We Bought Farm Land to Build a Home. Then We Found Out We Couldn’t Reach It.
Editor’s Note
This post is the first in a short series sharing our family’s experience trying to build a home on working agricultural land.
We’re writing this the way we farm: steady, practical, and honest. Not as a rant, and not to point fingers. Simply to document what happens when long-used rural access meets modern development rules.
Over the next few days, we’ll share the human story, the history of the road, the geography of river valley farmland, the policy questions this situation raises, and the path we’ve chosen moving forward.
If you live, work, or care about rural land, we hope this adds some clarity to a conversation many families don’t realize they’re stepping into.
Now, here’s where our story begins…
When we bought our land along the river, we thought we were doing something pretty simple.
We’re a farm family. We grow flowers. We bale hay. We raise kids who come inside with dirt in their socks and stories in their pockets. Our dream wasn’t a subdivision or a big development. It was one home. For us. On working land. Close to the river. Close to the life we’re already living.
We weren’t trying to change the land.
We were trying to belong to it.
The quarter we purchased is agricultural land with a long history of use. There’s an existing county road allowance that runs along the edge - not a paved road, not fancy, but a real, visible, long-used rural access route. The kind of road farmers, trucks, and equipment have used for decades without much fuss.
That road has served:
Local farmers
Previous land users
Pipeline and utility companies accessing right-of-way
Agricultural activity tied to the surrounding land
In other words, it functions like many rural access roads do, not pristine, not engineered to city standards, but working. Practical. Used.
So we did what farm families do when they buy land: we started planning a home. A modest family house where we could raise our kids while continuing to farm the surrounding acres.
That’s when we learned something we never saw coming.
In order to receive a home building permit, the existing county road would need to be upgraded to full modern municipal standards.
Not gravel maintenance.
Not spot improvements.
Not “make it safe for low-volume rural traffic.”
A full engineered road build.
The estimated cost? Close to $750,000 per kilometre, and to access all the private parcels along that road, we would need close to 1.5 kilometres.
We had to read that number more than once. Then a few more times just to be sure we weren’t missing a decimal point.
Under agricultural policy, landowners can sometimes share the cost of road upgrades with the county. We offered to pay 50%, which is consistent with how agricultural cost-sharing has worked in other situations.
Council declined to share in the cost.
So suddenly, before we even poured a foundation, we were facing a road bill that will dwarf the cost of the house itself.
We didn’t expect building a home on farmland would start with a million-dollar road. But here we are, learning more about municipal policy than we ever planned to, just trying to reach the land we farm.
And like most things in prairie life, we’re taking it one steady step at a time.
This post is part of the “Field Notes on a Rural Road” series: a five-part look at what happens when a farm family tries to build a home on working land.
Tomorrow: This Road Already Exists - It Just Doesn’t Exist on Paper
A closer look at the history and real-world use of the access corridor.