One landowner in Mt Lyford village really wants to sell a 4000sqm section. The price has been knocked back to $55,000. Most other sections of the same size are on the market between $95,000-$150,000.

If a section doesn't appeal, then one real estate agency has 15 homes for sale in the village. Priced between about $375,000 and $550,000, they are all built of logs and all sit on sections of 4000sqm and larger. There are log palaces up there too.

About 100 sections were carved out of a high country farm by Doug and Jenny Simpson back in the 1990s and about 60 have homes on them – villagers can't quite agree on the number. Most are baches that accommodate skiers at Mt Lyford skifield. But they are used other times of the year, especially during Christmas and school holidays.

Mt Lyford Alpine Resort Winter scenes at Mt Lyford village at the base of the Mt Lyford Alpine Resort.

Central Christchurch is two hours south, Hanmer Springs 45 minutes away. On a warm Wednesday in mid October, Mt Lyford is quiet. A couple lingers at an outdoor table at Mt Lyford Lodge and the occasional car passes on the Inland Rd to or from Kaikoura.

There are maybe 10 homes with permanent residents – again, there's no consensus on the number. Lyford has its own pace. Things proceed on "mountain time".

READ MORE:

* Rare, indigenous Lyford forest protected forever

* Mount Lyford skifield to be sold (2008 story)

* 250 skiers stranded on Mt Lyford (2011 story)

* A supercar production outfit shapes up in unlikely Waiau

GEORGE HEARD/FAIRFAX NZ Mt Lyford Lodge owners Jenny Yeoman and Angela Hunt.

Lyford isn't Tekapo, that booming bach and tourist centre that's got a skifield, ice rink, hot springs, star observatory, water sports, a remarkably scenic church and much passing traffic.

Lyford is more like Castle Hill, the little subdivision on the state highway to Arthur's Pass, or even Terrace Downs, the golf resort near Windwhistle that includes some private residences.

They have an attraction or two. They are less visited, less well known, struggling perhaps.

GEORGE HEARD/FAIRFAX NZ Founder of the My Lyford ski field and village, Doug Simpson.

Actually, says permanent resident Ross Barnes, that's the appeal of Lyford. He throws his arms high and wide and exclaims, "Look around! Where else can you live like this?"

It is beautiful country: Towering mountains, regenerating bush, no traffic, no noise.

The baches are far apart on those big sections (one acre by the old measures) and further subdivision is banned by covenants. These also direct that houses must be built of logs, have roofs pitched at 45 degrees and have a rustic, mountain chalet look. That's perhaps changing slightly.

GEORGE HEARD/FAIRFAX NZ Eco-lodge and holiday homes website owners, Claudine and Ross Barnes.

The holiday homes are clustered a kilometre or two above the valley bottom. There are no shops, no amenities, only houses. High above is the Mt Lyford Alpine Resort, the skifield built and still owned by the Simpson family. Below is the Mt Lyford Lodge, surely one of the most ambitious log buildings in New Zealand. It too was built by the Simpsons, on behalf of its first owner.

In early July, the lodge was bought by Jenny Yeoman, her younger sister Angela Hunt and Angela's partner Tony Hunt, all from the North Island. Tony stumbled across the lodge while on summer motor biking trip and fell in love.

He's now the cook and handyman, Angela does a little of everything. Jenny is a retired teacher and academic who pooled her money with her sister to buy the lodge. "I love it. I've never poured a beer or made a coffee in my life. Now I do all that," she says. "This is an adventure for me."

GEORGE HEARD/FAIRFAX NZ Mt Lyford Village, a tiny North Canterbury town with big ambitions.

They have ambitious plans to regenerate business in the lodge, which can sleep 30 in hotel, motel and backpacker rooms. There's a restaurant and bar and space for weddings, birthdays and small conferences.

An early challenge is getting word out that the lodge is open seven days. It has been open irregularly over the years as a succession of owners passed through. And they've got to drum up more off-season business.

This is where the Ross and Claudine Barnes come in. She runs the Mt Lyford Holiday Homes website, which co-ordinates bach rentals on behalf of 14 owners. She's selling isolation, quiet and rest, often to families.

Mt Lyford Alpine Resort Mt Lyford skifield from the air in winter.

There's also day hikes, tennis, kayaking on a small lake, skating in winter. There's a rural golf course down the road. Biking looks promising. Ross is trying to create the Hurunui Heartland Cycle Route, a 160-kilometre circuit through the district. The physically fit could cycle it in a day, but others might take three or four days and overnight in Lyford.

The Barnes have also persuaded a nearby farmer to allow a mountain bike track across his land. The Mountain Bike Mt Lyford track is a "quiet private trail" that has to be booked through Claudine's holiday homes website. Only once that's complete do customers get directions to the trail head. The farmer is nervous about letting strangers onto his land and wants to test the idea for a while.

Ross Barnes hopes that the farmer's unease – and those of others in the area – will ease over a few years and Lyford can build a mountain bike mecca.

GEORGE HEARD/FAIRFAX NZ Lyford resident Gary Morton, a lover of all things American, including Donald Trump, is restoring a car once owned by President Harry Truman.

The Barnes also built and own an Eco Lodge that's outside of the covenanted alpine village and so doesn't need to be built of logs. It's perhaps a chipping away of the original plan for a chalet village.

This sort of thing is watched with interest by Doug Simpson, the guy who founded it all.

Simpson bought the farm that became Lyford in 1979. The terrain always made farming a challenge. He jokes about buying merino sheep, some of which were last seen heading over the tops to Molesworth Station.

Then Rogernomics hit and farming communities were in crisis. "I'd send stock to the meatworks and get an invoice back [instead of a cheque]," he says. He remembers thinking, "We've got to do something for the district because Waiau [the nearest town] is going to die".

The only reliable thing on his farm was snow. Why not start a skifield?

His first attempt was a modest affair down the mountain from the current site. It would have needed snow-making to be viable, so after a few years Simpson moved the skifield about 330 metres higher up. To attract customers, he drew up those one acre lots, came up with the mountain chalet theme and founded a log house construction company.

It built many of the Lyford baches, expanded across the South Island and even built a few log houses in Japan. That's the company that built Lyford lodge. Simpson sold that company to its managers a few years ago.

He's also moved the skifield onto to his sons Hamish and Tim. They live in and own hospitality businesses in Kaikoura – as do their parents Doug and Jenny – and come back to Lyford for the ski season.

Doug Simpson, now 65, is kind of slowing down. He's got resource consent to bottle water from high up the mountain and plans to sell it nationally and overseas. That would create jobs at Lyford but Simpson watched the recent furore over bottling Ashburton water and is proceeding slowly.

He's also subdivided more of the old farm into five super sections – three of them larger than existing Lyford village. They front onto the skifield access road above the village. But that's proceeding slowly as well because of a failed attempt a few years ago by a different landowner to carve 149 sections out of land adjacent to Lyford village.

Most would have been – shock, horror – about 800sqm and wouldn't have carried the log building covenant. Many villagers opposed the plan and it did not proceed.

Over coffee in the lodge, Doug is asked if building Lyford made him rich. Son Tim chips in: "He's asset rich".

"I've had a damn rich life," says Doug. "We've worked with family. We realise how lucky we are." Some days during the ski season, three generations of Simpsons gather in the office to chat and socialise.

Lyford would never have proceeded under the Resource Management Act, he says. Grubbing the access road up the mountain, the stream crossings, sewage disposal – they would have been too much.

Would he do it again? "Yes absolutely ... and not a lot differently."

EVERY VILLAGE HAS A CHARACTER

"I've got five American cars, all black, says Mt Lyford permanent resident Gary "Tex" Morton.

A lover of all things American – and Donald Trump – Tex is restoring a car once owned by American president Harry Truman. One of his muscle cars hit 160 miles per hour at the quarter mile, good enough to win the Kaikoura Hop last year he says.

Tex also breeds canaries and sells about 50 a year. Exotic pheasants he once owned still live in Mt Lyford village after he let them go a while back.

Tex makes a unique living by manufacturing wheel rims and spokes in a workshop under his home. It's a Dickensian sort of place, but Tex seems at home.

Early cars, motorbikes and aircraft had spoked wheels and Tex is one of the few people in the world who can make them. Spoked wheels Tex contributed to were used on cars that appeared in The Great Gatsby and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang films.

He's made spoked rims for Sopwith Camel and Fokker vintage aircraft. If you look closely at some of Peter Jackson's vintage planes, there's a good chance Texs made or contributed to the rims.

"I can make any wheel in the world," he says without boasting.