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Consider it south Ottawa’s answer to the popular woodland skate operating at Lac-des-Loups, north of Gatineau Park.

Jamieson has dreamed of this moment for many years, but is now all in on the project, after being laid off from his construction job last spring.

“I live close to where I grew up, the old farm off my parents’ property,” Jamieson said. “The Castor River borders the south end of the farm – we always had a rink on the river and had a log cabin on the waterfront.

“I thought it would be cool, instead of going to a cold cabin and putting on your freezing cold skates … to be able to skate right from the house.”

People told Jamieson that folks would pay to skate the trails on part of his 108-acre property. Now they are – the RiverOak Estates had a “soft opening” on New Year’s Eve and the reviews were good, even if the ice was a little bumpy at the time.

He said this week’s rain might actually be a blessing, as it has smoothed out the ice, setting up a nice weekend for skating as long as the surface water freezes before the snow arrives Friday evening.

Photo by Julie Oliver / Postmedia

The skating trail, Phase 1 of Jamieson’s master plan for making his property a year-round destination site for day trippers and event planners, was a huge undertaking.

While he has an old Olympia ice resurfacer, the Zamboni-style machines are built for hockey rinks, and only have a water capacity of 160 gallons or so. On a rural property, that is a lot of back-and-forth to reload water.

And so Jamieson created a handmade “Zamboni” out of a 1,000-gallon field sprayer tank, which he hauls with a tractor. A flood bar on the back of the tank acts like an ice machine, minus the ability to scrape up snow. He has used 100,000 gallons of water already.