In this photo taken on June 8, 2017 in Derby, Vt., Brian and Joan Dumoulin pose on both sides of a marker showing the U.S.-Canadian border in the front yard of their home. She is in Canada, while he is... (Associated Press) 
 
 BEEBE PLAIN, Vt. (AP) — For sale: A 1782 fixer-upper with thick granite walls, 1950s decor, and armed 24-hour security provided by both Canada and the United States of America. 
 
 The almost 7,000-square-foot house, cut into five currently vacant apartments, is on a lot of less than a quarter-acre that, along with the building itself, straddles the border between Beebe Plain, Vermont, and Stanstead, Quebec. 
 
 Selling a home in two countries is proving to be a challenge for the couple who owns it. The structure, which has an estimated rebuild cost of about $600,000, is on the market for $109,000. It's structurally sound but needs lots of work. And then there's that international border. 
 
 "In the day, it was a normal and natural thing," Brian DuMoulin, who grew up in the house and was accustomed to life literally on the border at a time when no one thought twice about crossing from one country to the other. "Now it stresses everyone out." 
 
 The home, known locally as the Old Stone Store, was built by a merchant so he could sell to farmers in both Vermont and Quebec. Brian and his wife, Joan DuMoulin, inherited it about 40 years ago. 
 
 Now the couple, in their 70s, who have dual U.S. and Canadian citizenship and a home in nearby Morgan, Vermont, are hoping to sell it so they can move to Ontario to be closer to their children and grandchildren. 
 
 Beebe Plain is a community in the Vermont town of Derby, which along with Stanstead, about 60 miles (96 kilometers) northeast of Montpelier, or 75 miles (120 kilometers) southeast of Montreal, have become the cliché of security changes on the U.S.-Canadian border brought on by the 9/11 attacks on the United States. 
 
 Residential streets that used to be open were blocked by gates. The back doors of an apartment building straddling the border in Derby Line village have been locked shut. The street next to the Haskell Free Library and Opera House, deliberately built in both countries, is blocked by flower pots, although Canadians are still allowed to walk to the library's U.S. entrance without going through a border post. 
 
 The DuMoulins' house is directly across Stanstead's Rue Principale from the port of entry staffed by agents of the Canada Border Services Agency and adjacent to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection post. 
 
 Troy Rabideau, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection assistant port director for the area that includes Beebe Plain, said the agents know who live there, but keeping track can be a challenge. 
 
 "It's always a fine line," Rabideau said. "We do the best we can to keep an eye on it. We do what we have to do, security first, but we also want the support of the locals." 
 
 The DuMoulins' house has entrances from the United States and Canada. Agents have come to know the people who live in the house, currently vacant, and allow them to move back and forth freely as long as they stay in the house or the tiny front or backyard. There's a small granite border marker just outside the front door. 
 
 There is a gate hidden in a backyard hedge. DuMoulin said U.S. agents wanted to be sure the gate was wired shut. It is. 
 
 Rosemary Lalime, their real estate agent, said that between the time the house was listed around the turn of the year and the end of May when a Canadian magazine noted its odd location she showed it 10 times. In the last two weeks she's shown it six times and has six more appointments. 
 
 All but one person has come from the United States. One man called from Toronto. 
 
 "He was inquiring more about the border situation and if he bought it, what are his rights," Lalime said. "I put him in touch with the Border Patrol." 
 
 Brian DuMoulin said that usually the agents from both countries know who they are, but he told of a time when a new Canadian border agent saw him, his wife and her sister standing in front of the house, "a good 18 feet into the States." He demanded they report to the Canadian border post. 
 
 "He simply didn't know," DuMoulin said, noting it took about 45 minutes to resolve the situation after the agent called his superiors. 
 
 "That's the awkwardness," he said. "If there is an awkwardness, it's that you can't just go this way or this way, you've got to go through (the ports of entry) and then back through." ||||| Can't decide whether to live in Canada or the United States? Even in the current political climate? Okay. Well, if you buy this house in Vermont, you'll straddle the border between the two countries. In fact, there's a border marker right outside the front door. 
 
 But right now, Brian and Joan DuMoulin, who own the property in the community of Beebe Plain, say they're having trouble finding a buyer. For one thing, the house needs a lot of work. For another, heightened post-9/11 security restrictions have made it occasionally awkward to traverse the grounds. Brian explained to TIME, for example, that Joan and her sister once had to report to Canadian border patrol because a new agent didn't recognize them. 
 
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 Image: Zillow 
 
 "If there is an awkwardness, it's that you can't just go this way or that way, you've got to go through [the ports of entry] and then back through." 
 
 Still, if that seems worth it, and you don't mind a little Chip and Joanna-esque Fixer Upper action, it seems like a lovely house in a lovely community — and it's available for both Canadians and Americans to purchase. Bonus: armed 24-hour security from two powerful nations! 
 
 Check out the listing here. ||||| Image caption The successful couple will inherit a house that is totally self-sufficient 
 
 It could be your chance to live on a deserted island. 
 
 The French government is looking for a new couple to take over the tiny Brittany island of Quéménès. The current occupants, who were chosen 10 years ago, have decided to leave. 
 
 Wanted: Person(s) to run Brittany island. Must be practical-minded and resilient. Farmhouse provided. Solitude guaranteed. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption David and Soizic Cuisnier talk about their time on the island 
 
 Exactly a decade on, France's Coastal Protection Agency (Conservatoire du Littoral) has advertised for new volunteers to take over a unique experiment. 
 
 Quéménès is a mile-long speck of sand, rock and grass in the Molène archipelago, just off the far-west Breton coast. It is home to seals, sea-birds, rabbits, and a flock of black Ushant sheep. 
 
 And someone has to live there. 
 
 Image caption Quéménès is a tiny island that is home to a flock of Ushant sheep 
 
 The background is this. After thousands of years of human occupation, the last owners of Quéménès quit the island farm 25 years ago. 
 
 Exercising their prerogative, the Conservatoire stepped in to buy. 
 
 At that point they could simply have created a nature reserve, but they decided otherwise. The farm would be kept as a going concern, and they would advertise for a couple to run it. 
 
 Image copyright EPA 
 
 And so it was that in 2007 David and Soizic Cuisnier were given possibly the most romantic job in the world: to live on a deserted island, and to keep the island alive. 
 
 Ten years on, and the Cuisniers, now supplemented by children Chloé and Jules, are preparing to leave. 
 
 They have fallen out with the Conservatoire over the issue of rent. In any case, they feel the children need to be living near school. 
 
 There are 20 "serious" candidates to replace them and the deadline for applications has just closed. The lucky successors will be appointed in the coming weeks and they should arrive in the new year. 
 
 If the experience of David and Soizic is anything to go by, they are in for the time of their lives. 
 
 "If we'd listened to people's advice 10 years ago, we'd never have done it," says David. 
 
 Image caption In the decade spent on the island David and Soizic Cuisnier have had two children 
 
 "Coming here was an act of glorious folly. But it turned into the most wonderful adventure. We developed the farm into a successful business. We raised a family. It has been unforgettable." 
 
 The main condition of the Cuisniers' lease was that they would have to earn their livelihood. 
 
 So over the years they have diversified into different areas. They grow Mona Lisa potatoes, which they market over the internet and post to purchasers from the neighbouring (inhabited) island of Molène. 
 
 They run a guesthouse for six months of the year; they manage the sheep; and they gather edible seaweed. This last they see as a major opportunity, and after leaving Quéménès they hope to become pioneers in the emerging business of seaweed cultivation. 
 
 Back to nature 
 
 The other challenge has been to use only those resources provided by the island. 
 
 So their electricity comes from a wind turbine and solar panels, and their water is drawn from the island well, itself fed by rainwater. Toilets are of the dry variety: scoop-and-sawdust rather then flushing. 
 
 Image caption Life on the island is not completely solitary: there is access to mobile phones and internet 
 
 "We have shown that it is possible to have a normal, modern life, while consuming only what nature has given. We have all the electronic gadgets we need, including an electric buggy to get round the island," says David Cuisnier. 
 
 The one hiccup is that under typically recondite French regulations, the island water is classed only as "buvable" and not as "potable". Both words mean drinkable, but unless water gains the higher health status of potable, it cannot be used in any process of food transformation. 
 
 This meant their idea of setting up a small factory to convert seaweed into pickles and other comestibles never took off. 
 
 Ten years of island adventures 
 
 An evening with the Cuisniers is an evening of stories about the island, about its history and about their own adventures there. Chloé, aged seven, and five-year-old Jules have had surely the most idyllic of childhoods. 
 
 There was the time they found four skeletons on the beach. 
 
 The sea had eroded their place of burial. At first, experts thought the bones were of soldiers killed in a fracas with the English. 
 
 The Royal Navy knew these waters well, from its frequent incursions against the French Atlantic fleet and its base in Brest. The nearby island of Ouessant is known in English charts as Ushant. 
 
 "But in the end they decided they were probably shipwrecked sailors, washed up," says David. 
 
 Image caption Island life: The Cuisniers have become experts in cultivating seaweed 
 
 There are in fact scores of wrecks in the sea off the archipelago, notably that of the Drummond Castle, a British passenger ship sailing from South Africa which went down with 350 lives in 1896. 
 
 Then there was the tale of the Irish balloon. One evening, walking with the children, Soizic Cuisnier found a large balloon in a thicket. It had a message attached, from a couple in Dublin who had just lost a baby boy to a fatal genetic illness. 
 
 Sending the balloon into the air was part of their process of grieving. He wrote to the couple, and they are still in contact today. 
 
 There were the storms of 2014, which lasted for weeks. One evening, struggling back from a walk in force-10 winds, David saw what looked like a low, billowing cloud moving towards him. 
 
 "It seemed out of place in the storm, because it was coming so slowly across the sea. Only when it hit did I realise what it was. It was a 'salt fog' - salt whipped up from the sea by the ferocity of the blast," he says. 
 
 But what of the hardships? The solitude? 
 
 "Obviously we had our crises," he says. "One year the potato crop was totally eaten by rabbits. Luckily myxamatosis arrived, and the rabbit population fell from around 2,000 to the 100 or so we have today." 
 
 "And there was the time Soizic cut the end of her finger off. But the amazing thing then was how quickly the helicopter ambulance came. In 20 minutes she was being seen to by a doctor, which is quicker than she would have had on the mainland!" 
 
 And that is the final message from the Cuisniers. Please don't call them France's answer to Robinson Crusoe. Cut off they are not. 
 
 "The fact is we live in modern times. From the farm we can see the mainland and the other inhabited islands. We have the internet, we have constant visitors. Never once have we felt alone!"
– There was a time when living on the US-Canada border wasn't such a big deal. When Brian DuMoulin, who grew up in a home that was built right on the line in 1782, inherited it, he and wife Joan, who are both dual citizens, didn't think much of it at all. Now that they're in their 70s and trying to sell it, however, "it stresses everyone out," Brian tells the AP. Their home is known by locals as the Old Stone Store and was built by a merchant who wanted to sell to farmers in Vermont and Quebec. There are entrances on both sides of the border, and a small granite border marker just outside the front door. Derby, Vermont, is on one side; Stanstead, Quebec, on the other. The house comes with granite walls, 1950s decor, and a whopping 7,000 square feet of living space divided into five currently vacant apartments, and is listed for a relatively low $109,000, per Zillow. The AP cites a renovation estimate of $600,000, though it doesn't provide specifics. Of note: The new owners will have to be OK with border security agents keeping track of their whereabouts. Mashable goes so far as to call this a "bonus" considering it results in "armed 24-hour security from two powerful nations!" DuMoulin admits that there is a certain "awkwardness" to the house's location, because "you can't just go this way or that way." That said, if it's always been a dream to live in two countries simultaneously, this house has exactly what you want. (One island is the subject of a centuries-old custody agreement between Spain and France.)