Passive Solar Home on 10 Acres in Northern MN Near Lake Superior For Sale

I'm selling my dream home, and I want the right person to find it.

I had to move for my job, and it has broken my heart. This house, outside Duluth, MN, is going to be the greatest place I have ever lived. If there were any way I could keep it, I would. Having it sit empty right now is almost as hard to watch.

The house is built right into the trees — no yard, no lawn, nothing to mow or maintain. The trees come right up to the house and the front and side decks sit among them, so you feel like part of the land rather than separate from it.

Right out back is a garden with a tall fence. The well isn't set up to irrigate it, so instead there's a water catchment system with a large holding tank below the house that collects rainwater and snowmelt, pumped up to a second large tank by the garden with a pump for a hose for watering. Down the hill from the house and garden is a fully functional barn with a small apartment inside with a bathroom with a composting toilet, shower and sink. There’s water to the stalls in the barn.

We named our weather station "Narnia," because in winter, walking the paths on the land really does feel like stepping out of the wardrobe. We kept our snowshoes by the back door and walked those trails with our dogs every day. Trail cams caught bears, bobcats, wolves, coyotes, deer, turkeys, cranes, and more over the years. The songbird migration through those trees every spring was spectacular. It's boreal forest, so many of those songbirds actually nest there too. The land borders over a 1,000 acres of DNR public land where there are trails, hunting, and wildlife management areas.  There are oyster mushrooms and other edibles in the woods (we never foraged ourselves — wanted proper training first).

It sits near Lake Superior, the largest freshwater body in the world, and in the watershed of Fish Lake, directly north. As water becomes a bigger question for more of the country, that's going to be worth a lot.

I added some of my favorite pictures, but the actual pictures of the house and land can be found in the link to the real estate agent.  (The actual inside of the house is very nice and updated, the pictures are in the link.  I will add some below after work.  The pictures below are just some of the things I loved about living there.)

Specifics:
• Price: $799,000
• Acreage: 10 acres
• Size: 4 bed, 4 bath, 3,548 sq ft
• Solar panels with battery system and new inverter
• Passive solar design — full south-facing windows across the front of the house
• Built into bedrock; basement is ground-level in front, cut into rock in back — naturally cool in summer, warm in winter
• In-floor heating in the basement and retrofitted into the main floor
• Heat pumps (recently replaced) in the basement living area, main living area, master bedroom, and upstairs bedroom
• Master suite on the main floor
• Open-concept upstairs with two bedrooms and a bathroom; south-facing windows and glass blocks in the wall of the other bedroom bring in light; operable south-facing clerestory windows above the loft hallway
• Grid-tied ovens and heat pumps; everything else runs on solar battery (panels on the 3-car garage roof)
• Mostly forested lot — cleared areas already exist around the garden behind the house and around the barn; a few other spots have thinner tree coverage and could likely be cleared easily if more open space is wanted

You can follow this link https://zsvc.paragon.ice.com/s/goto/TReuqp3Hrsz for pictures and more details and to contact my realtor, Deanna Bennett, at Messina & Associates Real Estate.