Subject: How much land is enough?

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 21 Feb 1995 21:49:00 -0500 (EST)

Andrew,

I don't have an answer to your land question, but I also am interested in the
same question. I bought 17 1/2 acres or rocky NE PA wooded and hilly land. I
have three level shelfs that are really quite beautiful. I have made a shale
covered road to the second shelf and want to build a cabin to begin with. My
concern is the rocky land. I don't know if it is possible to really create a
good garden. Also, my aesthetic sense makes me do dumb things like choosing a
homesite a little removed from the planned orchard and garden. I hate the
thought of cutting trees and want them as a shield. I also hate the thought of 
a neighbor seeing my house even with binoculars! I know this is rambling, but
any suggestions? Can this amount of rocky and hilly land support much
realistically? 

[email-masked]

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From: "bonni brooks" <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 22 Feb 1995 11:36:27 EST

On 02/21/95 at 20:26:15 [email-masked] said:

>Nice area, and lovely people (they also are the exception that crime goes up

You might also want to consider north central WV.  The economy is better
here, and there's good land available.  They're also reclaiming the strip
mines (slowly but surely), and that land, which can be used for livestock
and woodlands, is *cheap*.

>  When the
>mines are going full blast, there's plenty of money around that part of the
>state, but times get pretty tough. You may want to check with your insurance

The mines are *not* going full blast.  Mines everywhere are closing down.

>An up side to the state was
>the low property tax (a 3200 sq ft. place on 2/3 of an acre in one of the
>nicest areas in Huntington (2nd biggest city in the state) was only $295 a
>year (I was paying that per month for half the house in Upstate NY last
>year)).  The down side to low taxes was that roads in that area of the state
>can kill you - if you  don't hit a pot hole and fly off the edge of a
>mountain, a coal truck will push you off.

Property taxes went way up recently.  Ours doubled last year.  We were
paying $300 or so for a big four-bedroom house on 2.5 acres (before we
bought the additional 41.5 acres).

The roads - well, just make sure your vehicle has good shocks!  I like to
joke that the major WV export is chuck-holes: we sell them to PennDOT. :;->
But the coal truck drivers are good ol' boys - they can't help it if their
rigs are tippy and hard to control.

>Remember Bophal India?  The only place where they made the same chemical in
>this country was the Union Carbide agricultural products plant in Institute,
>WV, just down the river from Charleston.  Things have improved greatly over
>the last 40 years, but had some folks in some of my safety courses I was

This is still true.  A friend of mine works down there.  He can see the
emergency sirens from his office window.  Scary.

Don't live anywhere near Nitro.  I don't know how people stand to live
there.  All you have to do to find it is get on the highway in Charleston
and head toward Huntington - you don't even need to open the windows,
you'll find it!  You never forget the smell...

>I've heard that somewhere between 65 & 85% of the state is covered with
>hardwood forests, at one time furniture factories were booming, and high

Yes, but they are second growth.  The state was clearcut.  There are
some good trees around now, but large portions of the state's forests
are full of seedy black locusts - good firewood, by the way, and
excellent fenceposts, but they have a tendency to shoot up and fall
prey to the locust borer and die.  Oaks, maples and hickories are coming
back, along with other assorted trees.  My in-laws' woods are about 80
years old now, and coming along nicely, but there are lots of widder-makers
in the form of dead black locusts that my father-in-law is weeding out.

>Sounds low to me too - if in the South East part of the state, expect the
>land to be up and down , and in that case more land wouldn't be a bad idea
>(woodlot excepted).  If you did buy livestock for that area, be sure to get
>the kind that have shorter legs on one side so they can stand up straight on
>the hillside ;-)

Heh heh.  Yeah, I hope this guy isn't trying to find *flat* land!  Ain't
no such critter!  What flat land there is, is grabbed by the counties for
airports.  Our garden is terraced, and we have to double-dig it by hand
because it's too steep for a tiller.  (We've only got one good-sized dent
on our van - where it was viciously attacked by a runaway Troy-Bilt Horse!)

>colleges (including med school), that offer 96 different majors.  Instate
>tutition costs me $125 to $144 Per COURSE (not semester unit) when working on
>my master's. (undergrad costs were less).)  Also Huntington is big enough to

A word to the wise here - tuition has been sky-rocketing the last five years.
I don't know what it's like at the moment, but I do know that tuition has
gotten outrageous.

>One thing to keep in mind:  No matter where you buy in the state, IF you
>decide it's not for you, selling the place will be tough (how many other
>states are loosing population?  The further out and/or more remote you are,
>the harder the sell.  (The nice place I mentioned in town took two years to
>sell - at a loss.)

Very true.  Even in the better areas, it's hard to move property.

On the other hand, one upside to the state is the politics.  It's highly
entertaining.  They really ought to take that dog and pony show on the
road....

bonni

  IC | XC  |     bonni brooks "The Lone Quilter"          |  "We speak
  ---+---  |         [email-masked]                |   Byzantine
  NI | KA  | Kelly's Creek Homestead, Maidsville, WV  USA |   Catholic
           |   http://wvnvm.wvnet.edu/~u6ed4/bonni.html   |   here."

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From: [email-masked] (Dean Osgood)
Date: Wed, 22 Feb 1995 12:30:27 -0500

>Charleston in the center toward it.  Where we're looking is in Pocahontas
>and Greenbrier Counties primarily, on the extreme southeast side of the
>state.  Your caveats about resale, poverty, etc. still apply in full
>force there, however.  We visited some longtime residents of Pocahontas
>Co. a few months ago, and they led us to believe that mining was not as
>much of a problem in their area - is this true?  We certainly didn't see
>the same evidence of mining that we saw in other parts of the state.
I have a farm in Summers county, SE WV.
Don't get to spend enough time there right now, too busy trying to get it
together for an early retirement to the farm.
The only mineing in those areas that I know of is for limestone and some
speciaty sand for glass makeing.
The area in general is impoverished, and unless you are bringing your job
with you, you are going to be out of luck.
Look at the phone service, I think that if you pick the right area you can
get a T-1 line, and in bad wether you might need a lot of bandwidth. Area
gets a lot of snow every so often.
I just joined up so I missed the origional post, but guessing from context,
I would say that you want the following, 10 acres wood lot for heat, 10
acres wood lot for timber, 20 acres for rocks, 2.5 acres for septic, 2.5
acres for buildings, etc., etc.......

Dean Osgood
[email-masked].

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From: [email-masked] (Dean Osgood)
Date: Wed, 22 Feb 1995 12:55:24 -0500

bonni brooks said
>joke that the major WV export is chuck-holes: we sell them to PennDOT. :;->
In the southern part of the state they are called "Jay holes" (sure do
Rock-a-feller)
>entertaining.  They really ought to take that dog and pony show on the
Heck, just watch Fiddlin' Bob on C-Span sometime.

Dean Osgood

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From: "bonni brooks" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Feb 1995 12:20:23 EST

>gets a lot of snow every so often.

Oh, this reminds me.  Some of the more remote (and some of the less remote)
areas still have party lines (we had one until a year and a half ago, and
we live 15 mins from West Virginia University).  Definitely look into phone
service.

bonni