Last week I closed on 18 acres about 40 miles outside of St. Louis, on the Illinois side. There is no power to the property, however there is a pole near one corner of it, I think the wires to that pole actually cross the corner of my parcel. It is all trees. there is a sliver of creek on one corner, and the rest is all hills, the start of a ridge between drainage into that creek. The land is currently zoned for agriculture. The purpose for the purchase was to put up a storage building and maybe try my hand at growing some things. Toward that end I may clear a bit of the land for crops, however most will remain forest. In this diary I plan to document what improvements I manage for that property. Currently I am only at the planning stage.
My current thoughts are as follows. First, I will need to redo an area where I can pull in off of the road as the drainage does not appear to be that good. There is a corrugated galvanized steel tube along the ditch with dirt on it currently, but this corresponds with a low spot where there is run off and hence some erosion. I will need to redo this area and plan to pour a concrete pad for parking. Currently I plan to put up a small utility building of poured concrete on one side of the parking pad to store a few implements and ultimately put an initial small power system. vandalism and theft at an unattended property in these parts is a real concern, so I am currently thinking of building the structure out of poured concrete with ample rebar, and to put a single door entry and a steel door and frame with another steel plate door with a protected padlock to secure it. It will need to be tall enough so that a couple of solar panels are out of sight, mind and out of easy reach on the top of it. Once this is done, I plan to build a larger structure with a workshop to process any agricultural products from the property as well as store some excess equipment.
Some of my coworkers seem to think that I will have a 'deer problem' on the property and have volunteered their services to remove a few of them. I am not much of a hunter of four legged game, so I will probably let one to a few come down in hunting season and try their luck.
Other than that, I am going to try and inventory the valuable timber on the property and initiate some type of forest management to enhance the economic value of the timber way down the road in the future.