THE VISIONARIES
Teri Loretto, Ivo Valentik, and their son Uly, Metcalfe area
An apple orchard. A garden big enough to share produce with city friends. Fresh eggs from a clutch of clucking chickens. Most of all, a restored 1891 red-brick farmhouse. It’s an ambitious to-do list for this family that, in 2014, abandoned city life for six acres with an old house, a barn, and a pond.
But having grown up on farms themselves, Teri and Ivo wanted the same for their son Uly, now two. In the country, says Ivo, “there’s a sense of history that’s not in cities because most of our cities are too new. I don’t mean it religiously, but living in the country is spiritual, living in the city is profane.”
So when the property they’d had their eye on for years came up for sale, they nabbed it, knowing full well that it needed a lot of work. Ivo, 41, is an architect/ design-build contractor and will do the major renovations himself. Teri, a 46-yearold stage actor, teacher, and backup weather person at CBC Ottawa is the one with the gardening and fresh-egg plans.
There are inconveniences to country life. Ivo has to venture farther afield to find the fine wines and imported beers he loves. After a show opens, Teri can’t stick around celebrating as late as her citified co-performers do.
But, she says, “when I get home at night and I see the stars, I think, ‘That’s what’s important, not that extra glass of wine.’ ”
However, when it’s time to sell, Sugarman says, rural properties often sit on the market longer than urban homes.
Because of a smaller commercial tax base, rural property taxes compare to urban. In 2015, taxes on a $400,000 house in Mississippi Mills, which includes Almonte, would have been just over $4,250, including education levies. In Ottawa, it would have been roughly $4,430, but that includes a public transit charge.
THE PRACTICALITIES
Get ready to drive a lot, especially if you have kids, cautions Jean McNally, a friend of the Briggses’ who moved with her family from Orleans to 50 acres south of Navan in 1992. Her boys, she says, “felt their lives had come to an end because they couldn’t walk to their friends.”
The boys survived, and McNally still loves her country home, including the walking and crosscountry skiing her back 40 affords.
With community resources far-flung, it may be harder for aging residents to remain in their country homes. But that home, with its view of farm fields and the occasional bounding deer, may still be better than the alternative of, say, a downtown apartment overlooking a parking lot.
Other pros and cons define country living. A pool won’t chew up your entire backyard, but Internet service can suck. There’s less traffic, but yahoos with car keys abound. That gravel road seems romantic until a spring thaw turns it into soup.
But for the committed rural dweller, there’s no life like it.
Says McNally, “It’s the little things that matter: looking up at night and seeing the stars because it’s so dark.”