before clearing around it).

We just needed to wait for Spring, which was a good thing, since there was an issue getting access to the property from the nearest road. We had been granted an easement by a nearby neighbor, who's property went half-way across an old county road. However, the new owners of the land across the old road were told they owned the entire road bed and that they had purchased "end of road" property. We worked things out between all parties (it's important to be good neighbors) and then cleared the old road bed to gain access. By this time, Winter had begun giving signs of its eminent passing and Spring was finally coming.