Both Sides, Now: My journey as I personally explore the county.

Happy New Year, and cheers to the upcoming re-launch of PEC Connect! 🥂

When we first started building our place in Prince Edward County, there was no electricity. Which meant that in the summer, we ran a noisy gas generator outside to power an RV/trailer air conditioner loud enough to end most indoor conversations, and had a porta-potty that stayed on the property for years longer than anyone wants to remember.

Trailer, noise, and porta-potties… just three reasons we’re still grateful for our neighbours who put up with us as we shaped our spot in the County. Despite challenges, we built slowly and loudly, as a family, with a golden retriever named Jessie underfoot who treated the whole thing like an extended camping trip… including sleeping in a cramped trailer that was much too small for her big 45kg build.

It wasn’t the quiet and quaint version of the County people tend to imagine; it was chaotic, inconvenient, and strangely grounding. And it taught me early on that being here looks very different from visiting.

I was drawn to the County long before we ever broke ground, back when my family biked here on an all too hot day (after forgetting our cooler with drinks and snacks at home, of course).

It felt captivating in a way I can’t try to explain or justify, but once bought into a piece of PEC paradise, the reality of building from scratch took over completely. 

At first, my world narrowed to the property lines. There were plans to review, materials to source, timelines to renegotiate, and more “temporary” solutions than I care to admit. One of those was the afore-mentioned 35’ trailer, meant to carry us through a year or so of building (in fact, it housed us through four years. But who’s counting?).

We were busy in the most consuming way, which left very little time to look outward or build much of a social rhythm beyond a small circle of neighbours curious enough to come by, say hi, and some even helped here and there (thanks, Jeff!). 

That inward focus wasn’t a complaint; it was simply the mode we were in. Still, even from that contained vantage point, I started to notice things. Conversations I overheard. Frustrations that surfaced casually, then repeated themselves. A quiet tension between old and new, businesses and residents, tourists and the people who stay after the long weekends end and through the winter’s freeze. 

Too often, the county vs city folk story created an us-versus-them problem, as if the County could only belong to one group at a time. Yet, there were  people who didn’t fit neatly into any one category but cared deeply all the same. I was one of them, and I’m still on both sides, now.

By the time the house began to feel less like a project and more like a place we lived, that observation had really stuck with me. For me, the County didn’t feel short on people, ideas, or energy. It felt short on connection, or maybe permission to connect without taking sides. Not in a grand, organized way… just in the everyday sense of knowing who’s around you, what they’re working on, and why they’re here. In 2023, I gave that noticing a name: PEC Connect.

It didn’t begin as a launch or a statement. It started quietly, almost tentatively. At first, it was just a way of paying closer attention; watching what was happening here, listening to the rhythms of the place, and resisting the urge to define anything too quickly. I wasn’t interested in creating another directory, destination, or more content on the top ten wineries in PEC.

That meant waiting, letting patterns emerge, and allowing my own relationship with the County to keep evolving alongside the project. Over time, PEC Connect became clearer to me. Not as a solution to anything, but as a connective space and something that could sit gently between groups rather than speak for them. A place that acknowledged difference without turning it into division, and perhaps even a place that didn’t try to smooth the County’s edges, but didn’t benefit from sharpening them either.

This journal, “Personally Exploring the County”, is part of that process.

It isn’t a guide or a review column, and it definitely isn’t a list of recommendations; it’s simply a place to write from lived experience. To note what I’m seeing, hearing, and feeling as someone who is here, invested, and still very much learning. Sometimes that will involve the land and the ongoing projects that seem to multiply the moment one is finished, like a hydra always rearing its head(s). Sometimes it will involve conversations, small frictions, or moments of unexpected alignment. Sometimes it may just be an observation that doesn’t yet know what it’s pointing toward.

There won’t always be conclusions. I’m not especially interested in them; perhaps through building in the County, I’ve learned that the fun is really in the journey (even if for years, that means the journey never moved far beyond a parked trailer).

What I am interested in is paying attention: to how this place moves, how it changes, and how people navigate it alongside one another. I’m interested in what happens when you slow down enough to notice the in-between spaces. And I’m interested in sharing that honestly, without polishing it into something more marketable or more certain than it actually is.

PEC Connect isn’t brand new. It’s been taking shape for a while now, quietly, since 2023. This is simply the moment where I start writing some of that thinking down, in public, and seeing where it leads. I don’t have a finished vision I’m working toward. Just a sense that the County is worth exploring carefully, personally, and with room for complexity.

This feels like a reasonable place to begin, though a little late, still slightly imperfect, and very much still unfolding as it’s getting ready for launch (spoiler alert!).

So, come on a journaling journey with me, and hang out while we’re just personally exploring the County.

Xoxo, Andreea in PEC