Septic Field

the septic holding tank

The Driveway

We have a nice long slightly curved driveway... long enough that Greg will happily have to purchase a man-toy to keep it cleared, but not so long that it will feel like a chore.  Curved enough to not feel straight, yet easy to back a trailer down.  Sloped enough to get up some speed on a 2-wheeler, yet not too steep to pedal up.  I love our driveway.

the lovely driveway

The surface is re-cycled asphalt.  In case you were ever wondering what happens to the old asphalt when it gets pulled up off the road (which quite honestly had never crossed my mind)... this is it!  It's like gravel, but packs better.  As far as I can tell it should remain water-permeable which means we won't have issues with run-off, and I am told that it will pack a little tighter in the heat next summer.

close-up of the driveway and a gratuitous shot of my cute, comfy and practical new Keens.

For now the driveway does not run all the way to the house, but it will before winter.

choosing the site

Let's go back to the beginning.... when we sold our house in September 2009 and started an intensive search for our acreage.  Truthfully the search had been going on for a few years already by my mls-obsessed husband.  The advantage of all his weekend and evening searching was that he was really educated about what was available, and was well aware how few acreages had been listed recently.  We spent eight months looking at listings online, and every chance we could, we would drive to another part of the valley with a stack of printouts and prices.  We hadn't spent this much drive time together in years, and we got to see parts of the valley we hadn't seen before.  Many thanks to our parents for watching the wee ones while we road tripped. The couple of times the four of us went it was less than fun.  Much less.

It felt like we looked at every acreage in our price range between Lumby and Osoyoos.  Those we could find, that is... we discovered that directions to rural properties are poorly marked and often inaccurate.  Many a wild goose chase was had.  Thanks to our realtor who answered some confused phone calls from us while driving around on dirt roads(dave goertz - http://www.century21.ca/dave.goertz).

We seriously contemplated a twenty-eight acre parcel in Lavington for a while.  It was a great price, but it had a creek and we had doubts about managing the challenges that entailed.  In the end we found our 10 Acres for a much higher price than we thought we wanted to pay, but the bonus is we get a lake view and we are close to our family and work.  The land is thinned and has a large relatively level area at the top.  Oh yeah, and it has a southern exposure... which is critical to our building concept and surprisingly difficult to find.  So since this is a long-term investment for us, we decided to sacrifice on the house size to get the land we fell in love with.