Island Trip 2

Adrian and I headed to the Island last weekend, to view several properties with a Real Estate agent, and we travelled throughout the Cowichan Valley.

 



 

We met at the Duncan Farmer's Market, which was nearing the end of the season, but still had a fairly decent turn-out of vendors.  We chatted with a lady selling pickles and preserves, and she gave me so much information about permits and requirements to sell at the market, that I purchased a jar of baby dills to bring home (for an astonishing $9).  There was a vendor selling Mason Bee houses, and I promised to contact him for more houses and cocoons if we wound up settling in the area.

 

Looking at other peoples' houses objectively can be hard.  There are always a few things in a house that make me tilt my head to the side and ask 'why?'  The trip to the Island last weekend made me do that more than a few times.....

This was the first house we saw on our trip, and had a goat dairy barn attached to the main building (which would have been very exciting, if the power and water were functional and the rest of the house wasn't oddly, partially renovated).  There had been a few starts and stops in terms of renovations - more stops than I was comfortable with for the asking price, and the extensive property was very overgrown.....

 

This house was adorable, if a bit small for our needs.  There were a lot of little finishing touches that showed how much the owner cared for her home...then I started to notice the little missing pieces, and I saw the rot around the upstairs skylight.  Also, we realized that the kitchen stove was being run off a propane tank smaller than what we use for our barbecue. Still, it was 12 acres of forest, pasture, garden and a large bog, with fruit trees, animal housing, 2 partially completed cabins (likely done without permits)....and plenty of water coming from a nearby spring.  Unfortunately, all of the water came from a license to a spring across the road - no well, no water treatment..... Too many questions, but a nice little place for someone with the time and money to do the repairs.

 

 

We stayed in Lake Cowichan for the night, at the realtor's basement suite she keeps for friends and family, and had a great dinner at Jake's On The Lake.  I watched the mist rise off the water the next morning, and the fish were jumping.

There was a property we couldn't get in to see because there was no lockbox, and a forested acreage that was a bit too much for us to commit to.  The last house had a new heat pump and lots of space, but plenty of standing water on a smaller acreage, and some questionable building decisions.

A lot of our needs and wants are being clarified with this research, and I would be happy to shop at the local Farmer's Market - maybe even be a vendor after a couple of years have gone by and we have excess to sell. 

We'll keep researching and looking.