When we first stepped onto this land in 2017, it was a overgrown tangle of trees, shrubs, and wildflowers. Ideal for birdwatching, but with no house—just a dug well, a simple driveway, and a lot of potential. For years, we spent weekends and holidays camping in a shed, observing the light, the wildlife and the seasons while we dreamed of what this place could become. The last thing we wanted to do was pave paradise and put up a parking lot.

Building with Intention

We didn’t just want to build a house; we wanted to manage the land responsibly and ensure our footprint was intentional. We hand-cleared an acre of land, reusing the timber to build vegetable gardens, and worked with CoolEarth Architects to design a unique home that sits softly between the forest and the farm fields. We wanted to share this experience with others, and so incorporated a guest house into the plan. You can read about the build as a model of low-impact, high-performance living.

Innovation with Earth

The Chocolate Suite is more than a getaway—it’s a living lab. Both our home and The Chocolate Suite feature rammed earth walls. This sustainable method is so unique in northern climates that our home is the site of ongoing research by University of Laval into the performance of this building material. You can read the initial report here to see how our walls perform against the elements.

On the theme of respect for the earth, we’ve tried to be as efficient with our land as possible. All our raised beds use the wonderfully-common-sensical ‘hugelkultur’ method. These beds store water so well that we rarely have to water our vegetable plants. And until the local mushroom farm closed down, we happily collected their mushroom compost to improve our soil. We dream of a food forest, and invested early in a permaculture plan. One of our first plantings was a small grove of truffle-inoculated hazelnut trees. We’ll know in a couple of years whether our crazy dream of a dual hazelnut & truffle crop will bear fruit.

Where we’re not planting and tending delicious vegetables, nuts, berries and fruits, we’re experimenting with native plant re-wilding. Much of the plot was taken over by invasive buckthorn when we first arrived. Slowly but surely, we’re replacing the buckthorn with hardy native species such as serviceberries, red-twig dogwood and nannyberry. Dropseed PEC has been a great source of native grass and wildflower plugs, and we happily swap native seedlings with like-minded County neighbours whenever we can.

Restoring the Wild

Our interest extends beyond the walls of the house and gardens. Working with Quinte Conservation and Ducks Unlimited, we restored the wetland at the back of our property to create a thriving ‘pair-pond”. What had become an overgrown, unproductive wetland now hosts extremely healthy populations of birds (including a Mallad pair who show up every spring) and amphibians, and serves as a watering hole for local mammals such as deer and fox. We’re sometimes treated to flocks of wild turkeys strolling across the yard after investigating our compost bin, or flying through the backyard (yes! Turkeys DO fly 🙂 We’ve had many avid birdwatchers join us from Europe and elsewhere in Canada to watch warblers and other bird species as they use our land as a stopover during migration.

In 2025, we were honoured to host American and Canadian Ducks Unlimited donors here to view our land as a model for successful wetland restoration.