Work trade southwest New Brunswick, Canada

My wife and I have a homestead on a beautiful piece of property in beautiful Southwest NB. It’s mostly forested, and our homestead is right in the middle of it, made mostly from materials harvested from the forest using principles that will hopefully one day result in the restoration of the native and threatened Acadian Forest that once covered Atlantic Canada.

The property sits quite far back from any trafficked  road, and there are no visible neighbors, and a good size stream runs through it, so it makes the place ideal for nature lovers like us. It is a short 15 min or so drive to towns where you can get everything you need.

After building our small home, and two winter seasons of logging, it became clear that we have far too much land to make full use of. I would love to pull more value out of these woods as the first batch of pioneer trees, a good size and species for log buildings or timber framing, are fully mature, ready for harvest, and blowing down faster than I can harvest them and build with them.

It’s a shame of course, but there is no way I am getting commercial foresters in, because it doesn’t pay, and they will destroy the second growth in the understory, which will harm the restoration to Acadian Forest conditions.

I have a band sawmill mill to help me turn this stuff into valuable buildings, but I have no hope of staying ahead of the blowdowns and making full use of the trees using my light touch techniques.

I have many ideas of what to do with the wood, and the tools and skills to make it happen, but there just isn’t enough time.

I wonder if there aren’t other folks in the area keen on some sort of arrangement. With some of the skills, or a keen interest and willingness to learn, and inclination to spend a certain fixed amount of time on this project to help get ahead of this stand that is blowing down faster than I can cut it.

I would like to turn these dying trees into bunkies, sheds, guest cabins, and other useful things to be sold locally, or to help expand the homestead, and I need help in the woods doing selective forestry, need help in sawmill operations, and in the construction phase as well.

If you have mobile accommodation, like a Vanlifer or RV lifer, you are welcome find a quiet spot in the field by the stream, and we can work out ways in which we can share resources and make things easier for you.

I can’t pay you in money, as I don’t have any income from the operations yet, and it isn’t that lucrative anyways I am sure! But I can offer a beautiful place camp for a while, close to town but a quiet spot deep in the woods to spend some time, and some experience with sustainable light touch restorative forestry, saw-milling, and timber framing. You are also welcome to hunt, trap, foraged, and grow on the land if you wish. (With some limitations of course) It has lots to offer.

You could also put up a temporary hard camp if you like. Yurt, wall tent with plywood, small log structure, or similar.

Open to ideas, but a fixed length of time is critical as I don’t know how long this stage of the project will take.

Let me know if anyone is interested or has any other proposal they would like me to hear!
I

Hi Tim,

I read your post with interest. I grew up in the village of Gagetown and now live in Aroostook County, Maine. My husband and I raised our kids in Virginia, just outside Washington, DC. We are empty nesters now and have dreams for how we want to live our golden years.  We were hoping to purchase land in NB but my husband loves his remote job and his US based employer couldn't make it work for him to live in Canada.

Anyway, one thing I wanted to share with you is that it may very well be possible to make a sizable income with short-term glamping style rentals on your property. I took a course all about this called Live the Off-Grid Dream.

https://www.livingtheoffgriddream.com/

When I was first working through the course, I decided to see if there were any places in NB that had a similar business model. We visited a super busy and successful glamping business in Cocagne, NB. https://www.creeksidernr.com/

It was truly an amazing experience to rotate between the wood-fired sauna, outdoor hot tub and cold plunge. This kind of setup is extremely popular and there are several all over NB. It's what we are planning to set up on our property.

Here is the website for our project, which only a seed right now.

https://mamamoose.life/

If you take a look at our vision and plans and you want to connect, please don't hesitate to reach out. I'd love to meet up and see how we could support each other. I visit the Fredericton area often and have family in Hampton as well.

Best wishes,
Jennifer Damashek

This is exactly what we had planned.

I was going to use the logs from the Acadian forest restoration project to make timber framed cabins out of natural materials using local historical architecture techniques, and have a screened in deck to extend the living area overlooking the stream, then have a d fired log sauna and hot tub and/or cold plunge in the deck.

There are lots of geodesic dome competitors in the area, and I preferred to use native materials that integrate into the natural environment better, and are hyper-local, vertically integrated, sustainable, are a revival of local heritage, etc.

Sounds very similar to what you have planned.

This was always the plan. Build the home, then this winter I was to go to the woods for that project.

And then… Canada saw a massive and abrupt spike in demand for housing almost overnight, and homelessness surged almost overnight as well. Housing prices spiked. The government decided to shift the blame on short term rentals instead of them. Better to get us pointing the the fingers at each other instead of them of course.

BC banned short term rentals almost entirely, the federal government made things more difficult, and now NB government has launched a study mulling over banning or restricting them as well.

It’s too politically unstable at the moment for me to pour the amount of blood, sweat, and money into such a project only to risk being political collateral damage.

So I have to figure out something else for the time being and maybe revisit this if the whole thing blows over.

But yes we are ideally situated for such a business. And there is a lack of this sort of thing and similar operations are booked solid. It’s sad.

I am not totally sure how we could support each other, given some of the challenges the border gives us. Would be cool to build some of these things for you or something like that. I have the plans. I am set up for it. Just don’t think we could export them to the US. But I am all ears!

It’s true there seems to be a move towards limiting AirBnB.

Have you looked into whether or not I could purchase a cabin shell from you if you built one for us?

I could ask at the border the next time I cross.

I haven’t looked into that.

I don’t cross the lines much myself, but if you do I would like to know!

Could be something we could do for sure.

It would give me a project until things settle politically here.

You looking at several?

I will be crossing the border the week after Christmas and will ask about this when I come back to Maine.