Synchronicity One Day Last June

Friends who had that same June come from a boat adventure heard of our pioneer project to build 'green' in a modernist style and listened with studious interest. Jim, a bespeckled bookkeeper, boat builder, and beer-maker had worked with my husband on an important restoration of the Smith Falls Library in 2003 where Bob had earned an Ontario Award in 2004 for his work. Michelle and I had shared many interests together and her trade as a restaurant owner in Merrickville always brought interesting stories of food preparation, tasting and even recipe writing. She had been recently completing a series of favourite recipes from her work at the Yellow Canoe and my tastebuds always perked with each new edition.

Bob and I soon proposed to the couple that their searching for land in the woods of Lanark could be over if they were interested in taking up residence on our land and pursuing a building project there. Our interests were similar, and their wish to build small, green and on a tiny budget seemed to fit into the allowance for a farm to have a farm accommodation unit or more clearly, a farm hands' cottage. The architect drew up the plans and the mini-house was born. Jim's sketches on graph paper were shared and the architect's adaptations were made. After a long wait for a building permit, the small footprint for the footings began. From our recollection, once the permit was in Jim's hands, the structure was built and occupied within 10 weeks.

We had created a temporary camp in the centre of the tract that we affectionately called Headwater Farm as just north was the visible beginning of a small creek wending its way south to the Black River north of South Bay. Our collective encampment contained the Pleasureway van borrowed from my father, a guest tent, a sleeping tent for Jim and Michelle along with a storage tent for them, and finally an elaborate kitchen with tarp, table camp stove and dining area for four. Jim had even outfitted the camp with an early purchase of their compost toilet place discreetly a bit away from the sit about but at the ready. So, in mid August our construction site was active as Jim's solar panel powered tools and a makeshift carpentry shop protected his working area for what would prove to be a very wet August for the County.

The mini-house is approximately 480 square feet in area, wood framed slab on grade with an open ceiling interior with two large patio windows facing due south. The home is heated in winter with a small woodstove, and is comfortable and cool in the summer. Solar panels provide energy for lighting and small ammenties in the evening, but their electrical use is carefully monitored to have a 250 watt system. Jim, throughout the fall added a small kitchen and dining area, along with handmade bedroom furniture. Take a peek at their blogspot at the-mini-house.blogspot.com. I am sure you will enjoy your visit.

Imagine Putting in a Few Grape Vines!

The climate in the County was less harsh than Ottawa valley winters, and the summers offered strong steady hot sunny days and the possibility of putting in a few grape vines too! I have always been an avid vegetable gardener and relished the concept of growing raspberries, blueberries and the natural extension of these pursuits - the glorious grape and all its promise of playfully investigating the making of the nectar of the gods, wine.

In the last year while the architect tweaked his design for our netzero home, I investigated preparing food from the local markets, while preserving the harvest and developed recipes using these preserves as ingredients during the colder months of the year. I participate in a local weekly market and sell jams, jellies, marmalades and such, while also offering monthly cook books that offer recipes using the local harvest.

In the spring as we sought where our new tract of land would be, we began to be concerned that opportunities for land would slip from our fingers, so we watched the real estate market very closely, and trusted in a local agent we found that our humble price range would bring up a few acres to build and farm.

In May 2008, we revisited a 34 acre parcel we had initially overlooked. The land offered a variety of geographies - to the south a young maple forest, and to the east a stand of poplar with mallards and frogs enjoying a wetland habitat. The soil type is called 'farmington' that was deceptively encouraging.

So we ventured into our late life to grab at the golden ring - and became new owners of a piece of 'greenbush', as the locals call it, situated on a rugged road without a power line in the ward North Marysburg in the County.

Prologue to our NetZero Home

One year ago, late June 2008, to the weekend, we were enjoying our new tract of land in the County and removing our 'sold' sign and wrote our names on the deed for 34 acres of rough pasture land presently uninhabited save for juniper trees that the locals call red cedar.

After long talks in our old Edwardian home in Eastern Ontario, we had come to an agreement that there were hopes and possibilities west on highway 401 to Lake Ontario. We had shared a local wine guru's first book, 'A Fool and Forty Acres' by Geoff Heindricks and were introduced to the newest wine growing designation - Quinte-Belleville area. I had been raised, for a time (as army brats are only raised for a short time from one posting to another) in Picton Heights at their military base, beginning school, and experiencing farm life growing up in the late fifties in the County. My parents had worked hard in the summers, my mother in local canneries so prevailant in local agricultural history, while my father picked tobacco in the large dry fields there. As an adventurous child of the '50's, I fished for smelts off Wellington's dock, cottaged at West Lake and of course spent many days at Sandbanks Provincial Park.

Forty years later, the County still boasts much of the same charm as the days in the late '50's. The lacy penninsula has a handful of small villages along its coast with names such as Cherry Valley, Bloomfield and Lake On the Mountain. Each of these communities have maintained a distinctive character, and are found within minutes of one another.

The architect and I were seized with a new ideas of finding a receptive community strongly active in the arts with jazz and classical music playing a role, a community with a sense of history not lost but still visible and vibrant in its downtown core, and a place to grow in our newly found interest - the building of a net zero home.

Headwater Farms Begins the Summer Construction Season

Exactly a year earlier we had purchased 34 acres in the County, and now we were beginning the construction season, anxious to start excavating the site for our NetZero home. We were beginning our weekend migrations from home in Eastern Ontario with a hastily planned weekend designed simply to 'rest and relax' somewhere in the County. Our hopes were dashed, however, while traveling south on Highway 416 as we listened to yet another B&B operator who was booked up to the rafters with cyclists down for the weekend from all parts of Ontario. I quietly settled into the thought of taking the most economical route much promoted by my husband, the architect, and that was CAMPING.

By the end of that first mid June weekend, I decided to put my research skills to work to find what the necessities for comfortable camping through three seasons would be, listing, surfing the net and talking to of course my trusty well stream of knowledge, my school librarian.

Now the seven elements of Bob and Linda's most excellent tent adventure are: a large tent with an indoor seating area or vestibule; a full kitchen with cookstove and clothesline; a fire pit for a yarn or two and a marshmellow at night; a shower to rival Ali Baba's secret camp; a hammock; a dining room table and humble latrine. With some planning, we made it so.

One the way to our new adventure playground, we came across a 'Quebec Garage' for tool storage and so another important part of our construction was to be established for ongoing work through our busy construction summer.

That second Saturday of the season was dedicated to setting up our camp called 'Twin Oaks' and the following morning a sign of approval came when a heron swept through the sky above the campsite in the direction of the marsh to bathe in the perch of a dead branch. As the heron rested on his perch did we survey our work feeling relieved that we had settled into our campsite for the season.