THE VIEWThis is probably the best view you have ever seen from a home priced under a million dollars. Framed by a deep, dramatic valley in the foreground and dozens of local Green Mountain foothills, it is a westerly view of the Green Mountain Range that covers 200 degrees of horizon and spreads over more than half the state of Vermont. The first thing people say when they come here is, “How did you find this place?� Please know that the still photos on this page do not begin to do justice to this rare view. See “VIEW DETAILS� below.THE HOUSE & GROUNDSThis is a “wow� home in move-in condition with a business command post from which two entrepreneurs have run a successful national business for 9 years. It was built in 1999 and is a 2770 square foot expanded cape, with stained cedar shingle siding and a Federal-style 12’ x 36’ covered porch featuring classic white columns that frame the amazing view. It sits on 40 acres of wooded land and open pasture. The house is specially designed for life in rural Vermont. The giant 24’ x 16’ first floor kitchen is an eat-in social center, with tile floor, cast iron stove, twin sinks, multiple big windows facing the western view and room for a dining table, rocking chair and harvest table. The 25’ x 15’ living room/dining room has a wood stove and more big windows facing the western and southern views. There is a large, tiled, entrance foyer; a large tiled pantry/office; a tiled half bath; a laundry room with deep sink and built-in table; and a tiled mud room that opens to the garage with room for a “take your boots off� chair and lots of coat/hat storage,. On the second floor are three bedrooms (one with a huge window oriented to the view), 2 full tiled baths and a 442 square foot office with 2 more huge windows oriented toward the western and southern views, high speed internet, a sophisticated phone system and three large office supply closets. The office also has been pre-planned by an architect for conversion to a master bedroom with ensuite bath, if desired. There is a door from the office to the flat roof of the porch, on which a wrought iron balcony could easily be installed. Above part of the second floor is a large half attic with pull-down stairs. There is an extra-long (13 x 27), nicely finished garage/shop at the first floor level with people doors to the mud room and outside, and two more garages under the house with sprinkler systems in case of fire. The first-floor garage and one other below have electric garage door openers. The walk-in basement is 1600 square feet with finished ceiling, painted walls, a double-wide entrance door (besides the garage doors), a full shop, weight bench area, yard equipment storage area, and a 14 x 27 root cellar & supply storage room, in addition to the two garages. Electricity and phone lines come underground to the house; heat is via a 3-zone oil burner; there is a 425 foot deep well yielding 15 gallons per minute of the best water you have ever tasted; the driveway parks a dozen cars; the perennial gardens are extensive and gorgeous and contain over 100 different types of hardy flowering plants; the lawn is quite small (on purpose); the grounds at the rear of the house are terraced with automobile-size stones artfully assembled into quite amazing walls; and there are about 8 acres of well fenced pasture for horses, cattle, sheep or goats. Most of the pasture can be easily mowed by tractor if you do not want grazing animals, although we find it easy and very enjoyable to “rent� goats, cows and sheep for the summer months and leave the pasture empty in winter. Most of the neighbors own tractors.If you do not wish to maintain the house and grounds yourself, there are many local Vermonters nearby who are skilled at every element of country living and who work inexpensively. Plowing, pasture maintenance and all other services are easily arranged. This is a very tough, reliable, modern house and can tolerate being empty for long periods if you choose to make it a vacation home.THE HOUSE LOCATION Our home is 2.4 miles outside Chelsea village (see aerial photo) on a well-constructed gravel road (see road photo). Except for approximately 20 “nearby� residents, nobody uses this road because it does not go anywhere. The road commissioner is every Vermont town’s most important official and Chelsea’s roads are plowed/sanded rapidly and expertly in Winter.As the aerial photos on this web site illustrate (see also Google Earth aerial view of the area), our house is surrounded by thousands of acres of farms and forest with only a few dozen residents nearby; most Chelsea residents live in other areas of town. This wild area is pierced by many logging roads and old “retired� town roads that are barely able to support 4WD vehicles but are perfect for hiking, horseback riding and cross country skiing. Many of these woods roads are part of the VAST snow machine trail network extending to Montreal. It is hard to believe this huge wooded area (and lots more forest contiguous to it) is only 2.75 hours from Boston, 40 minutes to Dartmouth, and 20 minutes from Vermont Technical College or Vermont Law School.There aren’t many places left like this: close to town with a real wilderness for a back yard.THE “NEIGHBORHOOD�“Neighborhood� is in quotes because the houses are so scattered, but the immediate neighbors (9 homes) are quite connected with each other. An extended, 3 generation family owns three of the closest homes/farms; a pair of brothers and their families split up another old farm; the grandson of a farmer who used to own the land we live on occupies another house; and yet another neighbor lives “off the grid� further down Town Farm Road. Professions include 2 business consultants, a logger, a psychiatrist, a speech therapist, a quilter, an HR supervisor, an electrician and more. Some of the 7 kids (ages 4-16) are in the private school and others go to the public school. The kids are all delightful and the oldest plays on our state champion girl’s lacrosse team.THE TOWNChelsea is 40 minutes from Dartmouth or Montpelier; it is the county seat of Orange County; and Vermont routes 113 & 110 intersect in the village; but those roads don’t connect any major towns. As a result, “progress� has not hit Chelsea very hard and the town’s population of about 1200 just recently surpassed its pre-Civil War figures. About two-thirds of the people were born here or near here (most of them grew up on farms); the rest are an eclectic mix of “flatlanders� from other places, almost all of whom are active in the town’s organizations and government. There is a 3-person Board of Selectmen and an annual, open, town meeting. Chelsea Village has a health center with 2 physicians, a physician’s assistant and a nurse; a 24-hour ambulance service; a small grocery store; three small general stores (two with gas pumps); two small restaurants; a bank; a library; a feed & seed store with some hardware; a tiny-but-vibrant public K-12 school with a hot sports program; a private K-8 school; a used book store; two excellent auto repair garages; a funeral home; a post office; a volunteer fire department with modern equipment (care to join?); the county sheriff’s office and (2-cell) jail; a wooden Superior Court courthouse on the south common; a church on the north common; an insurance agency; some lawyers’ offices and several other professional offices. Almost all the buildings predate 1900. There are no stores or shopping areas on the town’s outskirts and major shopping is done in Randolph, West Lebanon or Barre. See the aerial photo of the town; our house is in the hills in the upper left corner of the photo.VIEW DETAILSSince the house sits high on the western slope of the last great ridge that created the Connecticut River Valley, this property and the surrounding thousands of acres face West, toward sunsets over the Green Mountains. And it is a very big view. You can see 5-7 layers of hills and mountains covering 200 degrees of horizon. The view extends 80-90 miles South/Southeast-to-North, more than half the entire length of Vermont, and covers many hundreds of square miles. To the South/Southeast, 45-50 miles away, you can see several mountains in the Okemo-Terrible Mountain area near Ludlow. Moving north, the eye sweeps past a range of other mountains, including Ludlow Mountain, Salt Ash Mountain and Shrewsbury Peak in Southern Vermont, before coming to rest on Little Killington, Killington Mountain and Pico Mountain, the most prominent mountains in the view 35 miles away. Holt Hill, a local hill only 2 miles away across the deep valley to the Southwest, blocks the distant view for the next 15 degrees of horizon, but it provides a dramatic local view (see description below). Then to the West-Southwest, you see good views of Mount Harold, Breadloaf, and the Vermont Presidentials (Cleveland, Grant, Roosevelt) up to Mount Abraham and Sugarbush 30 miles away to the Northwest. Moving further north, you can see partial views of Mt. Ellen, Stark Mountain, Molly Stark Mountain, Burnt Rock Mountain and Mt. Ethan Allen. Lesser views of the tips of other mountains far off in the Camel’s Hump and Mt. Mansfield areas, can be seen over the tops of local foothills.Despite this sweeping Green Mountains view, however, most people find their eyes drawn at least as often to a fascinating local vista. From an almost cliff-like precipice 100 feet from the house to the South-Southeast, the terrain drops over 500 feet in the 1 mile distance to the upper end of the Jenkins Brook Valley. From the yard and the porch, the impression is that you are on the edge of a vast chasm rimmed by steep hills and mountains. You often look down on hawks and ravens soaring and circling over the trees below. The valley gradually runs west and downhill several miles to the brook’s intersection with the First Branch River. The far slopes of the First Branch Valley form the rest of the local viewscape, and above the First Branch hills rise the Vermont Presidential Mountains. In the immediate foreground are our home’s lawns, gardens and pastures, complete with grazing animals. Taken all together, it is a compelling combination of beautiful things, near and far, like being alone in your own national park. Another very significant aspect of the view is the sense of great isolation it offers. In the entire vista covering hundreds of square miles, you can see only a half dozen farms and houses, and they are tiny dots 3-7 miles away. At night, even fewer lights are visible on the 200 degrees of horizon, since some of the houses you can see are unoccupied vacation homes and most of the others are occupied by native Vermonters, not known for staying up much past 9:00 pm. The only “nearby� house you can actually see, from just one corner of our yard, is a small house 1.5 miles away and down low across the Jenkins Brook Valley (although we have nearer, unseen neighbors). The absence of any ambient light gives star gazers an exceptionally brilliant view, with the Milky Way prominent in the sky. The sense of isolation is increased by the almost continual absence of man-made sound. Almost always, the loudest sound is the breeze, the Jenkins Brook far below, the “awk awk� of a raven echoing across the valley, or our goats and sheep “baaaa-ing� in the pasture. You can hear an occasional individual truck or car but you will never ever hear the drone of �traffic� or any of the other buzz of civilization. It just hasn’t arrived yet in Chelsea, Vermont.Again, this is probably the best view you have ever seen from a house costing less than a million dollars. “Best� meaning dramatic, westerly, wide-angle views of sparsely populated mountains and valleys from a seemingly very remote location.Come visit.