Seeking BC Land, South of Prince George

Loving this website so far, thanks for having it available.

We are looking to relocate to the south of British Columbia (we are currently in the north) by September (my son going into grade 10 and I want to be fairly close to a decent highschool - within an hour) and preferably near Keremeos or over in the Kootenays region.
(Edit - oops! I forgot to add numbers! - $20,000 is our budget. So ya...not much.)

I have been looking over the past few years and so far only finding small lots in Anglemont, in the Shuswap ... we liked it there - we traveled the area a few weeks ago (I've lived in Eagle Bay in the past, actually), dropped my son with family in the Okanagan and we went around back up through the Shuswap, through Kamloops and Cache Creek to Hope and then finally fell in love with Keremeos! Although Anglemont seems the cheapest, it really doesn't suit us right now; we found a lot of established competition in our chosen professions... We want pigs, chickens, gardens and fruit trees. The lots are too small and the type of community is not really our style/we probably wouldn't fit in.

If anyone sees this and knows of anything else available, please message me with more details. We are open to all kinds of situations, anything to get us started.
I've been to bc auction, mls, kijiji, craigslist, landquest and dignam so far. Also researched a little bit crown land for individual rural residential, I mailed Front Counter BC to ask questions and was just rudely shot down from the get-go. Basically, there is little chance of us (meaning regular citizens) being "worthy" enough for crown lands.

Hello. I know Keremeos isn't the south Okanagan, but one of the things I've noticed since moving to the S. OK is that there are a lot of empty town lots for sale for (relatively) cheap, but that these aren't easily visible online. For example, within a five minute walk of my house, there are three empty lots for sale (two right beside each other) and two more lots with houses, but the houses are probably not worth very much to most people, both being older for the area, and neglected looking. None of these places show up on the MLS, but I believe most if not all are available for less then 10K. (One I inquired about, and is asking 8000, and has been sitting for eight months since then, so will probably sell for less.)
I'm from the city, so all these town lots look 'biggish' to me, and I'm wondering if a person could make themselves an "acerage" by buying up lots like them over time. Of course, there would be a problem with establishing forest on "acerage" subdivided like that, and pigs are out (maybe chickens would be okay?) but the positives would be that they're all already "hooked up" with water access and electric, they're close to whatever services the town provides, while having relatively low taxes since they're "empty" - and in the future, it might be possible to sell them for profit to housing developers as the town expands, provided that the town does expand. Plus they would easily be used as teachable space, since the town public would be right there to be amazed by permaculture coolness.

Other then small town lots, though, I haven't seen anything approaching affordable agricultural land in the valley, which I blame on the wine industry. And the cheap irrigation water. And of course, rich Albertans.

My advice would be to make contact with a real estate agent in Keremeos, it won't cost you anything but time as a potential buyer, and perhaps they can let you know about "secret" lots for sale. Ideally you'd be able to drive around the area yourself, and take notes on anything interesting you saw.

I haven't been to Keremeos yet, but keep hearing good things about it!

Hi Vera, thank you kindly for your helpful reply. I had expected that may be the case and have contacted a few agents in different places but no reply so far. I will contact some more today. Have not talked to any in Keremeos yet. I mean to go down again soon for a more closer look at the areas we became most interested in.
I am very much interested in the properties you have found if you could send me some more info? That would be super awesome! I'm willing to start anywhere I can, in fact I intend to pass the first property down to my kids when I "move up" anyways, they can live on it or sell it.

Wishing you all a great weekend