Open this photo in gallery: Kyle Christie/Kyle Christie 1546 Maryhill Rd., Woolwich, Ont. List Price: $9.85-million Lot size: 122 acres Property Taxes: $22,499.24 (2024) Listing agents: Patricia Inacio, Zofia Kaczmarczyk, Cliff C. Rego, Corcoran Horizon Realty As cottage season cranks to life in Ontario, some may groan at the prospect of busy roads leading out of town and hours of driving to find a little peace and quiet. Perhaps it’s enough to make you wish you could get some of the same pleasures of a cottage in your own backyard. That’s what Gerhart Huber wanted when he found the 122-acre Zinger family farm in 2011, just 20 minutes outside of Kitchener-Waterloo. He wanted to stay near the family business – his father founded Piller’s Fine Foods, perhaps Kitchener’s second-most famous packaged-meat company (after J.M. Schneiders) – but he was also motivated by a need for speed. “I had a professional snowmobile racing team, my son raced professional snowcross,” said Mr. Huber, who started racing snow machines in 2010. “When we first got the property the barn was converted into the race shop. We redid the whole inside: in-floor heating, a machine shop, welding shop, the whole workout area. It was the priority at that time.” Before too long, he added motocross to the stable of racing machines and had dirt-bike tracks and snowmobile tracks built on the property to help his racers train and tune their machines; they even made their own snow. It wasn’t until almost two years later that the main house was finally finished. The inspirations for the home were driven mainly by family influences: He wanted some of the water amenities of father’s Muskoka cottage and family trips had also exposed him to West-Coast living. Mr. Gerhart started in the business young, as a 14-year-old working weekend maintenance in the 1970s, before going to college for food sciences and innovation and working in more parts of the business in the 1980s. Back then, his brother once came back from a meeting with suppliers in British Columbia singing the area’s praises, which kicked off a tradition of annual father-and-sons fishing trips in Haida Gwaii (also known as the Queen Charlotte Islands) – which continued right up until the COVID pandemic ended the streak. “I always loved the West Coast. A lot of the homes up there are very open and I love that style,” he said. While he initially hoped to keep the 1850s farmhouse on the Maryhill site, there were too many structural issues. Instead, he and his then wife decided to build a long, rambling West Coast lodge-style home and incorporate elements of the original house. Limestone corners from the Zinger farmhouse were incorporated into the brick and stonework inside and out, done in a modified version of the traditional German “schmear” style, which uses wet mortar applied to brick and partially wiped off before drying. Even a black oak tree that also couldn’t be saved – said to have been planted in 1939 to celebrate the royal tour of King George V, the first British Monarch to visit Canadian soil – had its timber used for mantle-pieces on a couple of fireplaces inside the house. A vein of blue clay found during excavation was combined with quarried stone to make the artificial ponds arranged around the house watertight. The house today Most houses have a front door that faces the street, but while the driveway from the main road comes from the north-east, Mr. Huber prefers to start his day looking to the south-east. “There’s a big huge black oak tree and a view of the church on top of Maryhill, so I made them turn the whole house so the front door was facing it,” he said. The front foyer sits at the middle of the home’s central mass off which four small wings extend in an almost X-shape: one for the triple-car garage (found around the back of the front entrance); one for the family room and barbecue wing; one for laundry and kids’ bedrooms; and one wing for the primary suite. The entry foyer is dominated by a huge limestone wall with a built-in fireplace and a stone bench (handy for putting on shoes). Stone pillars on the left and right lead through the central hallway, all under a bank of skylights that run the length of the central mass. Heavy timber beams in the ceilings contrast against white walls and complement the wide-plank wood floors. To the right is the kitchen filled with wood-stained cabinetry and two large islands, one of which serves to define the large open dining space with glass-windowed doors facing the waterfall feature and back patio and pool/pond. More limestone pillars line the room and frame the entrance back to the sunken living room (behind the foyer wall). A second family room on the other side of the dining room (with a coffee table made out of a steel-wheeled J.M. Schneiders factory trolley) leads into the unusual glassed-in sun room/indoor barbecue station on the way to the indoor gym. “It was going to be a breezeway, but I barbecue all year round and didn’t want to stand outside,” Mr. Huber said. Instead, an industrial hood above the gas barbecue takes the fumes away (he keeps his smoker outside though) and a fireplace inside keeps it convivial all year round. He loves to grill a prime rib, but loyally affirms that his favourite wurst is a Piller’s brand harvest sausage. Just off the barbecue breezeway are the stairs to the basement, which extends under most of the house and is about two-thirds finished. Anchored by a huge family room with more stone pillars, there’s a home theatre room, a massive bar area, wine cellar and billiards room. The unfinished area (next to the sauna) looks like a commercial gym, and in a way it is: all the equipment from the motocross training room has been moved here now that Mr. Huber’s son has outgrown the motocross racing life. Back on the main floor, there is a guest bedroom across from the office space on the other side of the entrance foyer, and two more bedrooms in one of the wings. The wing facing the ponds and pools in the back is the primary bedroom suite with a huge pentagonal main bedroom and massive spalike ensuite bath behind sliding barn-style doors. There are more limestone pillars and huge glass windows that open onto a back deck that is separated from the pool patio off the dining room. Big pond energy In addition to building motocross courses, Mr. Gerhart undertook a massive earthworks project to create two huge ponds connected by a man-made lazy river on the property. “We brought in 160 tractor-trailer flatbeds of stone to make those two ponds. The upper pond is full stone right to the bottom,” he said, referring to the pool-size pond behind the house that’s about chest-deep. Meanwhile, the main pond below is almost 30 feet deep, has a sandy beach and is stocked with rainbow trout. The family pulls out kayaks and rafts to tool around, and the whole setup is powered by pumps that keep the water moving. The pool-pond can be fed from the very large waterfall feature, though that doesn’t need to run 24/7, it’s something you can turn on when you need it. “You got a real atmosphere of Niagara Falls, and the young kids, they love to play in that big waterfall,” Mr. Gerhart said. Just so long as no one tries to go over the edge in a barrel.