How much land do you have

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FramerJ

Member
Mar 18, 2021
66
Missouri
So I have been reading a lot of posts on this forum lately. Lets be honest, its better than anything on the internet and I dont like TV. Plus, you can learn some things on this forum. Anyway, I am generally intrigued....and a bit envious about how much land some of you have. It sounds like some of you have some really nice pieces of property. Also sounds like some have land that have been in the family for generations. I happen to live in the suburbs of KC on 1/3 acre. Dont laugh-- Im making the most of it. Its not my ideal situation but I am slowly wearing my wife down to possibly buy some wooded acreage in the Ozarks. I think she would go crazy living there full time but I would be in heaven just walking around in the woods. For the time being I will just keep saving up.
 
Seriously though, I started out with a 1/4 to 1/3 acre in town and quickly ran out of room. Didnt like that the neighbors were right there. Currently got a few acres in the country. Always looking for more!
 
I live on 15 acres. Prior to building the current house I lived on less than a tenth of an acre. The most interesting part of the transition between the two places is that I have enough blow-down or trees that need removed that I don't have to scrounge anymore. I still get a little twitchey driving past some wood along the road, but then I think about the work I have keeping up with keeping the paths clear around my place. The biggest advantage of having more space is being able to store enough wood for a few years, However, I need bigger toys to clear snow, cut things up, etc.
 
We have about 5.4 acres, with probably 3 acres wooded and the rest clear for the house, 30' X 60' garage, and a big lawn.

Our old house that we sold in 2019 to buy this house had about 1 acre.

My wife and I still look at each other almost on a daily basis and say to each other "I can't believe we got so lucky to be able to get this place." The area that we live in is very popular with people from NYC and there are a lot of second homes and real estate prices are high in this area anyway. When the pandemic hit, even more people from NY, NJ, etc started buying up houses here to escape the city, and now the prices are really high. We would never be able to get the house for what we paid for it in 2019. We bought it from a couple that was getting divorced and had to sell it to settle the divorce, so that's why we were able to afford it.
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We've done a lot of work on the place in the short time we've been here since those pictures were taken. I put a new roof on the garage, we put solar PV panels on the garage roof, and solar hot water collectors on the house roof.

I even have a nice corner of the yard for firewood processing and stacking.
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We own a tiny 4327 sqft lot in the city, or 0.099 acres for those the measure that way. We have one tree in our yard, it's about 1-1/4" in diameter and 4-1/2' tall, it wouldn't even make good kindling, lol.

My parents own an acreage just over 15 minutes away, so I keep 2 cords of wood on hand here at the house and the rest is stored at their place. We cut firewood on crown land, for a few $5 permits a year we have more firewood than my parents and I can burn.

One day we are hoping to also own an acreage, but growing up on an acreage I know first hand how much fun and work they can be. We are still in our 20's, and when we bought this place 4 years ago we wanted to leave some cash on the table to do other things. We like camping lots, and own a fifth wheel to make any remote place our home for a few days to a week. We also like ATVing, jet boating, snowmobiling, and my wife especially likes her hot beach vacations to the Caribbean in the depths of winter. Of course Covid has put a damper on some of these items in the last year, and has us revisiting the acreage idea more and more.
 
That's a real pretty house and I have a city lot and small house...its enough for me but I sure enjoy going out into the wilderness with friends and to the mountains--so pretty...especially when we stop at a place to eat--I like that...clancey
 
My house lot is 1.3 acres. It was regenerating hardwood on about 2/3rds with the rest eastern spruce and balsam fir. The hardwoods were mostly red maple with white birch and few other oddballs. The property was probably cut 20 years earlier so most of the wood was 6 to 8" diameter with a few larger trees mixed in. I cleared it for my house and subsequently for a garage. I went 10 to 15 years of weekend firewood by cutting out the low grade trees and picking the best tree in clumps of red maples and cutting the rest of the clump. I was starting to run out of candidates for cutting and then I had an ice storm that wiped out half my hardwoods and damaged about half the remaining ones. Cleaning up the dead and damaged trees carried me for about 5 years. I still had trees and the remaining ones expanded their crowns. I did have small softwoods in the understory that took advantage of the extra light and tried to take over but with some aggressive cutting I got that problem under control. I started cutting on a piece of woodland that my brother owned. It needed thinning and I would cut the stuff in his way since he had no use for the wood. Meanwhile I had been looking for a woodlot for my own and after several years of looking I bought 83 acres of land that needs a lot of thinning. Access is difficult as its a steeply sloping lot but there is more wood than I could ever cut and every tree I cut improves the overall health of the remaining trees. I will be girdling tens to hundreds of cords of diseased beech and leaving it in place to improve the woods as its too hard to get out of the woods.
 
Well 42 years ago we bought a farm 120 acres have added more
680 acres plus 220 acres of mixed forest. My sons now farm the home
farm with its 700 acres of cropland and hay plus the 100 acres of sugar maple.
No place I would rather be than right here
 
We had our first house on 3/4 acre and enjoyed it but wanted more space and considered selling our house but decided just to spruce up the place and have it ready to sell if we ever wanted to. We kept an eye on zillow, looking for something figuring 3-5acres would be fantastic and dreamed about 10 in our budget. Amazingly a property came on the market within a few weeks with 66 acres in our price range! We hurriedly got our renovations done, lined up a realtor and checked it out. After a tour of the house, tour of the property, and usual hoops, within a few months we bought it.

I ask my wife every day how we were so lucky to end up with this place! I think a few factors turned off basic buyers, there is an access road to a radio tower in the back, and much of the 4 acre front yard was overgrown and "scrub" after a clear cut 20 years ago. For me, the radio tower access road is great, it's a. 5 mile road someone else has to maintain and keep in good shape and goes right through the middle of the woods giving great access to the area.

Keep an eye out and be ready if something comes up!
 
I have 103 acres and the parents have another 10 bordering me and I'm always looking to buy more. It's probably 70/30 timber/pasture. It borders around 9000 acres of mdc land. Not to boast but but I can literally take off from my house and walk and hunt wherever I want. Like johneh there's no place I'd rather be.
 
I live on a whopping 4,815 acres. Okay to be completely honest....I own 5 acres and the adjacent state park owns 4,810 but I sorta claim it as my back yard. My 5 acres is heavily wooded with almost all hardwoods and a pond.
 
Growing up the family had something like 300 acres . . . most of it was land purchased by my great-grandfather during the Depression from area farms/families who were unable to hold on to the land. Growing up we knew certain parcels of the land by their former owners -- the Hamlin Place, Cates Place, etc. I suspect in time those names will sadly be lost to history.

Today I own a very modest 2 acre plot . . . but my wife and I have talked very seriously about moving north to The County . . . and if that happens I would like a little more land.
 
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I have 48 acres in North Carolina. This is the view from my living room in January. I own a lot of trees, but can't get to most of 'em. Very steep mountain here and the "road" to the far end of the property is an overgrown logging road that you can't drive on.
There is a big dead ash tree next to that road, it would go 3 Nissan truck loads of premium firewood, but I am not going to carry that wood 400 feet up the mountain.
 
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I have 48 acres in North Carolina. This is the view from my living room in January. I own a lot of trees, but can't get to most of 'em. Very steep mountain here and the "road" to the far end of the property is an overgrown logging road that you can't drive on.
There is a big dead ash tree next to that road, it would go 3 Nissan truck loads of premium firewood, but I am not going to carry that wood 400 feet up the mountain.

That's some beautiful country.
 
5.8 acres with about 4.5 being mature woods. My folks nearby are on 2.1 wooded acres. Can see a neighbor or two a few hundred feet away, but when the leaves come out can't see nothin'.
 
We have .85 acre, 1/4 of it wooded. Probably sell next Spring, retire to NC on somewhere near 1/2 acre tops.
 
Live on 50 acre farm with 13 acres of bush. My brother and I own another 200acres. Mostly farm able land with some bush here and there. We lived in town for 14 years and I have successfully turned a city girl wife into a happy farm girl. Our kids don't understand the difference in lifestyle yet. I am saying farmland but it's all within the city limits, our house is 7 mins from a shopping mall and 3 mins from North America's busiest freight highway. 401/402. We feel blessed always but even more in these "lockdowns". We go for a 1 hour walk and we are still on our own place.
 
So I have been reading a lot of posts on this forum lately. Lets be honest, its better than anything on the internet and I dont like TV. Plus, you can learn some things on this forum. Anyway, I am generally intrigued....and a bit envious about how much land some of you have. It sounds like some of you have some really nice pieces of property. Also sounds like some have land that have been in the family for generations. I happen to live in the suburbs of KC on 1/3 acre. Dont laugh-- Im making the most of it. Its not my ideal situation but I am slowly wearing my wife down to possibly buy some wooded acreage in the Ozarks. I think she would go crazy living there full time but I would be in heaven just walking around in the woods. For the time being I will just keep saving up.
Sounds like maybe a property around Springfield's bedroom communities like Rogersville or Ozark would be a good middle ground. In the countryside but literally 10 minutes or so from Springfield.
 
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We have just under 4 acres but we are surrounded by hundreds of acres of farm land which then borders state forest and or park lands. We have a few neighbors but not to close and we all get along well. Oh and almost an acre of our 4 is a paved parking lot. We didn't do that but it is nice for some things great for processing wood. I do wish it was smaller though.