Balsam Swamp is a sprawling state forest that stretches almost 5.5 miles east-west across 4 towns. The area is very rural, and the landscape surrounding the State Forest is predominantly forested. Balsam Swamp State Forest is comprised of a mix of native hardwood forests, hemlock swamps, and conifer plantations. There are no designated recreational trails on the forest, but there is ample opportunity for self-guided day hikes to explore the diversity of habitats represented on this State Forest. Additionally, the western section of Balsam Swamp State Forest is adjacent to Five Streams State Forest to the south.
The main attraction of this forest is Balsam Pond. The impoundment is approximately 152 acres and is a popular destination for fishing and paddle boat sports. Balsam Pond is a warm water fishery that contains a mix of largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, chain pickerel, yellow perch, brown bullhead and sunfish. Tiger muskellunge have been stocked in the past with the last stocking occurring in 1995. However, there have been very few reports of anglers catching any of the adult tiger muskies. A shallow gravel boat launch is suitable for launching small fishing boats.
A small rustic camp ground is also located at Balsam Pond. Camping spaces are available at no cost on a first-come, first-serve basis and there is no running water or electricity. A fire ring, outhouse, and picnic table are provided for each camping space. A sign on Balsam-Tyler Road in Pharsalia designates the entrance to the boat launch and camping facility. This is a carry-in carry-out facility. Please do not litter.
Farm crops and pasture represent roughly 1 out of four acres in New York State, only exceeded by forested acerage which is roughly 2/3rds of the state’s land cover.
While a lot of the forested acerage is Forest Preserve and park, a significant portion of the remaining acerage is farm woodland in support of farm operations – timber used to heat farm houses and make hot water for milk houses, milled in support of farm construction, used to provide hunting grounds, and sold as an additional income stream to the farm.
It just seems like all my friends are buying home and homesteads, getting land, moving out to country and raising stock and families. Then I follow all these off-grid and homesteading groups on Facebook, and my feed is constantly filled with pictures of cattle and hogs, vast open spaces out west, Alaska, the true west and mid-west.
At one level, I feel like I am getting older and not making much progress. It seems like I’m still in my miserable little apartment, which is so cold and dirty, worn out and broken, but I like the location. I like the library and park, and choosing to go without wired internet. I am dropped the hotspot plan when I went back to working downtown.
But at the same time, I totaled up this evening the money I’m investing and saving on a weekly basis, and while it looks relatively small on any one account, it does add up when you add up the various accounts, especially over time. But it’s not where I need to be today, although I probably could put down a pretty good down payment or even buy a modest house, but that would require me to sell of many of my investments and deplete a lot of my savings.
I just don’t want to live the suburbanite life, with the big screen televisions, the status symbols of the SUV or hybrid car, the chemically-fertilized lawn, the neighbors right next store. And the plastic! I’d rather die then live in a house with vinyl siding and two car garage. My heart is not in suburbia, it’s in the open country, some of the wild places I’ve explored and even more so the places I’ve read about and seen on the Youtube. The small towns that smell like silage and cow shit, the farm country, the ranches and vast mountains out west. Or even the small-towns like you might find in many parts of New York in a more subdued fashion. Upstate New York is fine, but it’s expensive and it’s a land of red tape and waste.
Some of my friends and colleagues took the small leap, buying land out in country, and still commuting back to Albany-area for work. It’s a lot of driving, and much of the rural land around here, while rural is far more urbanized and regulated then what you might find in the wilds of West Virginia, Missouri or Idaho. Land prices are pretty high, especially for acreage, and there are still a lot of codes to be followed. Yes, I’ve been to places like the Southern Tier and the Black River Valley, or far reaches of North Country, but even the most remote and wild small town in New York isn’t like so much of world I’ve been learning and reading about.
I really hate to sign my new lease and the commitment it brings at the higher price for the next year, but I can’t make the numbers work to move. I’d love to own land, but it’s expensive locally, and I don’t really have enough money to buy what I want or would need outright. I sure like having the bus I can take to work downtown, the library, park, and wildlife observation grounds a short walk from home. And honestly, I don’t really want to spend my whole life in Upstate New York, when I’ve seen there are other places in the world and other places. But I feel like re-upping my lease is just kicking the can down the road — sure I have fun traveling now — but I also feel like I’m making little progress compared to what my friends and colleagues are.
Another state I’ve considered moving to would be Wisconsin. It’s a big state with vast rural areas, famous for its dairy industry and the sand hills that Aldo Leopold once wrote the Sand County Almanac about. It’s also home to the Blue Karner Blue Butterfly, similar to the Albany Pine Bush.
It’s vast fertile lands, such as the sand hills once fertilized by prarie grasses and now by manure and nitrogen fixing alfalfa and soybeans are great both for milk production and for deer, turkey, migratory birds, beaver and wildlife for hunting, trapping and observation. Northern Wisconsin has vast forests, a large portion that are federally owned and available for a wide variety of recreational pursuits.
Wisconsin is cold and snowy a big portion of the year and is part of the rust belt. There is a lot of salt on the roads but at least they are fairly quickly cleaned in the winter. If I had a good wood stove and a small well insulated off grid cabin it wouldn’t be a big deal. Hills in Wisconsin are relatively small and roads relatively straight so icy roads are less of a problem – although the rust belt still means throwing away cars regularly – even though they don’t rust the way they once did.
Wisconsin has its urban population centers and an under-girding of progressive politics but it’s also a very conservative state – much more than Minnesota to its west. Gun laws seem reasonable maybe not as permissive as some of the western states.
That said that in deep rural Wisconsin, your unlikely to be looked down upon for being a gun owner. Farmers aren’t likely to care if you hang a deer out back or process your own meat hung from a tree or work on your own car in your backyard. Raise a hog, goats, chickens or bull calves, and thru aren’t going to care – they’re in the same business. Code regulations are less in farm country, bonfires and household trash burning allowed. Dairies can be a cheap source of bull calves to raise for food or even fertilizer for the garden. And good farm stand produce like sweet corn in the summer. I’d probably choose a property that is more upland and less desirable for farming, just because it’s cheaper but I would have no problem living next to a farmer’s pasture or corn field.
Wisconsin at the state level officially forbids open burning of your household trash but most rural towns are much more permissive – many actually encourage residents to have burn barrels for non-recyclable trash to reduce disposal costs and landfill reliance. In dairy country that is spread out, I doubt most farmers give a damn about your fires as long as you don’t set their fields with valuable crops on fire. Many farms burn their own household trash along with net wrap, silage wrap and bags that corn seed and other feed comes in. Better than sending it all to the landfill as is the norm in New York – and saves a lot of money over having a dumpster.
Living in area near fertile dairy country can have it smells during part of year – early spring and late fall as manure is applied to the ground and a earthy smell as a ground is broken. Storage, use and disposal of spoiled silage can be real pungent too, although freshly chopped corn is wonderful. Especially with more modern controlled methods of liquid spreading used on larger, more modern farms which apply more carefully but in a pungent way. But I don’t care that much about the smell – my neighbors growing up raised hogs and the town I went to Boy Scouts in is famous for their milk production and the cow smell that goes along. Flies can also be a concern in farm country, especially during certain times of year after manure is applied or near barns themselves.
Zoning and codes varies a lot from town to town in Wisconsin and are an important consideration especially if I want to have an off grid property. Even though I don’t plan on doing a lot of building on my own land I don’t want to be tied down by a lot of red tape for minor upgrades when I follow code reasonably close. I want to be able to work with the town inspector do what needs to be done for as simple and minimalist structure as possible. Small towns usually are a lot easier to talk to and meet face to face with government officials.
Is Wisconsin my next home? Probably not but it’s a possibility on the list of many I’ve explored in recent years on the blog. Here are some of the previous posts I wrote:
Between 1951 and 1969, the Punxsutawney Phil always saw his shadow. In comparison, between 2005 and 2025, the Punxsutawney Phil didn’t see his shadow 7 times. 🐻
The facts are simple — the Ground Hog is seeing his shadow less today then in years past. Long winters are becoming rarer.
I am the child of two college educated parents, but they were homesteaders, and I grew up in a very working class rural neighborhood – and my parents had very working class jobs at the Center for Disability Services.
Having college educated parents that grew up in the suburbs always put me in a different social class then most of the more working class folks who parents graduated high school if even that. My parents had a professional mindset that really wasn’t even in the vocabulary of the hillbillies who lived in trailers down the street.
I was and still am super jealous of them. They always had four wheelers, lots of guns, and livestock. Pigs and cattle. Big bonfires. I’m well aware of what pig manure smells like or for that the distinctively pungent smell of kerosene used to keep their mobile homes warm in the winter – besides the woodstoves they had jerry rigged up. To say nothing of those slurry trucks from Stanton’s Dairy in Coeymans that would traverse the road a few times a year to fertilize the field up the road.
But at the same time, I found it difficult to find connections with them as they were so culturally different in their upbringings and beliefs – the hillbilly way of looking at the world was so foreign to the world I knew with post graduate educated parents. At the same time, despite my college education and professional career I find it difficult to connect with the more professional and educated types with my redneck and small town upbringing.
I want to go back to the country and not just for a weekend trip. Do real hillbilly shit, although I know damn well it will take money, as I don’t have the skills or even the grit and family connections to make it alone in the country. Now I don’t want to live in a fancy house – I’d rather have livestock and junk in my front yard and a garbage burner out back – I just know how important having money is to survive out in the country when you lack so much else that true country boys and girls have to survive and make a life off the land.
