Moving to Southern Ontario: Suggestions?

[ca2devri]

My family and I are making a long-planned move closer to extended family, back to Southern Ontario. I'm looking for suggestions on good, supportive rural communities / locations.

First, a little background:

- we have lived in and around Ottawa for 10 years, this past year I've run a market garden, but I work in high tech as well
- my family is in the St.Thomas / London area and my wife's family is in Brampton.
- I will be working in Waterloo, but my medium-term goal is to buy a small farm and do market gardening again (so perhaps proximity to Waterloo isn't a big requirement).

We're hoping to find a community not too far from family that is supportive of small-scale agriculture and homesteading. Proximity to a good market is important too.

Feelings from personal experiences are welcome!

Chris

[DaleK]

Somethings to keep in mind: land in the Waterloo area is out of sight, particularly market-garden sized parcels. With all the Mennonites and the produce market, I would think Waterloo is probably one of the harder areas to make a go in market gardening now. You might be better off going farther north or north west, if you can find someplace with enough traffic or market nearby.

[majik]

I agree that most of Waterloo is crazy expensive, but there might be smaller parcels of land near Millbank or other edges of the county. Waterloo as a workplace is easily drivable from Oxford County, and the land there (here) is cheaper in some spots, but the new Toyota plant is driving things up. In terms of markets, the market in Waterloo is quite touristy and expensive to have space at. You might want to try Stratford or Woodstock. Definitely worth doing the research. Good luck, and welcome (back) to the neighbourhood.

[Ross]

http://www.farmersmarketsontario.com/ Has a list of all Ontario farmers' markets see what is where across Ontario. I pulled Kitchener's market web page out of the list. Never been myself. http://www.kitchenermarket.ca/

[pookshollow]

I agree that Waterloo could be very pricey - it's still commutable to Toronto (why anyone would want to do that is beyond me). Don't even think about Brampton!

I second the Woodstock area, or you might want to look around Brantford/Paris. We're just south of Brantford, and got 10 acres quite reasonably. We're on heavy clay, but not too far west of us (next road!) is sandy loam.

[ronbre]

if you wanted to go across the pond..my sister in law has a double wide for sale really cheap in Temperance Mi

[Tracy Rimmer]

Honestly, I understand why you're doing it -- I have family all through that area myself -- but realistically, NO WAY would I move back there. Land is too expensive and there are too darned many people for my taste.

If I *HAD* to, I'd look in the western portion of the area -- Goderich, Sarnia, even up as far as Owen Sound. My sister and her husband just moved to the Parry Sound area, but I'm assuming that that is too far north for you. There are still some very affordable (on Southern Ontario's scale) acreages in that area.

[ca2devri]

Thanks for the suggestions. I understand Waterloo-Guelph is going to be expensive. In fact I think it's likely we end up further from Toronto and closer to London (my parents live just outside of St.Thomas).

The reason I'm apprehensive is that I'm unsure what the support of customers and competition will be like in that area for small-scale vegetable growers. I have been growing and selling on the outskirts of Ottawa in what I think is an under-serviced market so marketing my produce has be relatively easy. When I see markets like St.Jacobs with the piles of cheap produce (most of it not farmer grown though), it worries me a bit.

I like the idea of the north shore of lake Erie. It's a beautiful area and it seems that you can get land at a good rate if you're not close to the bigger cities, but there's the rub. If I am going to depend on bigger cities for a market, I'll want to be closer.

Most important to us though will be a place with a sense of community and support for sustainable agriculture. I know it's going to be hard to judge, so we're planning on renting somewhere for a while.

Chris

[city2country]

We're looking at a similar move... but to the other side of toronto... more the peterborough area. But i know people who've bought some pretty nice places out london way. Land is quite a bit more expensive in Southern Ontario than most on this forum are used to, but good deals can be had. On friend just bought 50 acres with an old brick farm house and one barn. Both the house and the barn needed tons of work. But he got it for just over 150G. The house is now gutted and they hope to have it finished by mid fall.