This weekend, while Aidan and I were at a birthday party (if you ask Aidan what he did that day he says, "I ate cake"), Steve looked at some properties. There was a 2 acre plot in a good area with a foundation, well and septic already there. My immediate reaction was - I hate that - buying someone's unfinished project. This wouldn't be the first piece of land that we had looked at like that. It makes me feel restricted by the size and location of the foundation. I acknowledge that I might just lack vision, so we went to look at it when Steve got home from work last night. It is in a really nice area, dirt road, the town I want to be in... but the property itself was not exciting. It was uninviting and steep, with very little usable land as far as I could see. I thought that we could look into getting a building loan because it could be a very affordable scenario, since the most expensive building elements were already in place.

On our way back we stopped at another property that Steve hadn't explored, but just driven by. He had said that he liked it. I had looked at it once before and thought that it looked rocky. It was all flat, so we grabbed Aidan and started to walk a bit on it. It felt much nicer than the first property. We couldn't remember the details about it. It hadn't really been our destination.

Two minutes into our walk, Steve saw an old man coming toward us. We approaced him, a little nervous that we were going to get yelled at for tresspassing or something. He was thin with white hair and a white beard. He wore a wide brimmed hat, clean clothes with a watchface tied to a beltloop. He knew where the property boundaries were and was happy to show us, after he showed us the mint 1929 Ford that he had just bought. He asked Aidan if he wanted to drive it and lifted the cover off and opened the door for him. I asked him his name. He said Williams.

Mr. Williams property is across a poorly maintained town road from the property. He siad that he lived there, but all I could see were old cars with these dome shaped shelters over them. He explained that he lived in that shack whose roofline you could see peeking over one of the domes. He built it in 1947. All it has is a phone.

He showed us the property boundaries for the land we were looking at. He even knew exactly where the survey stakes were. He pointed out a swampy part. I told him that the realtors are very clever and call that a "pond site". He explained that the land was farmed at one time and the tractors had made the ridge that formed one of the boundaries. The land was much more than we had expected. When we got home we looked at the listing and found that it is 6 acres. We loved Mr. Williams and talked about how most people would find his shack and pile of cars to be a liability. We felt like his presence there was like a personal invitation to us.

Now, how to afford it.