We are now landowners but know nothing about owning land. Where do we start?  Taxes. Insurance. Management. Etc.  Much to learn.  Overwhelming actually. Fortunately there are a lot of public resources in NC to help with the journey.  It truly is a journey as we are learning and developing new skills with nearly every visit. 

Typical with the start of many things in life, the practical matter of finances came up.  Buying the acreage was only the beginning.  Fortunately we anticipated at least some of this when we settled on the price.  First we needed to assure that the property did not get taxed as “best use” land, but rather as “current use”, which was agriculture. Secondly we needed a place to store stuff; tools primarily (though some might refer to them as big toys). I will come back to the second priority in a later post.

In order to keep the property listed as agricultural status we needed to a management plan to give to the tax office.  (This would save us hundreds of dollars on our annual tax bill!) Since the undeveloped land was primarily woodland, and we wanted to keep it that way, the first place investigated was the NC Forest Service. After multiple phone calls and emails, we were able to get a management plan submitted to and accepted by the tax office.  What a relief!

This is when we really lucked out.  When we had the forester out, we realized we had a stand of Longleaf pine trees on our property. Little did we know, but this is the basis of an entire ecosystem, one that is the focus of restoration in the US, and one that provides for cost sharing and educational resources.  This aspect of our recent land acquisition really interested us and opened an entire new direction and priority list for us.  More to follow.