Good land...or keep shopping???

I agree, Paul. The odor is not that strong, nor is it my number one concern.

Seems to me that selecting the property where you plan to live and raise a family is one of the most important decisions anyone will make. A compromise here makes it certain that you will wake up in a compromise every morning. I wish you good luck in your search....Glen

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The more a man travels, acquires wisdom and learns about life, the more likely he is to marry a Country Girl.

Huh. Funny how expectations in various areas of the country are different. Here in AZ, it's perfectly legal to live in a house that doesn't have good access. When it rains bad in my area, I have to park a good distance away and walk home across the desert because my road's totally impassable -- it floods knee deep. The school bus gets stuck on it fairly regularly, and I have a neighbor who's a cop and on call sometimes, and we still don't have good access. (The road is supposed to be maintained by the county, but it can take them days to "maintain" it to a passable level after a rain. At least so far they haven't tried to "fix" it by putting clay down on it like they did to another road in my area, thereby turning a sandy road into a gumbo road.)

And I don't have a papermill, but I sure enough have feedlots. I can smell the one north of me if the wind's right, and it's fifteen miles away. One thing about bad smells is that if you're exposed to them constantly, you get used to them and stop noticing them.

Leva

We have blizzards up here in Minnesota, like your rains I guess, makes all travel impossible for a day or 2 sometimes. The hazards of nature I guess.

The problem would be designing a living site that is, 24/7, impossible to get access to. I believe there are certain grade, width, and bridge specifications for access to a living quarters. Now, a rain or a snowstorm can still make it impassible, but at least it needs to be designed to work in dry weather.

--->Paul

I am also right in the middle of looking at houses and raw land. The one thing I am realizing is that the great majority of places are for sale for a reason and you don't want them. I have probably looked at over 200 seperate listings, drove by at least 50 of them and really looked in detail at about two dozen and the only place we liked turned out to have an easement on it to allow the neighbor to have his leach field on the property.

We backed out of the deal. The property went right back under contract within the week.

It always seems that when you think you found your place there is something about it that you just can't compromise on. It gets frustrating but you have to be patient.

Sometimes we think we are being a little picky but we see other places all the time that we would love to have, but they just aren't for sale.

Thanks again for all the good advice. I know I have to be patient, I've just been getting frustrated because we are limited to this area and I've looked at most everything on the market here. Despite being in the middle of spring, new listings that fit our criteria have been basically nonexistent. We've been looking for months, I know some of you have looked for years and that's what scares me! It's hard to imagine putting things on hold for that long. Hope y'all will keep your fingers crossed for us.

Blue

How "locked in" to this area are you? Have you looked furthur west or north? If you go furthur north on hwy 63 and cross Dogget mtn. you will definetly escape the smell of Canton. From there go south on hwy. 209. All along there are beautiful area to live. If you continue on 209 you will end up at exit 24 of I-40, just go back east from there and you'll be back in Asheville.