Simpler living
By Fiona Wagner • Bankrate.com

I'm not sure when I truly appreciated the significance of our move to the country. It could have been when the moving truck drove away and we found ourselves alone, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by acres of woodland, hay fields and a trillion crickets. Or perhaps it was when we harvested our first egg from our new brood of hens. Then again, maybe it was the arrival of the donkeys. Yep, it must have been the donkeys.

Like many people, we yearned to kiss the city life goodbye and trade our suburban lot for greener pastures. We often complained that our town of 30,000 people, on the outskirts of Toronto, was quickly becoming too busy, too commercial, too suburban. Developers were building on agricultural land around the city limits, and we knew the days of smaller-town atmosphere we once coveted there were numbered.

We'd spend hours talking about moving to the country and the ways we'd simplify our lives. We'd reduce our dependency on cheap oil, spend less and live more.

We wanted to grow and preserve more of our own food, heat our home with wood, experiment with solar and wind energy and tend some animals for milk and wool. Most importantly, we wanted to raise our kids, ages 4 and 6, in a place filled with fresh air, sunshine and small-town congeniality.

It was about slowing down and getting away from the hectic pace of life we found ourselves in. We wanted to live within limits.

Looking for land
We drafted lists of what our rural piece of happiness would look like. We had a vague idea of where we'd find it: eastern Ontario, somewhere between Port Hope and Kingston. As we both worked from home -- me as a freelance writer and my husband as an IT consultant -- we were free to live almost anywhere.

We started looking on the MLS, casually at first. Then, late this past April, I found a listing that made my heart skip a beat: 71 acres -- half mature woodlot, half pasture -- with four ponds, a large barn and drive-shed, two-car garage with a workshop, three-bedroom century home with an outdoor wood furnace.