deer foraging.
There are bears
and cougars, too.
Then there are the rats
— it can be a difficult and
time-consuming process
to eradicate rats from your
property. They love outdoor
compost piles, so composting
has to be carefully isolated. In
addition, any rat looking for
a warm place to wait out bad
weather loves a car; a rat can
do enormous damage to the
vehicle’s wiring and interior, and
certainly to one’s peace of mind.
58 | arta.net
For those
of us who have
lived in cities or
towns, we’re used to
having services like garbage
and recycling pickup,
community water, and
sewage disposal.
On Vancouver Island and the
Gulf Islands, many properties
do not have these amenities.
You may have to arrange for
your own garbage pickup,
recycling, and composting, and
food disposal. If your property
doesn’t have community
water and sewage, you could
be faced with installation
and maintenance of a septic
field and a well. I’m told that
as many as a third of all
properties on Vancouver
Island have septic systems.
Rather than having
furnaces with central heating,
most houses on the coast
use baseboard heating,
usually supplemented with a
wood stove or fireplace. Each
individual room has its
own thermostat.
It is obvious, then, that
purchase of a home requires
the usual house inspection plus
a separate inspector for wood
stoves and chimneys, another
for wells, and yet another for
septic systems.
Air quality is an ongoing
issue. Constant winter rain,
mist, and fog press smoke
from the many wood stoves
and fireplaces, along with
particulate from pulp mills,
down closer to the ground;
and the increasing severity of
forest fires can cause air quality
problems for months on end.
The absence of light in the
winter can cause depression.
Sunshine is reduced by fog,
mist, rain, and smoke, and
the sun can be blocked by too
many trees. Also, while it’s
nice to have less ‘light
pollution,’
absence of