In the beginning..

This story starts somewhere around chapter 5. After a failed attempt in 2016, the property was eventually acquired in 2018, with a troublesome issue with the notarized documents along with way.

Next came the building permit issues. Essentially, one month after we signed-off on the purchase, the building permit requirements changed and our road was identified as 'non-conforming'. As it is a private road, our property was not grandfathered into compliance with the new, more strict building requirements. Thus, until our road was brought into compliance with the new code, no new building permits would be issued. Thankfully the building code has since been further modified to include ours on the list of roads grandfathered into compliance. So now, at the end of 2020, we're getting ready for the real work to begin!

For posterity, these are the earliest photos of The Land that I've been able to find (and not surprising that You Know Who features prominently in each of them!).

This one is from May, 2017 (just after we got the Purchase Agreement signed). That's what 30+ years of falling branches and leaves looks like.

This one is from December, 2017. Not much direction to The Magic Stream at that point in time, and the forest even looked chaotic under a blanket of snow.

Finally, this photo shows the pathway from Ernest's to The Land. We later switched it to the other side of his wood storage shack, and it has certainly come a long way since then.