In 2016, Rich and I sold our house in Aldergrove, BC. We are home bodies who get deeply rooted to the place we call home, so it was a huge step for us. At first, we had no specific idea where we wanted to move to; all we knew was that we wanted to escape the ever-expanding clutches of the city to somewhere more peaceful, wild, and rural. We spent seven intense, turbulent weeks of property hunting, never quite finding what we were looking for. But the clock was ticking, because once we sold our place we needed somewhere to go. To make things more stressful we sold in the fall; the move had to happen before winter came.
We had settled on a town, but not on a property yet. Nothing we looked at was quite right: we wanted acreage with privacy, a not-too-big house, and ideally a barn.
But time was running out, so we settled on the place that ticked the most boxes: the house was small and beautiful, almost half of the ten acres were useable, it was within reasonable driving distance to the hospital (my future employer), and the price was right.
The boxes it didn't tick: no barn - and no privacy.
"It's gonna be alright," we reassured each other. Did we have a little twinge of unease in the pit of our bellies? Well, yes - "but nothing's perfect" we said.
"You have to make compromises."
"We were spoilt at our old place." (It had maximum privacy, being surrounded on all 4 sides by trees.)
And lastly: "Let's hope for the best and see what happens."
The place we moved to is part of a subdivision. It's a large subdivision with property sizes of ten acres or bigger that share a community well. There are varying limits to how much water each place is allowed to use per month, and a water board made of volunteers that looks after the water.
The man who developed the subdivision had a vision: he wanted it to look uniform and tidy. There were rules about what the fences had to look like, the buildings you were allowed to build, how many horses you could keep, how many vehicles could be parked in front of the house, how many RVs you were allowed to have, etc.
I think he wanted to create a picture-perfect Stepford Wives-style world, like a theme park: something that looked like the real thing, but was fake.
It was asinine, but we were assured that none of those rules applied anymore. He had long since moved away, and besides, who really cared that much about what their neighbours were doing? Didn't people have their own lives to worry about?
We couldn't have been more wrong.
But at first, everything seemed fine. Our next-door neighbours greeted us warmly with pigs in a blanket. We marvelled at the novelty of a dry November, used to the torrents of rain and mud from our years on the coast. We scrambled to assemble winter shelter for the animals, and when the first snow fell we were ecstatic at the winter wonderland we found ourselves in. I got hired at the local hospital, we made friends, and once spring arrived we hired people to help us build aviaries, a hay barn, and proper shelter for the animals.
We also heard some strange stories. Our next-door neighbours, who had become good friends, told us that they once received a complaint about the laundry they had hung outside to dry: the person calling didn't like the look of it.
Several people had the fire department called when they burnt something in a well-contained, small fire in their own backyards.
A family who's slowly renovating their house on weekends while living several hours out of town had been told they should think of selling since they obviously couldn't get their place fixed up in a proper timeframe.
Another person in the subdivision was tattled on for staying in an RV on his weekends there. There's a bylaw that RVs can't be used as permanent dwellings - but who cares?
The self-proclaimed sheriff of our neighbourhood does. He told on the guy and managed to have his RV removed. The result? The rightly pissed-off guy put up a barrier and signs everywhere prohibiting people to use his property as access to crown land. Until then we had all used it, but those days were over.
But nobody annoys the self-proclaimed sheriff+wife more than we do. They have lived in the subdivision for many years, and with the developer out of the picture they seem to think that they are the unofficial king and queen of the place.
Their house looks directly down on us, with a clear view of our front yard and animal pastures. They don't like the buildings we put up, the amount of animals we have, that we have farm status, or anything else we do or stand for.
At first they thought we would simply comply like obedient children when they tried to tell us how to live our life. "Oh, you don't like that? So sorry, we'll change it right away. What would you like us to do?" When we didn't they started to get nasty.
They called a city inspector about our buildings (all legal).
They called the SPCA twice about the animals (all well cared for; they were firmly advised not to waste their time anymore).
They tried to lure our dogs over the fence (a neighbour watched them) with the local zealous animal rescuer stationed in front of our driveway, waiting to catch the dogs and take them away.
They put a lock on our water meter curb stop for over a year as a threat that they could turn off our water at any moment.
When none of these worked they started with the water threats.
They claimed that we can't use "their" water for agricultural use (we got a lawyer involved; we can).
They tried to force us to give up our farm status, wrongly believing that having farm status means you are a commercial farm (it doesn't).
When we bought the neighbouring bare ten acres to double our allowable water use they refused to hook us up, claiming that only residences were given access to water and that we had to build a house first.
And every few months, we would get threatening letters, emails, and a couple meaningless letters threatening legal action (it never came).
While this was going on we dealt with Rich's severe illness in late 2017/2018 (which prompted the callous remark that "if we put enough pressure on him, he may die").
My mental health took a serious hit; I started to believe I'm a horrible person.
My drinking worsened due to the stress.
The pandemic happened, with all the fear and uncertainty it entailed for a healthcare worker facing an unknown, possibly deadly enemy.
Still, we never considered moving. We had made roots, and evil neighbours aside, we loved our place. We've planted over a hundred trees, have a huge garden, built my She Shed. We thought this was our forever home, and that self-proclaimed sheriff+wife would give up eventually.
Until March of this year.
Rich and I wanted to buy some land as an investment. We had heard that one of the ranchers was selling 40 acres off his land, and after looking at it we agreed to buy it. Still no plans of moving; we thought we'd just use it for our cows, nothing more.
I went there a lot, often by myself. It's on my way to work, and I couldn't stay away from the place. Every time I went there I imagined what it would be like to live there. It's 900 meters (almost 3,000 feet) above sea level, 300 m/984 ft higher than our current place, and the air is different. It's greener, fresher, and cooler. There are thousands of trees, lots of grass, and it's so peaceful. Two sides of the property are bordered by crown land, which gives it ultimate privacy.
On the first warm day of spring I took Rich and the dogs there, and as we were walking up the hill I mentioned once again how nice it would be to live in a place like that.
"Why not?" he replied.
Why not indeed.
We discussed the pros and cons, the work involved with not just moving but building everything from scratch.
Then there were problems from the city, and more than once we thought the deal would fall through.
But everything is finally falling into place! We had a witching lady at the property a few weeks ago, and we're getting the drillers there next week to drill a well.
We've decided on a modular home, found a design we love and a company who will build it for us. We've contacted a local energy company about solar panels; we'd love to be off-grid and self-sufficient.
The future is looking brighter than I ever thought possible.
A few times over the last few years I was close to despair. I hate conflict, and for a while I didn't feel safe in the place that's supposed to be the safest in the world: my home.
You can't win against people who are determined to hate you; even if we would have done every single thing they wanted us to do they would still hate us and would still find ways to torment us.
For a long time I thought I'd just have to accept to live in a more or less permanent state of conflict, Yellowstone-style.
But then I changed one major thing in my life: I quit drinking. I woke up from the stupor my life had become, and once I was fully awake, I took stock: what I was willing to accept, what I deserved, and what I wanted to change. I realized that I was no longer willing to live in constant fear and tension. I wanted us to freely live the way we want to, and I also realized that this is not possible at our current home.
I also needed to get rid of a bunch of limitations that existed in my head, such as "we can't move because we just moved 6 years ago/because of Rich's age/it's too much work/who do I think I am for deserving the realization of this crazy, huge, beautiful dream?"
I don't regret the last 6 years in this place. We've grown to love the people of our little cowboy town (minus a few exceptions), and we've made many friends. 6 years ago we couldn't have found our 40 acres because we didn't have the connections we have now, and it was never officially for sale. Besides, we didn't have the luxury of time to build that we have now; we needed a ready-to-move-in place.
The last 6 years have taught us a lot about the area, and even more about ourselves. They've taught me that I'm more resilient than I thought, and that I value freedom more than fitting in.
We are so excited and grateful for this next chapter of our lives. I have a feeling it's going to be the best one yet.
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Vol. 79