4536 Sills Bay Road - SOLD

The Essentials

68 glorious waterfront acres just north of Sydenham. A mix of forest and orchard and vegetable garden all wrapped around nearly 3000 feet of natural waterfront. A cool rambling farmhouse too, and five (count em, five) islands to paddle to and swim from.

The Bigger Picture

Yesterday I headed up through the pretty village of Sydenham. I realized with no small amount of delight that the chip truck would be open by the time I was done. The grocery shop is right there too, next to the hardware store. The LCBO is down the street, past the lake. The convenience store and gas station. A couple of restaurants. Both schools are up at the top of the hill. Sydenham, it must be said, has a lot going on. 

I pushed five minutes north to the very end of Sills Bay Road. Even now, I was a scant thirty minutes from my own home in downtown Kingston. I parked the car and took stock, listened for a few moments to the air jostling the very top of the trees. The birdsong all over. I observed with some wonder the great spread of lake out beyond the lawns. 

I met in my mask with the owner to sign some paperwork. We sat at either end of a long pine harvest table set against the porch screen and admired together the view. It felt just then (and this is sort of mad, I know) almost as if there was nothing wrong with the world.

I set off on my own. I flagged a trail from the driveway that ran past an open field, and then beyond an orchard planted about 45 years ago, same time the house was built. Down a long shaded walk through old forest, a litter of needles like silk underfoot and a mix of granite and limestone scree on the steep slope back up to the house, its metal roof just about visible between treetop and sky. Where things level out again, the path splits and you can head north or south. It’s glorious in both directions. 

I went north first. Down to the dock (still on shore this year) and then a little further to a point from which you can look out over the islands. Your islands. Five of them technically, but three of them really quite substantial, and two of them are forested and nearly an acre each. A little closer in, there’s a granite island from which the owner’s son tells me he swims and why wouldn’t you do endless laps of your own quiet bay? Someone has piled some stones into a sculpture of sorts over there and I swear that at some point during this listing I will add a crown to that pile.

Did I mention there are islands? I think I’m still in a little shock that we have this listing on the books. It’s very exciting. As a kid growing up outside Oxford I studied this part of the world, the way it was carved by glacier and icesheet, how water was left behind in the myriad lakes. I pored way back then over black and white images shot by spy plane. That’s how it felt, anyway.  It never occurred to me I’d be commissioning my own high-def aerials of the same landscape a half lifetime later. 

When Cheri and I were out here the first time a snapping turtle slid from the bank and made off through the waters like some pale starship heading into deep space. We have video of that somewhere around here. A glimpse of the wetland was off to our left, egrets risen from its brown tangle as if in the opening moments of some performance put on for our benefit, their legs dangling ungainly beneath them like faint scratches marked on the sky’s blue shell.

If you head back the other way, the water is on your left, sometimes close and sometimes glinting at a distance though the forest, or at bottom of a sharpish slope. The waterfront throughout is natural, unspoiled, and by our count there is nearly 3000 feet of it. There aren’t many spots other than back at the dock where you’re going to plunge in, but pushing away in a kayak or canoe, a small boat, is a treat that will never get old. Off to your right is a long interesting slope up to the house (which remains invisible now, set back as it is from the lip). For some of that long walk there’s a limestone ridge about two-thirds of the way to the top. It’s not a cliff, more a stone wall set into the hill. You can see how the water has poured into its cracks, softening and widening them. The kid in me wants up there for a month just hunting fossils or holes big enough I could call them caves.

Back near the house — and if you were with me on the walk, it’s an hour later now — there is a vegetable garden fenced in to protect it from rabbits. And a garage. And a greenhouse / potting shed that collects all the light and focuses it on the tomatoes, if that’s what you’ve got started in there.

There’s the porch again, where we signed all the papers, and from there you head on inside. The most surprising thing about the house is its age. It was built in 1985 and yet it looks for all the world from the air like a nineteenth century farmhouse, with its steep-peaked metal roof and its royal blue wood siding.

The kitchen is all clay tiles and wooden counters, open shelves, a wood stove set in front of a brick wall. Again, the impression is of generations having sheltered here, and even cooked over that stove. I don’t mean to romanticize it - there is work to be done here, renovations to be undertaken, and I don’t suppose for most of you they will be cheap - but there is a warmth here, a sense of stories told over and again, a sense of pride in the way the floor plan was organized and the materials chosen. It’s a house that wears its history proudly.

There are five bedrooms, four of them upstairs. And there are dens and there are offices. There are places to be sociable and there are places to hide away with the Audubon and the audiobooks. There are oak floors and there are windows situated so well that you could mistake them for art, so perfectly do they frame the South Frontenac landscape.

There is also carpet and wallpaper. And tastes have changed. There is a glossy black tile in one of the bathrooms and there are light bulbs ringing the mirror in there. I like it, I do, but would I also change things up? Yes, I would. And happily too. The house inspected well and so I’d likely begin with a fresh coat of good white paint. The whole place. And I’d run some new flooring through the carpeted sections (although I do like the orange shag in front of the fireplace). I’d hang art on the walls and it would feel quickly, I’m convinced of it, like the most exclusive of galleries. 

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These are different times. And for the health of everyone involved, there will be no in-person showings of this house until an Agreement of Purchase and Sale has been negotiated. We hope you understand. Our thinking is that the setting, and the land, and the waterfront, and the islands(!), and the orchard, and the egrets and the osprey and the deer, are a large part of what’s on sale here. We’ve done our best to make sure you have a good feel for the house too. The iGuide tour is here and it’s as skilled and as honest as always. There are floor plans too. And aerial photos that I just can’t stop admiring. There is even a house inspection on file. We’ve tried to give you all the tools you need, is what I’m saying.

Call us, or write to us, for more details, of course. We could go on all day. And part of me feels I’ve barely scratched the surface. There’s solar out here too, for instance. One array helps with the water heating, and another set of panels sell power back to the grid. There are nine years left on that contract.  And could you sever a lot at the front of the land? It would be a tough slog, but who knows.

A Gallery