A "River" (tributary) runs through it

Here is a view of the little river tributary that runs through the back portion of our acreage. (4 weeks till closing!!). It's beautiful! There are some cedars in the back of the property (not many!). The moss grows thick and it's wonderfully cool. There are native (not stocked) brook trout in the stream and it runs all year. We are investigating small scale microhydro systems to see what we can do for harnessing some of its power, particularly in winter when it's running its strongest. It's a beatiful place. It forks just a short way to the right, which you would be able to see if this picture were larger, or if I could figure out if we could post more than one picture per post. The sound of the water is amazing, a roar that can be heard just a couple hundred feet (if that) into the property and gets louder and louder as you approach it. When you are by its banks (the banks are high) it has quite a thunder to it.

This is a place for exploring.

We have determined roughly the method by which we will push forward...

June 1 is closing.
That part of the season also coincides with the time that roads can be installed. We are going to run the driveway along the cleared portion of the land in the front (about 100 feet in from one end of the land) and wind it back through the trees about 250 feet. After that length, we are getting too expensive for road work.

This coming Tuesday is our soils test. We are going to take our rough plans for the house and stake out the spot we would like to build so that the septic designer can do a soils test for that area specifically (shouldn't be an issue here). Septic design (along with stairs and railings, electric and plumbing) are pretty much the only thing the building inspector here cares about at all, with septic being highest on the list. We will get our septic design from the designer within two days of his work (things happen SO fast here. It's an amazing amazing contrast from Whatcom County, where it takes 12 months just to get an appointment to meet with the building department! I'm thinking about our conversations regarding this right now, J & T).

After the road is installed, the site work for the building site will start. We're going to cut the trees ourselves, and then have an excavator come in and pull the stumps. The area we want to build isn't incredibly wooded, so it won't be much of a job. We want the firewood anyway, even if it isn't huge!

And we'll keep posting as we figure out more precise details and get more information figured out. Now it's time to work on houseplans a bit and read some building related material. This is really exciting.

Now I think we are caught up on our posting, and won't have to cheat by changing the dates anymore! Thanks for reading!

Tomorrow we are planting peas and some good cold hardy greens out in our newly dug plots up front here at the rental. Come on Spring!!!

A peek at downtown Belfast, Maine

We spent MayDay in Belfast, having what is known as a "curb cut" done for the land we are closing on. It's simply a service where the public works department comes out, checks the spot where you are wanting to locate your potential driveway and either ok's it, or tells you where you need to relocate it so that you have proper sight availability (usually 250 feet of vision from either side). The fellow came late, so we were out tromping in the woods thinking about where to best site the house when he came by, and spraypainted his big public works OK on the road. :-) Very exciting! It was delightful to come up to the land lot and see "sale pending" on the for sale sign out front! We're less than a month away from being back in daily hard work, something we've missed deeply since selling the house months ago.

We also have found a very solid local fellow to GC for us. He will help us with the driveway, septic, well drilling and basement. The stick framing and interior work we'll do ourselves, electric we will work on ourselves, but in conjunction with a solar installer (hopefully most of the box/panel we can set up for ourselves, but barring financial disaster, we're going to go for a grid tied system utilizing at least some solar panels to start). Plumbing will be roughed in, and aside from copper work, which is just too expensive to bungle during the learning curve, we'll probably sub out as well. It's going to be a long and exciting and sometimes probably frustrating experience, we are looking forward to it!

Belfast is a lovely little town! It's on a small harbor and has a large residential area full of pretty amazing New England homes, lots of capes and lots of Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn type places. The downtown is small and tight, with many fabulous brick buildings. Belfast has been a working waterfront for many many years, and has also had mill work and chicken "farms" as major employers in the town. It's got a lovely, funky feel to it, and seems perfect (as though anything is!) There's a wonderful co-op, lots of small stores, some neat little restaurants and bakeries, a movie theatre, a great library with a lot of weekly activities going on, tons of different churches, one of which has a strong role in the Maine Council of Churches engagement with MOFGA to make local eating and CSA's a bigger part of our daily consciousness, bookstores, toystores (who can resist a good toystore?!), all kinds of neat stuff. Plus kayaking is an easy option with lots of routes to choose from. The Bay is just at the end of the downtown cluster. It's a neat town. It has a wonderful feel to it. We love all the bricks everywhere, and there are some lovely architectural details to the buildings that kept us pulling out the camera like the gawking tourists we still are in this neat little town we are adopting as home, and waiting to be adopted into! There's a lot going on in this town - it's quite amazing. I guess I didn't mention the little yarn store (and I probably won't again, till the house is built!!). Once a week there's a knit night, even! Our land is located 2.2 miles from the co-op, which is right downtown. We are still feeling a bit like this might not be happening. Who would have imagined that this research and wondering that started over a year ago has ended us here in real life, and that we are on the way to making a land purchase?!

We definitely still feel like we are learning our way around, but Belfast has a real home-like draw for us, similar to that we felt when we first saw Bellingham, and Point Roberts.

Today we met a woman at a nearby nursery who lives in Belfast and is starting her first bee hives this season - so we found a link to the bee-keepers, Jessica and Tim! She's going to email us some contact info. :-)

Off to catch up on a couple of other posts that I have failed to make in the last week or two. We've been rather busy trying to finalize house plans, and have I mentioned that dial up is REALLY slow to do anything picture related on?! :-) Miss you all!