To bring you up to date...

Carol and I (Mike) recently purchased a quarter section (160 Acres) of raw land in Barnhartvale, BC, about 35 minutes drive SE from Kamloops, BC. As stated before, the land is undeveloped. There is no power, water or septic installed and the road in sucks. All of these issues need to be addressed before any actual construction can begin.
We weren't actually looking to take on a project of this scope when we first started looking for a new home. Ideally, we thought, we wanted a small acreage with a nice house, barn and facilities for keeping a few horses. Riding has been a passion of Carol's since she was a little girl and this was her opportunity to live her dream. We spent months scouring the local listings and viewing a few places. It quickly became apparent that anything that fit our wish list and was close enough to town to allow comfortably commuting to our business, was outside of our modest price range. Fortunately, early in the process, we hooked up with Jackie Brommeland, a local realtor. She was great to work with and had gone through a similar quest a few years ago when she and her family moved to Kamloops from the coast.
Right away, we learned that all rural properties fall into 1 of 4 groups - properties that have water; properties that have power; properties that have both water and power; and properties that have neither. Depending on which group a given property belongs to, the value of that property will vary dramatically.
We had been up to look at a 40 acre chunk that fell into the "has water, but no power" group. This property was not for us as the house was a little too rustic for both our tastes, and while 40 acres is a good sized piece of land, it wasn't what we had pictured in our mind's eye. It was flat and uninteresting with no real "view" from the house other than the various run-down outbuildings. However, it was intriguing to see how they had overcome the lack of grid-supplied electricity. They had installed a variety of solar PV (photo voltaic) modules, a wind generator, a significant battery bank and a serious inverter system to convert the DC voltage stored in the batteries to more familiar 110V AC. It got us thinking...
Jackie mentioned that she had listed a beautiful piece of property a few kilometres from her own house. It was 160 acres, or a "quarter section", but had no power and a very poor access road. But, it did have a good water supply, with an old well used by the original settlers 100 years ago and a spring fed by an underground stream. We arranged to go and view it a few days later.

It was quite a trek from town, not too far but the last 14 kms were on gravel roads and the driveway, Sinclair Road, was really a 4WD test track with huge ruts and boggy sections preventing all but the very adventurous from getting in. But once we got there and took a look around...Wow! It was love at first sight for both of us. The place was gorgeous, with varied terrain, forested areas and wide open clearings on a mostly gentle slope with a spectacular view of forests and the mountains beyond. We were home!