62 Acres in Danville, VT - $595,000

The Hideaway Forest Compound is located in Danville, VT in Caledonia County. The property is only a 15-minute drive to Interstate 91 in St. Johnsbury, VT. Danville has a nice mix of shops and restaurants located only a few miles from the property. The Lamoille Valley Rail Trail goes through the area, and you can bike, walk, ski, snowshoe, or snowmobile on the 93-mile long recreational trail, which is the longest in New England. There are a couple of ponds in Danville including Joe's Pond and Keiser Pond where there is swimming, fishing, and boating available. Boston is 3 hours away and NYC is 5 and a half hours south.

The property is easily accessed from paved Peacham Road, where there is an owned right of way into the forest. The 3/4 mile dirt and grass driveway has a new sliding gate for privacy at the beginning of the drive. Mostly flat, it would be easy to maintain and is plowable in the winter.

The Hideaway Forest Compound has been in the same family since the 1980S and was used mainly as a hunting and family getaway parcel. The house was built in the early 1990S by the owner, who is a builder and carpenter, with a solid 10 poured concrete foundation, and 2x6 construction. The house is well insulated for year-round use and is run on solar power and propane. There is buried electric power brought in from the main road to a pole located at the beginning of the private, gated driveway. The living area is open plan, with one bedroom and bath on the first floor, and an additional bathroom in the basement. There is an open stairway to the second floor with two separate bedrooms that can sleep four. A wood stove heats the entire house but is supplemented with a Rennai gas heater, plus an additional heater in the basement. The basement has a one-bay garage on one side and a separate utility room with a bathroom with a washer and dryer has big windows facing the forest

The large 36'x34' garage is used to store all of the equipment needed to keep the property in perfect shape. Two long workbenches line the walls at the front of the garage with more than enough space to build or fix anything. The ownership is willing to sell almost everything in the garage to the new owner, which would make taking care of the property a seamless transition. There are open mowed areas on the property where you could build additional houses or camps, connected by the internal trail system, making this a true family compound if desired.

The forest has been carefully managed over the years, following a forest management plan that is part of the land's Current Use enrollment, and would pass to the new owners. The upper forest canopy is mostly dense, with an open understory that is generally easy to walk through, especially on the many trails that have been established and maintained over the past decades. Tree species include maples, birches, red oak, white cedar, hemlock and white pine. While there are many age classes, the resource can generally be considered mid-aged with average diameters of roughly 14 inches (average age of 70 years). The owner has personally conducted light thinning on his own over the years in a light touch, low impact single tree approach, resulting in high forest aesthetics.

The southwestern corner of the property holds a small section of a wetland complex with both open water and edge forestland species well adapted to wetland conditions, such as white cedar and hemlock. This area is the origin of the Rake Factory Stream that runs across the land before quickly leaving the property boundary. The wetland offers habitat diversity which is frequented by the local deer herd, moose, bear and coyote that roam the wider landscape, plus the many bird and amphibians adapted to wetland habitat. The ownership has several deer stands set up across the land, and each year has harvested deer on the property.

A woods trail leads to a small spring-fed pond with two docks that is located at the northern end of the land whose depth is about 9-10 feet deep, with a healthy population of rainbow trout. This pond could be used for swimming as it's large enough and deep enough, and with the cool natural spring water, it would be quite refreshing.