It all started one cold November morning with a fresh covering of snow. Sharon and I had been looking for a property we could retire on in British Columbia, just like every other Albertan. We checked online and in newspapers and even took road trip to check the lay of the land. But no luck. I guess we are Albertans at heart and just couldn’t bring ourselves to leave the prairies.

That’s when we decided to look closer to home. As luck would have it we found a 27 acre plot on Birch Lake a little over an hour from home. We dropped everything and drove out, hiked the property and immediately fell in love with it. Birch Lake is not much of a lake, typical for Alberta but we weren’t looking for lake activities, just a piece of nature.