Here is my little story,
Five years ago, me and my wife bought 26 acres of forest land. Since then, we have done a lot of work toward building our dream homestead. We built a road ( with a permit), cleared and made a pad...
Last week, I receive a letter from the city telling me that my road is not legal, because it's not exactly where it was supposed to be on the plan. I also have to hire a biologist to restore a stream that they say my road has put sand in... this will cost a few thousand.
I call the city to know if I can expect a lot of surprises like that, since we are finishing the plan for the timber frame home that I was supposed to cut myself, and we are supposed to start building in a few months.
They tell me that I need to keep 50% of the land intact. I said no problem, I want to have a a permaculture land with forest garden and free range animal so I also want to keep the land natural. They said that I can't put animal on the 50%, because I cannot modify or stomp the native grass that is there!
So I went from 26 acres, to 13 acres, less the road, the house, the septic, the barn, thepaddock... so basically, I have a land too small for my plan!
This is what happen when the environmental law are made by people who doesn't understand what sustainable really is if nobody is allowed to modify his land, then we are stil at the mercy of big monoculture farm that rely on fossil fuel and deplete the soil nutrients
So we basically forgot the project and will sell the land to some rich city dwellers that will built a secondary residence and will have nothing sustainable!
We will buy and existing house with a land already farmed ( probably monoculture) and we will transform it to a permaculture. But it will never be the house we planned, built by my own hand...very very sad.
thanks for letting me vent!
