Getting to Know our Neighbors

We had a great night, albeit chilly, with Tom and Linda Savage of Allied Organic Farms in Person County, and their friends. Delicious meal served up by Chef Lucindy Willis, formerly of Yancey House Restaurant. Five courses from local ingredients, including her signature Three Little Pigs, Roasted Pork Loin wrapped in Bacon, stuffed with House-made Sausage and Swiss Chard with Peach Mojo and Blackberry Wine Sauce, which took first place honors in The Best Dish in NC. Many local farms represented around, and on the table. Fun and delicious night, especially since music was provided by Yolanda Rabun.

Water, Water Everywhere . . .

. . . but not a drop to drink.

You'd think that having land on a lake would solve the water issue. But our lake serves as a back up reservoir, so we can swim, boat & fish in it, but no pumping is allowed. Since we aren't living on the orchard land, it didn't seem to make sense to drill a well. So we bought 1100 gallons of cisterns. Next project: build a roof to cover them and an adjacent shed, each with rainwater collection to keep them filled. Simple solution.

Miss Daisy

So we figured we'd need a work vehicle. A gator is the normal choice, but we wanted to avoid dealing with the maintenance & exhaust. So we found an E-Ride rechargeable electric mini-truck. Ours was bought from Dallas, after being used in a reality cable archery hunting show.

Leslie named her Miss Daisy after the movie. Guess that puts me in my place! Daisy's entrance was a dramatic one. Our shipper sent her up on a car carrier, and her axle was a bit short for the treads. She slipped off when the driver tried to back her down and we had to talk a local wrecker into using his boom to pick her up and get her back on track. Anyway, pretty cool, quiet, and no fumes!

Fruits of our Labors

If you add an orchard & garden, what do you grow? We want food we can't get in the market, or can't get fresh enough. We found a local orchardist who has preserved over 400 varieties of heirloom southern apples. We're starting with five. The complete list (in so far): Fruits: Apples: Old Fashioned Winesap, Golden Grimes, Blacktwig, Arkansas Black, & Virginia Gold Pears: Keiffer, Seckel, & Korean Giant, Plumblee Figs: Brown Turkey, Italian Golden Honey, & Black Violette Peaches: Indian Blood Cling & Elberta, Plus Asian Persimmons, Pomegranates, Plums, Kiwis, Pawpaws, & Jujubes. Berries: Blackberries, blueberries, cranberries, serviceberries, elderberries, gooseberries, plus ground cherries and scuppernong grapes. Plenty more: asparagus, sorrel, ginger, horseradish, saffron, rhubarb. Annuals next spring.

Good eats. Even if we'll be giving away a lot.

Planting a Best Practices Orchard & Garden

We started with the clearing. Mulching everything in place: 1 to 3 feet of wood chips cover the site. Then we brought in Bountiful Backyards to plan and plant. This Durham group is converting city lots and yards to urban farms, using permaculture techniques. Great design. Hard work. Fruits, perennials, companions, pollinators all now in over a very long week.

Don’t Fence Me In

No sense in planting our orchard and garden just to feed the deer and rabbits. So we went down to local farm and feed for advice. Fence builder Bill Hutchinson stretched alot of line for us. 8 foot height, high tensile on top, no climb below, solar electrified. The battle begins!

Fauna

This is a rural area, and the lake is sparsely populated. That means we share our land and water with a wide variety of wildlife. Here's what we've seen so far: deer, raccoon, beaver (only their aftermath), great blue heron, osprey, bald eagle, coyote (fleetingly, except for this photo of scat on our drive). More heron than anything else.

Where is this Place?

Our lake is in Caswell County, which dates back to 1777. The postal address is Leasburg, which has a population of just under 2000, and was formed in 1788. But that little hamlet is actually about 6 miles away. Our lake is actually in Hightowers Township, with the nearest unincorporated place having the wonderful name of Frogsboro, under a mile from our cove. As near as we can tell, there is no town at Frogsboro, although there are several churches.

We are just about 15 minutes north of Hillsborough and a little over a half an hour from Chapel Hill.

Living off the Land

Leslie's always been a gardener. I met an heirloom apple orchard keeper near our land. So we picked up several acres across the road to plant an orchard and garden. Apples, peaches, pears, persimmons, plums, paw paws, figs, blueberries, blackberries, muscadines, asparagus, and rhubarb go in this year, so they'll be ready when we move.

First order of business is to clear about a half acre. We decided this time to mulch all the trees on site, leaving everything that came from the ground there to go back into it. Bring in Tigercat, with its 2500 pound 4000 RPM mulcher that felled the hundred foot plus pines then ground them up, all in about 5 minutes a tree. Amazing machine.

Warmth, in About 45 Minutes

Dry stack fire pit. One of the easier projects.

Accoutrements

A place to relax on the land, and on the water.

Cruisin'

Needed a boat for family of six. Checked Craigslist. 24 foot pontoon just down the road. Seller will deliver. Got a boat.

What's up Dock?

As luck would have it, the lake warden let us know about a floating dock for sale at the other end of the lake. So we used his boat to tow it to our point. The dock had a mind of its own, but we eventually tamed it.

Clearing the Way

It will be a few years before we can make the move to our lake, but we wanted to be able to enjoy it in the meantime. That meant cutting a road and clearing by the cove.

The Pursuit

Soon after we found the lake we learned property on it rarely comes up for sale. We weren't interested in buying a house; we wanted to build something that could serve as our principle residence for decades.

So we wrote a letter to every property owner on the lake asking to keep us in mind if they decided to sell.

And then we waited.

Two years later some land became available, a little over three acres on the west side of the lake.

In a month, it was ours.

The early beginning

Almost 30 years ago, Leslie and I took a long weekend north of NYC with another couple to an old rustic cabin on Burden Lake, near Sand Lake NY and we fell in love. Not with each other - we were well down that path - but with lake life. The lake was flat and quiet. We canoed, fished, lit a fire, and city induced tautness ebbed away.

Three years ago, now in central North Carolina, we decided to fall in love again. Not with each other - we were still on that path - but with lake life. The last of our four children was in high school, and we set a goal to leave suburban life behind when she was graduated and gone at college.

We found our lake almost by accident. Signs on a well traveled road in a nearby county pointed to a lake house for sale where no lake seemed to be. We thought it must refer to a farmstead with a large pond and passed it by several times. Then, on a whim, we followed the sign down a gravel road and discovered a secret lake. Nearly a thousand acres, almost three miles long, the lake allows motorized boats - restricting speeds to a civilized 25 MPH - but no jet skis or water skiing. It has no public access and is home to only 57 houses, fewer than 20 of which are year round residents.

We had found the lake. But it took two years before we could call it ours.