At Home In The Woods

[Obed]

After moving to Knoxville from the Carolinas, we bought the tractor and spent weekends cleaning up our rural Cumberland Plateau property to get it ready for putting a small camper on it. Here I am picking up my new toy.

 

[Obed]

Here are some pictures cleaning up the plateau property. The neighbors' dogs loved riding on the trailer. I find that so funny.

 

[MotorSeven]

61 rural ac??/ NO...Don't sell it! That is a beautifull tract of land, & you will regret selling. We are an hour away from Knox and that's too close for us. I spent an entire career in a big metro area....never again! I'll spend the rest of my time here...when I go, someone can use the FEL to drop my corpse into the compost pile.

Our creek:

 

[dave1949]

61 rural ac??/ NO...Don't sell it! That is a beautifull tract of land, & you will regret selling. We are an hour away from Knox and that's too close for us. I spent an entire career in a big metro area....never again! I'll spend the rest of my time here...when I go, someone can use the FEL to drop my (mortal remains?) into the compost pile.

That's a good one M7! I agree, that 61 ac looks just too interesting to sell. That could be one of those forks you wish you would have taken when you look back 10-20 yrs from now.
Dave.

 

[MotorSeven]

Either I forgot something or it got moderated away.....:>[

RD

 

[Obed]

RD,
I checked out your post on building your log home. I love your property. That looks like an awesome buidling site.

 

[Obed]

So we started house shopping closer to Knoxville. We wanted some acreage. In 2005 and 2006, there was a development boon in this area. Lots of people had moved to counties around the Knoxville area for their retirement years. Prices had shot up during the boon. People were convinced that their property was made of gold. Due to the development spurt, acreage prices went up accordingly. However, when we started house shopping in 2007, we were not convinced that the real estate boon was still happening and were not willing to pay the prices that people were asking. So we kept looking. Our preference was to buy an existing house with acreage. Privacy was high on our wish list. Unfortunately, for every property we looked at in our price range, we either liked the land and didn't like the house or we liked the house and didn't like the land. In 2008, we did find a farm at a reasonable price that we loved. We were preparing to make an offer when it occurred to me to ask the realtor about the location of a proposed expressway that would go through that area. It turned out the proposed expressway would be located right across the road from the farm for sale. With that new information, we decided not to make an offer.

 

[Obed]

With the trouble we were having finding a house with property, we expanded our search to include vacant land that we could build on. I remembered a piece of land I had seen earlier on the MLS that I found interesting but had not looked at it. The tract was 30 acres of woods along a ridge line and was about a 30 minute commute to my work. Due to the terrain of the land, it was not something most developers would be interested in so the price was reasonable. We bought the property in the spring of 2008. Here's a picture of the property when we purchased it. Trees, trees, and more trees.

 

[Obed]

So now we own two pieces of land, the 61 acres on the Cumberland Plateau 1 1/2 hour from Knoxville, and 30 acres 30 minutes from Knoxville. Since we don't need both, we have recently put the 61 acre piece on the market. The 30 acre tract is where we will make our home.

 

[jimmyj]

Obed, that 61ac is like a paradise! Is there no way you can make it work? Gosh, what a beautiful place. (I'm not questioning your judgement, just expressing a glimmer of hope that maybe you could keep that paradise).

Good luck either way. Hopefully the 30ac is pretty too.

Jim