Love horses, fishing, swimming, great neighbors and peaceful country living?
Do you love farm life? Horses and dogs especially? Do you dream
of a place where you can hunker down and become more self sustaining in these
uncertain times, where you have room and resources to keep and enjoy your
horses, maybe raise and preserve your own food? How about a place where eleven
neighbors, people who enjoy country living with a bunch of farm animals, share
the overhead and the fun of a beautiful and really well-equipped horse farm?
Well that's us and our unusual concept, and we've been doing it since 1995. And we have a home available here at Sundance 'Country Club' Ranch. We're located 7 miles east of Smithfield at I-95, in Johnston
County, directly east of Raleigh. Our address is 299 Brogden School Road,
Smithfield, NC 27577.
Read on, I guarantee you've never heard of a place like this!
HERE'S A DAY IN THE LIFE AT THE RANCH:
Please imagine this scene: From the kitchen window, or from the swing on the covered
front porch of your cabin-style apartment (with a fenced front yard); you view
horses munching away in sunlit pastures in all directions, 20 acres surrounded
by a solid, private wall of trees, Lilac trees filling the air with their
intense fragrance in the warm months, brilliant red Cardinals darting from
feeder to feeder year round.
Homework done, five boys and girls are gathered outside playing basketball, dogs flopped out watching. And when they
get hot, they jump in the pond. Thirteen year old
Josh, rod on shoulder and dog Gracie by his side, strolls by on his way down to
the pond, to fish from the Ranch canoe. I'm practicing my chip shot on the huge
lawn in the pleasant evening, while watching Misty put her horse through his
paces. Other folks are headed out for a leisurely late afternoon trail ride.
In the summer, everyone is in and out of the water, and there are hordes of delicious tomatoes spilling forth from
gardens up and down the row and in the larger community garden, everyone with
plenty to share. You must go say hello to Donkey the donkey
who guards the front driveway and usually brays when
someone comes down the drive. Then you head over to the compost pile to add your
coffee grounds and egg shells, stopping last at the cozy bonfire out front, to
end the day. These are real people and that's what life is like here.
Are you looking for a really beautiful and fun place to live, one that actually
welcomes your pet friends and horses? We are a small, 11-unit community of truly
great people, ordinary folks who are animal lovers and nice people every one, on
a peaceful, 20-acre pond-front country estate near the Neuse River.
The Ranch was originally built by a son of a famous local tobacco farming family,
whose claim to fame was being one of the original "Marlboro Men", the cowboys
who used to smoke on TV and billboard ads before that was outlawed. His idea was
to make a place reminiscent of a Wild West town, and he did!
In that cowboy theme, the homes have the following features:
• 2 BR downstairs AND SURPRISE!, a bonus 3rd BR, which is a LOFT that overlooks the living room and
kitchen, has a built-in platform for a single-wide bed or couch, its own closet,
an electrified reading nook at the foot of the bed, and is reached by stairs
that raise and lower, which kids find fascinating.
• Strong Southwestern flavor, cathedral ceilings with exposed beams and lots of stucco and stained
wood throughout,
• All of the homes have either a fireplace OR a wood stove in addition to central heat/ac. Working of course!
• Big beautiful kitchen with lots of storage and all appliances including dishwasher (Yay!).
• Laundry connections in the second downstairs bedroom, a bit of a bummer,
but at least you have connections in your home!
• The homes are cozy at 750 square feet, but the open floor plan and soaring ceilings give a roomy feel.
Great for singles, roommates, couples or small families. Your power company is
Progress Energy, and the electric bill is very reasonable, at around $125 in the
spring and fall, going up to a high of around $200 when you add ac or heat in
the winter and summer. Comparatively, these are very reasonable power
bills!
• Covered front porch with swing or Adirondack chairs. Picket-fenced front yard. All homes
face tree-enclosed front pastures full of horses.
• Back door leads to back yard, stable, lake, and pastures.
• Ceiling fans throughout the home, lots of windows front to back. In spring it's often a perfect 76 degrees at noon and all the windows and
doors are wide open. In fact our long fall and spring are just perfect for opening up every window, day and night.
• ALSO, you can get service from all the internet, phone, cell, and tv providers.
Besides your home, your rent price includes lots of utilities and services. Here's what you get:
• Free sewer,
• Free water,
• Free garbage collection,
• Free lawn and home maintenance,
• Bring your friendly, non-aggressive and housebroken indoor pet group for a one-time
$200 pet fee that covers them all.
• Beautiful grounds, paths all around; ride, walk, bike everywhere in the beautiful rural tidal flatlands.
• Designated target
practice area at back facing forest.
• The school bus meets the kids at the head of our drive, and goes to the schools of the Princeton School District in
Princeton, NC. The elementary is brand new and excellent in every way. The
middle and high schools have a good reputation, and perhaps most important:
these are rural schools, not at all urban.
• Two BONFIRE AREAS where we cook out and hang out practically every day,
• Acres of land to practice your swing or your putting. The kids play football and basketball every day after
school. Play on the tire swing by the pond!
• Lovely pond with a canoe for your use, where the kids love to swim
• Filtered well water, Yay!, no city water filled with chemicals for us!
• A lovely VEGETABLE GARDEN you can have your own space in (and more land available!), if you like to garden (many grow in their yards!)
• and miles of trails for anything you want to do, whether it's HORSEBACK, FOURWHEELER, GOLF CART, HIKING, BIKING, or RUNNING.
And we have these truly excellent Horse Facilities:
• Beautiful 10-stall stable, multiple tack rooms
• 6 separate pastures on 12 acres, each with run-in shed, with some acres to expand.
• Excellent lunge training pen
• Show size riding ring AND a covered riding area!
• On-site riding paths, miles of country trail
riding areas including paths to the Neuse River
• Horses love to swim in our pond, too!
You get to actually LIVE WITH YOUR HORSES and care for them
yourself (or just enjoy ours)! WAY better than having to drive somewhere to ride
your horse, and then not even getting to do the fun things that bond you
together, like daily feeding, turnout and grooming. Super price: $100/mo per
horse, self care, gives you a private stall, room for your tack and pasture --
quite possibly a private pasture and a private tack room! You can't beat
that!
PLUS, a really great financial feature! IF YOU PAY RENT ON OR
BEFORE THE FIRST DAY OF EACH MONTH, TAKE $50 OFF YOUR RENT! We're careful to pay
our bills on time or early, and we provide this incentive to encourage everyone
in the community to treat their rent that way. For yet another bonus, we LOVE
folks coming to NC from faraway places, especially Armed Forces families, you
who just need a place for a few months to get your feet on the ground in the
area. The initial lease term is a minimum three months, which automatically then
converts to month to month after that -- we want only happy people, not folks
just here waiting for a lease term to end! (Our most recent transplants are from
New York city, and we've had folks move here from Florida to California and
everywhere in between. As long as you're nice and responsible, we welcome you no
matter where you're from, what you look like, or whatever your family
arrangement!)
We are a happy, lively bunch of country folks (and city
folks who love living in the country), and we're all about having and being
nice, considerate neighbors! As we said above, Mean people need not apply!
Welcome are folks with good energy, farmers, artists, intelligent people of all
genres, animal lovers, golfers, recyclers, scientists, gardeners, bikers,
hikers, runners, walkers, horseback riders... You get the picture. You just
might spend the rest of your life here! Several of us expect to! FYI, except for
the lofts in each home, we're handicap accessible and we try to be! Being on a
farm with 20 acres, tons of fruit and nut trees growing up, a fresh water pond,
a deep well, and a fireplace or woodstove in every home (in addition to central
heat/ac); we're a long way toward self-sustainable right now!
We're centrally located for easy commute to top-notch business centers in all four
directions:
• Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill (Research Triangle Park (RTP)) (35 mi west),
• Clayton (18 mi west), Smithfield and I-95 (7 miles west)
• Wilson (25 mi north),
• Goldsboro (20 mi east) and
• Fayetteville (45 mi south)!
Geographically, we're in a lush, beautiful rural setting in the Neuse River basin beside a huge, unpopulated,
dense natural forest, full of wildlife. In fact, we're less than a mile from the
nearest bend in this great river, which runs on directly to New Bern where it
meets the ocean. You can jump on Hwy 70 in five minutes and go east to reach the
beach at Morehead City in two and a half hours, or go west on I-40 to hit the
ski slopes at Sugar Mountain or Ski Beech in less than five hours! (FYI, we're
not only just five minutes from Hwy 70, we're less than ten minutes from I-95
(exit 93), and 20 minutes from I-40 at Benson. How about that for location!!!)
You can see tons pictures on our Facebook page "Sundance Ranch") and at this address: www.flickr.com/photos/wendywhiteofsundance
And when I figure out how to organize my albums and photos easily, this will be spectacular, since The Ranch
is TRULY beautiful and I have lots of great shots I haven't uploaded yet...)
If you want to get in for a look, call for an appointment to let us show you around, or just drop by -- but don't expect an inside showing unless
you make an appointment. For a showing, please call/text me at 919-215-8501, or email me directly at [email protected]
Best! :)
Wendy, owner
SUNDANCE 'COUNTRY CLUB' RANCH
Factoid: The Ranch also happens to be very close to extremely important Civil War Battle sites.
In fact, the last great battle the South fought was at the Bentonville Battleground just across the
Neuse River, fought between Generals Sherman and Johnston. The infamous
"Sherman's March" that so destroyed Georgia and South Carolina in fact ended
only when Sherman received the news of Lee's surrender to Grant while he was
encamped just four miles away from where the Ranch stands today. And that's the
only reason Raleigh wasn't burned to the ground. Lots of ancient Indian and
Civil War artifacts found in the area.
Another Factoid: Movie star Ava Gardner grew up and lived in two homes, both within a football field of the
Ranch, and if you believe the local folklore, the clawfoot tub from her home is
right here! A movie star walked these roads...
FINAL Factoid: We're close enough to commute in less than an hour to virtually every employer,
university, military base and medical facility in Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill,
Goldsboro, Fayetteville, and everywhere in between. We've had plenty of people
live here and work at such entities as Duke University, Duke Medical Center, the
Veteran's Administration (VA) Hospital, North Carolina State University (NCSU),
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), businesses in the Research
Triangle Park!, and military bases Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro
and Fort Bragg in Fayetteville.
See ya!