One Year in: Building a Dream at the adirondack Foothills

It’s February 25, 2026 and today  marks one year since we closed on 150 acres in Saratoga County, sitting quietly at the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains.

While I enjoy the more urban setting of Saratoga Springs, where we live full time, my husband has always dreamed of something more remote. His vision was to create a managed tract of land where he could enjoy the forest, open fields, streams, and of course the wildlife. When this property came on the market, it checked every box. The property had been listed for barely a week when he negotiated a fair price and placed his deposit.

While the accomplishments of the past year are credited largely to Rich’s hustle, it is no doubt a team effort. This is our third major project in the past seven years, and each one brings the need for our shared vision and collaboration.

Rich is the boots on the ground. A typical day for him can cover the spectrum of managing correspondence with the Town and Design Professionals, physically working himself while handling various trades, and troubleshooting issues one might expect when remodeling an old farmhouse. A typical day for me includes behind the scenes support. This often includes managing household logistics, overseeing rental properties, handling bookkeeping for our development company, designing plans for renovations, and cleaning /staging post construction. Every project has visible as well as invisible work.

As I reflect on this first year, I realized it might be worth pausing to acknowledge how far we have come. We are often so focused on the next task that we rarely stop to measure the progress already made.

Let’s Review Year One

1. Clean-Out Time

Every property necessitates clearing space. Cleanouts are rarely glamorous; they are dusty, physically demanding, and occasionally surprising labors of love.

Sometimes you uncover treasures, however, more often you uncover things you wish you hadn’t.

Fun Fact

Each of the last three properties we’ve purchased has included a barn. This one is my personal favorite so far, with its traditional gambrel roof.

All three properties have also come with an old farmhouse — each one renovated from top to bottom.

Creating the Driveway and Parking Area

Before newly acquired construction equipment arrived, we needed a driveway and parking area, this became the next priority.

Purchasing Equipment to Facilitate Development

At some point, dreaming gives way to doing.

Purchasing a tractor, excavator, and dump truck marked the shift from planning to building. These machines will help turn long-term goals into tangible progress.

Owning the equipment offers the benefit of working on our own timeline, shaping the land with mindful and daily intention.

Groundwork

Once we assessed the condition of the structures, attention shifted to the land itself. Proper infrastructure is not the exciting part of development, but it is the most important.

Surveying the Property

To move forward responsibly, we hired surveyors to map the full 150 acres and establish accurate boundaries.

Understanding exactly what we own — and how it can be divided and reconfigured — is essential before making long-term development decisions.

Studying the land on paper is just as important as walking it in person. Accurate boundaries allow us to reconfigure parcels thoughtfully and plan for long-term use.

We created miles of trails for hiking and snowshoeing.

We also met with forest management professionals to discuss responsible stewardship of the wooded areas. Their guidance helps ensure that our decisions support both sustainability and wildlife balance. The wildlife that moves freely across the property is a daily reminder of why that matters.

Wildlife Management & Land Stewardship

We cleared brambles and brush to establish food plots for responsible deer management, opening the fields and encouraging wildlife to thrive.

At the same time, we constructed hunting blinds and began cleaning up relics left by the previous farmer — preserving what mattered and removing what no longer served the property.

Early morning visitors in one of the newly established food plots.

Fall may be my husband’s favorite season here.

Rich hunts throughout the fall and has hosted a few others as well. Responsible wildlife management is part of maintaining healthy acreage, and it allows us to remain closely connected to the land in every season.

Expanding Access and cultivating the land

To create year-round access to the Far Meadow, we installed a large drainage pipe to properly manage seasonal water flow.

With infrastructure in place, we began planting the orchard — investing in growth that will take seasons to mature.

We also moved our beehives over from other recently sold property and harvested our 4^th year of honey, adding another layer to how we are actively working with the land rather than simply on it.

Some improvements are immediate. Others take seasons.

Restoring the Old Farmhouse

While doing all of the above, we were simultaneously coordinating with our engineer and the Town’s Building Department to obtain the proper building permits for the farmhouse renovation.

And then we did the work — start to finish — a ten-month rehabilitation.

Exterior

KITCHEN

DORMER

STAIRCASE

expanding the Vision

Simultaneous to adding the finishing touches on the farmhouse renovation, a new project was already underway.

More engineering. More permit coordination. This time to obtain the building permit for our first spec lot.

Winter 2025 was busy. A new septic system was installed, followed by foundation work in challenging conditions.

It is easy to admire the finished product. It is harder — and more meaningful — to appreciate the unseen groundwork beneath it.

And this month, we received delivery of the modular.

Not So Fun Fact

A full week of around-the-clock generator use was required to operate large scale heaters to melt several feet of snow that had accumulated inside the foundation prior to modulars arrival.

The basement floor concrete was poured just last weekend.

Today, on the first anniversary of our closing, Rich is back at it again. Record snow and cold temperatures cannot slow him down.

We rented an excavator and jackhammer to drill through frozen ground — creating a four-foot-deep, seventy-five-foot-long trench to run electrical from the house to the utility pole at the road.

Rich maintains heroic efforts to keep up with the never-ending snowfall. Thank goodness for the big green machine and the excavator, they have come in handy this winter! 

The Future

The plan for the property is always evolving.

Although we purchased the 150 acres as eight separate parcels, they will need to be reconfigured with new lot lines to allow for the combination of our intended uses.

Here is the long-term vision.

1. Renovate and expand the old farmhouse. (95% accomplished at time of post)
   It will serve as a personal retreat for us and potentially an Airbnb opportunity.
   The location offers year-round appeal — twenty minutes to Saratoga Springs and Lake George in the summer, five minutes to Brookhaven Golf Course, which becomes a top-tier cross-country ski and snowshoe destination in the winter. Snowmobile trails are accessible directly from the property.
2. Create a small hobby farm.
   I am leaning heavily toward lavender fields. Rich prefers the idea of planting garlic, potentially supplying local venues.
3. Add a condominium space to the far end of the barn.
   This would become our unique second home on the property.
4. Construct several small cabins in more remote areas of the land for additional Airbnb use.
5. Maintain larger tracts of land for recreation, managed forest, and wildlife stewardship.
6. Sell select buildable lots.
   A handful of smaller parcels and a few estate-sized lots will either be sold as approved building sites or developed as spec builds — still to be determined.

One year in, the progress is visible, the potential is limitless. There is still much to do — but the foundation, in every sense of the word, has been laid.

Foundation Laid.
— Joani