Temporary Lodging & Property Hunting… Again

Jan 26

Preview

I’d made the decision to find an alternative place to keep my sheep, somewhere I could also live.

So I started looking. Everywhere. Every corner of the province. I considered moving back to my family farm in the far north (Peace Country). I looked east, almost to Saskatchewan. I even explored the idea of renting a beautiful acreage in the southern Alberta foothills. But no matter how promising a place looked on paper, nothing felt quite right.

Then I found it: 30 acres with an old house, tucked close to a provincial park, about 30 minutes east of Edmonton. The little house had good bones, and I convinced myself I could fix it up and be living there within six months. I viewed the property twice, once on my own, and once with my parents and the realtor. The realtor even mentioned that the neighboring 30 acres might come up for sale in the next few years, which felt like a sign that growth could be possible down the road.

I put my house in Blackfalds up for sale and it moved fast. Viewings started right away, and within the first day I had three offers. Eight hours after my listing went live on MLS, I’d accepted one.

For a moment, everything felt like it was lining up perfectly: my house was sold, the land purchase was moving forward, and it seemed like the transition was finally happening.

Then FCC (the lender financing the land) flagged an issue that stopped everything in its tracks.

The property I was trying to buy had an environmental easement on roughly one-third of the land, an easement that restricted grazing to only 10 animals for one month of the year. For a sheep operation, that isn’t a minor detail. It’s the kind of limitation that changes the entire value and functionality of the property.

The worst part? It was a complete surprise. Every document I’d been provided stated there were no easements. Once I learned the truth and confronted the realtor about the misrepresentation, I backed out of the deal.

But my house was already sold.

So suddenly I was in a situation I never expected to be in: no property, no home, and a moving timeline that didn’t care about any of it.

My parents are wonderful people. They didn’t exactly have room for me, 20 sheep, and a dog, but they brought us in anyway, without a firm end date, just the understanding that we’d figure it out. Everything I owned was either sold or put into storage. Their place had a perimeter fence but no cross-fencing, so we moved quickly setting up temporary fencing to create three pens and make it functional enough to manage sheep safely.

On September 10, 2024, I moved to my parents’ acreage in the Mundare area (about 45 minutes east of Edmonton).

And then I started searching again.

That second hunt lasted four months, then I found another property, and I felt that pull again.

This one was about an hour southwest of Edmonton: 65 acres of bare land with a creek, pasture, gentle rolling hills, and spruce trees all around. It was quiet in a way that made you breathe deeper without realizing it. I loved it immediately.

But it came with a different kind of reality. To make it livable would require a lot. Not just hard work, but the kind of work that requires heavy equipment and big decisions. A driveway would need to be built. Power brought in. The entire property fenced. Water figured out (drill a well and/or dig a dugout). And then, eventually, build a house. It was exciting, but it was also overwhelming.

Once again, I asked my parents to come look before I made a decision I couldn’t easily undo. Dad came out, walked the land, and gave his blessing knowing the scope of the work and what it would take to get started. (He owns equipment, and offered to help with the heavy lifting that would be required.)

I slept on it one more night.

And then I made the leap.

In January 2025, the paperwork went through, and I officially owned that beautiful 65-acre piece of land.