Hey folks, Curtis Stone here. We're going to carry on our video series where we're looking at
all the provinces and states in North America and analyzing them to the lens of homesteading.
And today we're going to be looking at Newfoundland in Canada. And yeah, it's a maritime climate.
Similar weather to all the places around here. Main experience is some of it for sure.
But Newfoundland is up there as far as how north it is. If you just look at
Canada as a whole, it's pretty close to the Arctic Circle. And so it's a lot closer than
everywhere else that most people live in except up in here in Labrador. But
a lot of people don't live in Labrador. They live in
they live in these areas where the where the bigger cities are. And actually,
isn't there a bigger city? Yeah, Labrador City, I mean, it's small.
Yeah, it's pretty barren up here in Labrador actually. Look at the Canadian Shield.
It's trees are sparse.
The weather can be harsh. So let's look at what would you say is the no-go zone of Newfoundland.
It's St. John's, but hardly really because I mean, the population here is generally really,
really low. And so I wouldn't take this too much of the grain of salt. There aren't,
you know, the thing about many other parts of Canada outside of Toronto, say, or Vancouver
is Edmonton and Calgary, I would include Winnipeg for sure. But, you know, the smaller cities in
Canada, you just don't have the same kind of demoralized people. They're demoralized in
some ways, but as demoralized as say urban metropolitan areas where you've got a lot of
cultural diversity and, you know, cultural diversity is mostly just a load of BS.
People actually don't get along and that's why they segregate into areas and cities. They
vulcanize in their own ways. And so places like St. John's don't have that amount of animosity
that's a place like Atlanta, Georgia would have, not even close. So when you think about the threat
of socioeconomics, which is a scale of permanence, I believe it's number four, you need to factor those
things in and they're just realistic considerations. But so, you know, as far as Newfoundland
is concerned, it's not too much of an issue. If you found a homestead in and around these
areas, I'm sure it would be fine. You don't have the risk of absolute zombie apocalypse
when there's no food in the grocery stores. I mean, there's just so few people out here and
there's so much land that, you know, in a way, it's very safe. It's a very safe place in some
ways. In others though, the thing that I have found just in, you know, my consulting over many,
many years, getting to know people that are homesteading in this area, Nova Scotia, certainly
New Brunswick, similar, is that there's just not a lot of young people and that really weighs on you.
And I'm not all that young, I'm 45, but you know, when you look around and two-thirds of the people
are 70 plus, it's just, and I don't know if that's the real statistics, but that's just what
I've observed in these areas of Canada. And that can be kind of, you know, concerning because if you
think about the socioeconomics of that, like much of talking about sort of urban metropolitan,
potentially violent scenarios, it's in this, in this kind of apocalyptic scenario,
it's not so much that it's violent. It's just so much that there's just so many people
around you that are needy and you're in a minority of people who can provide
otherwise the Canadian welfare system provides. But that welfare system is,
there are all these systems are collapsing, in my opinion. And so take that for what it's worth,
but it's called clout and piven. And that's what's happening is they're making all services
from the government grind to a halt. They're making them ineffective. And this is really
happening in Canada, especially with CRA and some other organizations, they just cannot
manage. The bureaucracy is unmanageable and costly. But anyways, that's a whole other rant
for another time. But so, you know, that's as we generically say, the main area you're going to
avoid, but there's a lot of other areas you can explore. Let's just look at what good areas that
we pick. They're all coastal, especially on Newfoundland here on the island, is that
the higher the higher the highest ground is going to be in the center, right? As is most islands.
As you get away from it, so you can see this ridge here. And then it starts to go down here,
kind of deltas out in a way. So all the good regions are going to be coastal.
I wonder if the interior side of the ocean might be beneficial based on weather systems
coming out from the outside of the ocean. But I don't have a lot of experience living in these
climates. And I visited them just a number of times. So, you know, take it for what it's worth.
But I do analyze a lot of topography and can definitely find out certain things. But just
by looking at them, it's interesting, all this, that's the rocky stuff. And these are
where you have some of these coastlines that are just gorgeous where it's like rocky. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, this kind of stuff. It's just beautiful. These coastlines are so cool. And you're just on
this big shield of rock. Look at that. And that's why there's so few trees up here. And so I wouldn't
necessarily pick this type of landscape in Newfoundland to homestead on because there's
going to be very little soil. It's just, it's worse bedrock than I have. It's just shield. So I would
avoid places that have that kind of topography. And so yeah, in here, we're into the trees, right?
You can see that now we've got more soil here because there's more biomass. End of a road,
always nice, big fields, huge pond, total private access in, you know, you got to go all the way
through the home to get to the end of the line, which just looks like where some of the infrastructure
is. Okay, that's updated. Mostly raw land, probably just a field that somebody owns as
property and they just lease this part out to have some farmer run. Other than that,
they come out here and hunt every now and then, explore. You know, who knows, but
how big is that one? That's 45 acres. Yeah, so you're kind of getting into those areas where
there's more soil, right? You can see these kind of outcropping areas. They're really cool to
visit and explore, but not necessarily. You're just so exposed, right? There's, for any Atlantic
system coming in, you're just exposed. So you don't want that. You want to have trees, you want to have
topography around you that benefits you. You want to have, and we got some of that here,
right on the coast. Man, you'd have such a cool view here because yeah, you're off the really
bony stuff. It's still kind of bony around here, but you got trees though. You got a wicked pond.
Wow. You would have, look at that. Oh, you wouldn't have a view to the ocean. Oh, too bad.
Because right here, that view to the ocean would be epic. And you're high upright. I mean, as far as,
you know, you're 70 over here, 63 up at this high point, you're 92 meters off the ocean. So
you're well out of the danger zone. However, you are in the feeling the front, you know, like,
I don't know what hurricanes are like out here. I don't know if they get them much, but,
you know, big systems that come in, it could hammer you. And so I'm always kind of nervous
living that close to the ocean. That's not my preference, but a lot of people do. So,
oh, look at this. Newfoundland kind of does the similar thing that Quebec does
with the way it kind of subdivides its peri-urban areas. That's cool. I like that.
It's a bit more of an old school thing, because, you know, this is the old school Canada. There's
some of the first places people went and settled. Didn't stay long though. Well, people
stayed, but not a lot of people stayed. Most people went west. They're going towards Toronto
or the other big cities in Canada. Wait. I looked at this one. That's this one. We looked at that one.
Okay. Where's our 10 acres? Was that what we were looking at? Yeah.
So this is 10 acres. And it's the one that's not quite there, but that's cool. It's a cool
property. I mean, you've got, you know, maybe not having to view the ocean is good as far as
weather systems coming in, but you've got aspect to the south on the house. It's southeast. That's
ideal. This one's a little bony around you, but you do have trees and you do have this pond,
which is really cool. Governor's pond. So that's 10 acres. And let's go look at our 23 acres.
Oh, this is cool. That's a nice little wow. Holy, that's beautiful. The way that's laid out. Easy access
and turnaround. Not a lot of infrastructure, but the basics to get you started, you could easily
just develop this is your zone one, you could just develop everything around there, all your
buildings and infrastructure fields, you might want to consider putting some stuff up here.
It looks like you get kind of marshy here. But yeah, you might just clear some tree areas.
And you'd want to, you'd want to look at the ground here because it might, this might have
been what happened here is they just logged that and then that's what was there. So
you always want to analyze your ground before you get in and get modifying it.
Because if that's going to, if, if this is going to end up like that, then you wouldn't,
you don't necessarily want to go cut those trees down. Maybe you might want to go,
maybe you might want to actually go closer to the house in here. But it looks like this,
you got some of that boniness around here. But the thing is, if there's trees growing,
you got soil. So that's, that's what's really important. But you've got this wicked little
micro, you have many micro climates on this property, this north side of this ridge, south
side of this ridge, exposed area here, cool damp areas here and here. This in the summer
would be a neat place to hang out because you'd have Western shade, you know, as the sun sets.
So, you know, thinking about things like that when you look at properties is always kind of fun.
But yeah, that's, that's Newfoundland. It's a, it's a big area, Newfoundland Labrador. We didn't
look at Labrador. It's very few people live up there. Just look, you know, so yes, you can
go up there, but it's, you know, you need people too, right? And if you don't have people,
that's a big thing. And if two thirds of the people that are around you are old and no longer
in their productive age, it's, you know, and you have children, that's a, that's a big consideration.
And that's why a lot of people leave these areas. And so it's sort of self-perpetuating.
I don't even know if there's a lot of migration going in these areas. But yeah,
we'll leave it there for this one, folks. If you guys like this video, smash the like, share
it. Let me know in the comments where you want us to go next and check out that web link
I've got in here, a little video where I'll show you how to use Google Earth. And you can
learn to do and navigate this like I do and help you and save yourself tons of time when
you're looking for properties. All right, folks, see you in the next one.