This video will give you an idea of what your east border is like. This border sits alongside our road.
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The third in a three part series of articles that will give you some insight as to why we chose this particular piece of property.
When chronicling any endeavor or adventure it’s always best to start at the beginning. This certainly holds true when it comes to establishing a sustainable farm in ten acres of heavily wooded Florida pine scrub. Property hunting certainly calls for some selection criteria. It also demands some soul-searching, vision and a very good sense of humor. The property hunt and how we finally settled on purchasing the land we did is as good a starting point as any. Here’s what made our latest purchase the right place at the right time. Elevation/Contour/Shape This criteria ties a bit back into the access criteria. Elevation in Florida is rare, but is important for all the previous reasons mentioned. Now, couple this with the fact that we wanted to stay coastal (within 20 miles of Gulf) due to sea breeze, and things start to fall apart. Fortunately for us there is a bit of undulation in our county that provides a bit of elevation for safety. While elevation in a potential hurricane is easy for most to understand, contour--not so much. With elevation comes some contour, but not necessarily a lot. Well, to understand contour as a criteria some local climate experience is necessary past the USDA growing zone guide. What if I told you that the area we’re in gets just as much (if not more) rain annually as Seattle, yet xeriscaping landscape design is still advised? Water conservation in our parts is reality. Capturing and controlling water so it seeps rather than runs is essential and contour makes that possible. The last criteria was the desired shape of the plot. We wanted to be able to easily subdivide the property into chunks for cultivation and eventually individual livestock paddocks. Badly misshapen lots often make for wasted space with costly perimeter fencing bills. Ultimately contour and usage will shape the internals of the property, but perimeter boundaries are easier to define and maintain when the overall layout is in a uniform shape. Square or rectangular property is just easier to define. Lastly, a square or rectangular property is easy to separate from the bordering properties (in our case, other heavily wooded and unmaintained lots) with fire lines and roads. In the pine scrub of Florida wildfires start quickly and run rampant through decades of dry branches and matted pine needles on the forest floor.//mr The next line we worked on getting preliminarily cleared was the west line. This was a lot easier than the north line, by far. Enjoy the tour! This video shows the north border of our property after preliminary clearing. The short-term goal was to establish a safe and quick way to get from the front of the property to the back of the property. This was the first area we worked on. We just need to tidy up a little more, then it will be ready for fence posts to be set. We thought it might be fun to give you all a monthly wrap-up of what we have accomplished. We started working on our 10 acres July 12, 2014. We had a 10 day plan in place, that we met and continued onto our next set of goals. The most important goals were to clear the borders so that we could essentially walk completely around our property. We also wanted to carve out a parking area so that we could park on our own land instead of in the right-of-ways.
Our next set of goals included creating a path so that we could easily walk to the northern border from our parking area. Future goals will include paths to the west and south borders. We are quite proud of ourselves for meeting our first set of goals.//tr The second in a three part series of articles that will give you some insight as to why we chose this particular piece of property. When chronicling any endeavor or adventure it’s always best to start at the beginning. This certainly holds true when it comes to establishing a sustainable farm in ten acres of heavily wooded Florida pine scrub. Property hunting certainly calls for some selection criteria. It also demands some soul-searching, vision and a very good sense of humor. The property hunt and how we finally settled on purchasing the land we did is as good a starting point as any. Here’s what made our latest purchase the right place at the right time. Wooded/Raw The second major criteria we had for any potential property purchase was that we wanted something raw with plenty of trees. You know, a relatively untouched and wooded lot. Why? Well, several reasons, but primarily due to climate concerns. We are in a subtropical environment (USDA growing zone 9B) and the sun is very intense. The premium that shade offers is evident when driving past some of the commercial nursery growing operations. Growers utilizing acres of irrigation under shade cloth in order to protect young plants isn’t unusual. The natural shade wooded acreage affords calls for no major infrastructure investments other than some strategic trimming and clearing.
For us, selective cutting and clearing was something we were willing to invest time in doing. Creating “edge effect” through removal rather than planting and waiting just seemed like a better option. Gotta be thinking Michelangelo’s David here. No way is there room for anything other than a full piece of marble. No pre-shaped slab is going to do (hold that thought). On a practical note, wooded lots in our area are often undervalued and overlooked. Many potential buyers looking for acreage are horse-loving retirees relocating to a hobby farm with pasture. The last thing many of them can do is clear land themselves or waste precious time waiting for it to be cleared. Also, land clearing is expensive and a good way for capable people to save a bit of coin when starting out. So, concentrating on wooded acreage took some of the property competition (the overpaying horse crowd) out of the equation. Now, back to Michelangelo. Raw, vacant land was just about the only non-negotiable criteria. Why? Because we wanted to put ourselves in the best position to work WITH the land. We want to make sure we’re in a position to become the best stewards of our plot possible. Rarely is there a perfect piece of property, so why complicate things even further by having to accept a previous owner’s incongruous vision? Again, something that was just a non-negotiable in our view. So, with an untouched wooded/raw lot, the prices in our geography is more realistic and much less open to any bidding competition. With our fully wooded lot in the raw we’re also able to take our time or open things up full-throttle as we see fit. No wasted time repairing old buildings or broken systems. In essence, our full-sized marble slab is ready and waiting to be chiseled and shaped into our masterpiece.//mr It had to happen. We had to do work along the main road. The North, South and West lines have all been cut. The East side road frontage is the only line that has work remaining on it. The goal was to make a cut into the property that will first serve as a place for us to park our vehicles on our own land as well as begin to establish our future driveway.
We have avoided this for a couple of reasons. First, the road is on the East side of the property. From about 7 am to 8 am its nice and shady. After that, it's not a pleasant area to work because you are being baked. Somehow the jungle heat of the interior of the property paled in comparison to that day's work due to the blazing sun. We would have to walk across the glaring limestone road that captured every last ray from the burning star overhead to seek relief in the only sliver of shade within sight. The second reason we have been avoiding working along this section of the property is that it is inevitable people are going to stop and start asking questions. While this is not a bad thing - we both feel knowing our neighbors is beneficial - it feels kind of weird being the couple questioned. We do understand the curiosity of two strangers hacking away along the road with hoes, rakes and shovels on a piece of property that has sat idle for greater than 20 years. So the day we worked the road, we met some of the locals. The conversations and comments ran the gamut from "you're not going to cut these trees down and clear this land, are you" to "cut them all down, they are all junk trees!" Mostly everyone was kind and welcoming. They asked what our plans were and if we would be moving out there soon. It’s funny, because when we asked a few questions of our own, many of the negative comments about the area centered around the roads. The road and it’s access is actually one of the reason why we chose this particular piece of land. One guy was trying to scare us by telling us all about the multiple 5 foot rattle snakes he kills all the time. When my husband extended his hand into the truck’s cab to shake hands, he later commented that he got a contact drunk off the guy. It’s is Florida, and the saying goes, “up by 7, drunk by 11.” A couple of folks were even bold enough to ask us what we paid for the property. We were perfectly fine offering up this information, it is public record, but I don’t ever recall asking a stranger what they purchased their home or property for. Immediately after asking that, they harkened back to the days of the last real estate bubble. We achieved our goal for the day of being able to park our vehicle on our own land. The fact that neither of us had a heat stroke was an added bonus. //tr&mr The first in a three part series of articles that will give you some insight as to why we chose this particular piece of property.
When chronicling any endeavor or adventure it’s always best to start at the beginning. This certainly holds true when it comes to establishing a sustainable farm in ten acres of heavily wooded Florida pine scrub. Property hunting certainly calls for some selection criteria. It also demands some soul-searching, vision and a very good sense of humor. The property hunt and how we finally settled on purchasing the land we did is as good a starting point as any. Here’s what made our latest purchase the right place at the right time. Access Access is a major concern for anyone seriously hunting for a piece of property to farm or homestead. On our criteria list it was a primary concern. If you’re going to dedicate yourself to developing a homestead or farm on a scratch piece of land, being able to get to it as easily as possible is critical. Anyone that has ever shopped for any real estate knows the saying “location, location, location”; well, when it came to finding the site to build our vision the saying morphed to “access, access, access”. Access is such a determining factor that it can not only determine the property’s success or failure, but can alter the final geography of the purchase. After all, what good is that majestic mountain overlook or secluded bend on that river if your first purchase has to be new vehicles and timing your travel according to the latest weather report? That example may sound extreme, but it’s closer to reality than most people care to think. In this day and age of suburban sprawl, deed restricted communities and farmland scarcity, finding accessible land that’s affordable can be difficult. Also, when considering a potential property’s access there’s an amount of focus and leveling with yourself that has to occur. Yeah, that secluded cabin dream (delusion) may be really beautiful in the mind’s eye, but can you escape it in the face of a wildfire or hurricane? Better yet, can your invited guests easily and comfortably find you? Tropical storms that blossom into hurricanes with tidal surges are a reality in our subtropical area. Happy to say that our property actually has some elevation (rare in coastal Florida) and is located outside the tidal surge evacuation zones. That’s a huge factor when you consider livestock and other agricultural assets that cannot be moved easily for evacuation. Another critical access issue worth major consideration was that many lesser residential roads throughout the county are maintained by the individual property owners along those roads. Paved roads that lead past mailboxes at the end of secluded drives aren’t a reality for many county residents in the area. Some locals will tell you, “If you want that, go find yourself a deed restricted community”. Potholes and washouts are a reality and a major concern for many properties we visited. We visited properties that had swaths of spare carpet laying alongside the road not as trash, but as a community service for those unfortunate enough to get bogged down in sugar sand stretches. Other roads were so rutted that imagining pulling a trailer full of kids (baby goats) to auction or beehives destined for orange groves offered some much needed comic relief from the property hunt. The conversation one-liner, “Look at it this way, it’s affordable...and nobody will ever visit” went from punchline to property classification after the first week of serious searching. Purchasing new vehicles and repairing roads before even thinking about setting the first fence post started to hit home with us. Marketing livestock, selling farm-fresh products, going to town for supplies and hosting customers for on-site farm sales was more than just a consideration--it’s the business plan! It didn’t take long to realize basic property access does come with a price tag and quickly became a critical selection criteria once framed within our ultimate vision. With a paved county road and steady traffic within sight from the property’s road frontage, local foods such as pastured pork, farm-fresh eggs and raw honey straight from the farmer can easily become a reality for our county’s residents.//mr It's mid-July, in Florida, and it's hot. I must preface this though with a statement that Florida is not the hottest place we have ever dealt. We lived for many years in Arkansas, where triple digit temperatures, straight-up, no heat index were normal. Don't even get me started on the heat index... Florida is a different kind of heat - more along the lines of a jungle heat. If you wander into the shade, it's instantly cooler. If you sit down and put a cold water soaked bandana on your neck, it's instantly cooler. If you eat your weight in watermelon, you are instantly brought back to a cooler internal temperature.
You have to be careful, and you have to pace yourself. You have to know your limitations, and you have to know what you can and cannot do. You have to rest when you feel fatigue setting in and you need to stay hydrated. We worked for about 6 hours today with rest breaks totaling around 45 minutes. We sat in the shade, we drank Gatorade and ate watermelon. We brought enough water to last us twice as long as we were out there. We achieved our goal for today (clearing the West line) and decided to eat our sandwiches and take a little break before packing everything out. As I was inhaling the last bit of sandwich, I found myself staring off into the landscape. You know, that far off stare where your mind is completely empty and void of all thoughts. I finally heard a voice, "stay with me sunshine". Ooops! It was time to go home. A bit more water, a nice change of clothes, and a sweaty walk back to the car put an end to me. It was a pit stop at the ABC store, then straight home to the pool to cool off - gotta get back out there in the morning!! //tr |
About UsIn 2014 a couple of 40-somethings decided to make a change. The purchase of 10 raw, pine scrub acres along Florida's Nature Coast started it all. This is that story. Archives
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