Getting back to the property overview this 605 acre (5 parcel) property was acquired in four separate purchases. Dubbed Beulah Land by my wife Anne and I, it is located in northern New York with far off views of Lake Ontario to the west. This property borders an extremely fertile area containing some of the most productive agricultural ground in the north east. The property itself is extremely fertile but contains some of the rockiest unworkable soil in town making it a poor and thus lower priced Agricultural parcel; it is also elevation wise higher than land to the south, north and west yet is extremely wet with a water table of 1 1/2 to 3 ft. below the surface in the winter and often at the surface in spring time. Despite its unworkable nature Beulah Land is prime for deer hunting in that it grows stuff well and yet is affordable as compared to the prime Ag land in town which is selling for astronomical prices.
Here is an example of a turnip that grew wild on the property and was dug up in early August.
The turnip above weighed 8.1 lbs and was one single turnip. And below is an example of how the trees grow here;
As you can see by the examples above we are talking excellent growth rates here. I recall the maple was about 30 inches at the stump and was 39 years old. Our logger Barry Croniser who comes from the nearby Tugg Hill area said he never saw tree growth as prolific as he is seeing it here. We did not know this when we bought the land;it was partly just plain luck. Growth rates on a property over shadow just about all habitat projects one could do.
And then there are the rocks. Both of these rock pictures are from a small plot put in by our driveway. The giant rock below was as big as the tractor could handle--the really giants had to rolled along with the tractor one roll at a time.
We did not plow the small plot; the rocks pictured are just some of the ones that were sticking up; Most of the larger ones had already been removed from the above picture.
Though this property is hard to work, too wet and too rocky, some of it rents for agricultural uses. The AG income does help to offset some of the maintenance and tax expenses.This is important. It is one thing to buy land; it is another to afford to keep it when one retires--something to consider when deciding what land to purchase if you want to keep it.
Beulah Land is valued way below the excellent AG lands surrounding it. Low end AG land with great deer hunting such as this sells for twelve to fifteen hundred (based on 2016 sales) per acre locally. Prime AG land sold last year locally for many times that.
I'll focus further on the positives and negatives of the property in my next overview post (snow day).
