Well, after talking to a local cacher/insurance agent on the phone yesterday I learned a few things.
1) Almost nobody caches out here in the winter. Funny thing – much less snow than we had in WI and not nearly as cold, but I don’t have the inclination to test the logging roads to look for caches either. I’ve found all the caches in town, so all that is left are the ones on the hiking trails, but I don’t want to take the time to drive the 40 minutes to hike and search through the snow. I just don’t trust the caches to be there as much as I did back in WI.
2) It is hard to find someone to insure houses that are “close” to woods due to all the wildfires in the past few years. Our current agent (and caching friend) wants to insure us, but her company won’t take the risk because the woods are “too close” to the house.
3) Water rights are stupid. The house has rights to water 6 acres of land from March through September. This acreage includes what we would call the front yard, a garden, pasture for goats/cow and horse pasture. We wouldn’t use the last two. If we don’t water, we lose the rights to what we don’t use permanently – and this loss would transfer with the property if we ever sold it and would greatly decrease the value of the land. I philosophically have disagreements about how the whole thing is determined and handled, but my view is 180 different than everyone else around here. When I’ve explained why, they look at me like they’ve never heard that point of view before. First claim to the water (historically speaking) has priority over other claims.
4) I may have a slump of over a month after all the house stuff and weather stuff sorts itself out.
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