The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Lay of the land

looking at tax maps and deed books


We spent a fun afternoon today looking at tax maps and deed books.

There are a few properties in the area that might work as an organic orchard annex and we wanted to do some detective work on how big they are and what the county thinks the value is.



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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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Pretty much my most favorite thing EVER. In fact, one of the reasons we focused on Tennessee and not Virginia in our land search is because most of the TN records are available online whereas only some counties in VA are. You can divulge so much information about an area and its history just from property records!
Comment by mitsy Wed Jul 18 17:23:10 2012
Mitsy --- Yet more proof that you and I are birds of a feather. :-) I'm sometimes a bit disappointed that our county doesn't have the info online, but have to admit that keeps us a bit more remote from the outside world, which is good.
Comment by anna Wed Jul 18 19:19:50 2012
I have never even heard of this! I am assuming you are at the tax assesor's office or something similar? So cool, I will have to check into it.
Comment by Phil Wed Jul 18 19:34:00 2012
Phil --- Stay tuned for all the nitty-gritty details in my post in the morning. :-)
Comment by anna Wed Jul 18 20:31:19 2012
You should have a soil conservation district or something equivalent. They should be able to give you soil maps or information on the quality/type/drainage of that piece of property. Am looking forward to orchard posts from you. :D
Comment by c. Wed Jul 25 12:00:07 2012
I have soil maps for the county and enjoyed poring over them after we bought our land. (The smart thing to do, of course, is to look before buying your land. :-) ) I probably should do a post about the modern way to look up your soil survey since you can now get all that info online. Good reminder!
Comment by anna Wed Jul 25 13:28:36 2012





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