Journal

Field notes from nearly twenty acres of Ontario wilderness

Forest in a watercolour style
Planning 3 min read

Forester Visit

Learning the forest and signing up for Ontario’s managed forest tax incentive

We’ve both spent our lives around forests, camping and watching trees grow, but we’d never really taken the time to learn their deeper history. We knew the basics, a few tree types at a high level, but nothing specific. We couldn’t identify the different parts of the forest or read the story it was telling.

At the same time, we’d just bought the property. Property taxes on vacant land were one more cost we weren’t looking forward to. That’s when we found Ontario’s Managed Forest Tax Incentive Plan (MFTIP).

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Solar panels and cabin in a watercolour style
Solar 4 min read

Solar Energy

Choosing a system that would last, and what we learned the hard way

For the first while after we bought the property, we had no electricity on site. We ran battery-powered lights, charged phones off battery packs when we could, and trickle-charged here and there. In practice we were camping on our own land every weekend, and for a time that was enough.

When we did need real power (for tools, charging, or the odd convenience), we had to run a generator. That was when the trade-offs became impossible to ignore. Generators also bring real safety concerns, which we knew well as we’d already had one catch fire overnight in our winter setup.

The generator was loud. One of the reasons we’d bought the land was for peace and quiet: no traffic, no city hum, just the forest. Firing up the generator meant throwing that away for the whole stretch we had it on. It was also expensive. It needed premium fuel, and we were burning through $30-40 in gas per day whenever we used it. For a place we visited on weekends, that math didn’t work. We needed something that could give us power without the noise and the ongoing cost.

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Generator in a watercolour style
Planning 2 min read

The Generator on Fire

When our winter power setup went wrong, and what we learned

During the first year on the property, we were out there as often as we could get away, including through the winter. To make cold-weather stays work, we picked up insulated ice-fishing shelters to use as tents and ran a generator overnight to power heaters. For a while, the setup did the job.

We’d taken what felt like reasonable precautions. The heaters had anti-tip protection. We’d placed the generator well away from the shelters. We were careful. Then one morning I woke up and it was cold.

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