We just bought land!!!

[FedUpWithIt All]

We are going to follow through with our dream of a simpler life.

We are scared and exhilarated.

It is a beautiful 50 acres. It is rough and will take us a long time and a lot of work but we are so relieved and thrilled for the opportunity to "give it a go".

We have been working toward this for a very long time.

:bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce:

[Kajsa]

1. Congratulations,FUWIA!

Wishing you success and happiness
with your new home.

:toast:

[FedUpWithIt All]

2. Thank you, Kajsa

:hug:

We are very happy.

[Gormy Cuss]

3. Best wishes to you and yours in this new adventure.

Tell us about the land. Heavily wooded? How much clear acreage? Do you have your own pond or stream?
Are you moving far away for this? Details, please!

[FedUpWithIt All]

9. Thank you, Gormy Cuss.

:-)


I posted details below.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x8973670#8974150

[livetohike]

4. Congratulations!

:toast: When you love something, it will not be work....have a great time :-).

[FedUpWithIt All]

10. "When you love something, it will not be work"

Thank you for this.

It has all been a lot to take in. Our lives are going to completely change. But this IS what i am supposed to be doing. I have known it for a very long time. I am content in a very visceral way.

:)

[arcadian]

5. Where?

[FedUpWithIt All]

11. We are moving from NE Ohio to WV. n/t

[seemunkee]

6. Congratulations

Are you going to farm? Become self sustaining, off the grid?

[FedUpWithIt All]

14. Yes and yes, eventually.

We want to raise small scale livestock and try and produce a large part of our own food. What we cannot produce we will try and buy local. We already try to do some things more responsibly, like maintaining a kitchen garden and line drying clothes, etc. We have been downsizing our possessions for some time. We just feel like it is time to take the next step.

We are researching alternative power options that would suit this property and are really trying to cut our usage.

[hippywife]

21. Have you read

Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle?

[FedUpWithIt All]

23. We listened to it on audio on the drive down to view the property.

Very odd that you mentioned that book. :wow:

[hippywife]

24. Not so odd, maybe...

considering your undertaking. It was the one that got me started embracing the garden more and wanting to get chickens, and all the other ways we've changed our lives.

It's great motivation. And I'm glad the kids are on board. Maybe offer to take her boyfriend with you. He sounds like a keeper. LOL

[FedUpWithIt All]

26. I went to France when i was a teenager and stayed in a very rural town for a few weeks.

We stayed in a (several hundred year old) cob home. We fed the pigs our table scraps right after dinner and helped escort an escaped cow home using a long stick. The after dinner entertainment was a good talk, a card game or a book. We hand turned a grape press after spending a day cutting them off the vines, made dinner on a gravity rotational spit in the large kitchen hearth. Our host would eat the chicken heads and feet that floated in his soup at the evening meal and swirl wine in the last drop of broth before moving on to the next course (the neighbor's lamb, traded for some homemade pate and some field work). Bread was made or delivered fresh every morning. It was the way life is supposed to be lived and it has NEVER left me. I have been working on getting back ever since.

We live such a homogenized life in this country. Our food is bland, our entertainment empty, our social lives fractured. I want my kids to have a heritage. I was them to be bound to something bigger than a McDonald and a Target.

I have been dreaming of this, in progressively broadening form, since i was at least 17. It has taken a long time for things to line up the way they have been recently.

[Odin2005]

53. That's a good book, gave it to my sister, who lives in the country, for her birthday.

She's really into that stuff. She has some animals and has really expanded her garden this year.

[hippywife]

61. Hi, Odin.

It is a very informative, inspirational, and motivating book. Good choice for your sis. :hi:

[csziggy]

28. If you are building a house, build the tightest, best insulated envelope you can

You can change power sources later, but a good tight house that is well insulated is the best investment you can make to start with and will reduce your power needs from the start.

This will be exciting for you!

[FedUpWithIt All]

30. Thank you csziggy. We are pretty excited.

Thank you for this advice. I agree.


We are planning to build a cob strawbale hybrid. Very low cost and easy to build and the insulation and thermal mass cannot really be beat.

We are thinking about straw bale (r-value R 2.38 per inch to R 0.94 per inch) separating a windowless, storage pantry along the north side. Beyond this wall we will build an encasing cob room to keep that back room cool but also keep the warm air in the southern house portion. The cob in the back should allow the cooler (northern) environment into the room and the straw bale, should help insulate this from the rest of the house while preventing heat loss on the cooler north side of our home.

Cob is brilliant because with a variation in daily temps, they are the cool in the day while it is hot outside and warm in the evening while it is cool outside.

We intend to build the front of the structure with the cob and a solar collector like a kitchen greenhouse. It is slightly similar to the earthship designs.

We hope to have any additional heating done with wood. When we build we will be incorporating a spiral flue that graduates through the walls ensure the smoke releases as much heat as possible before it exits the building. This means there will have to be "access points" for cleaning.

I am hoping the have a pizza oven built into the kitchen (cob again) along with a full sized hearth. This will serve a multitude of purposes. I want a small smoke room above this hearth to make use of the exiting smoke. Perhaps a warming bench as well.

:hi:

[hippywife]

33. Sounds like a wonderful plan.

And, oh the fun! you can have designing a cob house!

http://images.google.com/images?q=cob+house&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=rsx-StT6AtSTtgfG4YT0AQ&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4

I still couldn't be more excited for you if I were doing it myself! :rofl:

[FedUpWithIt All]

35. ...

:hug:

Thank you. There are few things in life better than someone being joyful for you.

So this means you'll sign up when we put out the request for free manual labor (ie. house buildin')? :rofl:

:hug:

[hippywife]

38. If I were still in Ohio

I'd certainly assist. Alas, I'm living much farther away now. But I do hope you'll share your progress with us as it moves along.

:hug:

[csziggy]

39. The straw bale houses are neat!

I thought about doing that, but between the hay and straw shortage in this area when we were planning and worrying about mold if any moisture got in (we're in Florida so that is just about guaranteed!), we opted for insulated concrete forms (ICF) and hurricane resistance. Even though the new house is 50% larger than the old one, our utility bills are 50% than in the old one!

Unlike you we have to worry more about excess solar gain than adding heat. While we were building, with the air handler turned off and windows cracked to vent the floor finish, the house did not get below 64 F even when the temperatures dropped into the low 20s. During the summer our problem is that the air handler runs more to reduce the humidity than to lower the temperatures - in fact the house stays cooler than we really want because of that!

We went all electric since I am phobic about fires (had third degree burns as a child) plus I cannot physically deal with carrying wood and such. Eventually I want to put in photovoltaic panels but the budget did not allow that investment, and I think the technology will make big jumps shortly that will let the price get more reasonable.

I tried to post a message last night about your site - but DU seemed to go down and I lost the message.

For your springs and a pond - check with the local County Extension Office for how to contact the Soil Conservation Service or whoever is doing that kind of thing now. When we bought our 60 acres in 1977, they provided free consultations on farm planning and help in planning our pond location. They also had a list of large equipment operators who specialized in ponds (and other work) so you may be able to get recommendations for contractors for that part of things.

Also each year I get stuff from them about grants and aid available for small farmers. A friend got a large part of fencing her new place paid for through one of those.

And the County Extension Offices have tons of info about growing, planning, canning, preserving, whatever, and most of their publications are free or low cost. For instance, if you need to build a barn, they have plans going back decades - and for a minimal cost you can get full size copies of them. Some of the stuff is available online, too, or you can order them online.

And check to see if there is a county forester where you will be - the one here helped us come up with a plan for our back thirty acres for "managing" the trees and that plan let us get a greenbelt tax exemption which cut the taxes on that half of the property. Now we also have a conservation easement since it has been re-classified as "environmentally sensitive wetlands" so that helps, too. (Managing the trees pretty much amounts to letting them grow, LOL!)

What are you doing about cabinets? I ended up getting IKEA cabinets - they are low VOC, environmentally friendly and very easy to assemble and install yourself. For help planning a kitchen with them and for ideas on how creative you can get with them, check out IkeaFans.com - great group of people with lots of cost saving tips. What is cool about the IKEA stuff, is that it is component - you buy a box, the parts to put inside it and the fronts to make it pretty. You can re-arrange the parts inside however you want as long as they fit. IkeaFans.com have some creative people who have come up with some innovative uses for the standard parts.

Oh dear - I better quit! Having a new place with all the planning and building is exciting - enjoy it as much as possible, don't hurt yourself working too hard, and take lots of pictures for the memories. :hi:

[backwoodsbob]

42. we have a similair place but not so out there with the home

we have about 50 acres between the three families up here...all growing gardens and trying to live right.

What part of WV?

[FedUpWithIt All]

44. Trying to live right is becoming more and more pressing. Too many signs that all is not well.

Here in NE Ohio the summer has not really arrived. Today is toasty but the previous months have been very chilly. Unusually so. People are talking about the climate now. Sensing that things are changing. It is just time. By moving away from the typical comforts we find ourselves more peaceful. It never fails. This is simply another step.


We are moving to north central WV.

[hippywife]

7. Congrats!

We only have eight acres but it's enough and far enough out of town to make us feel like we have our own little haven far away from the grind. We love it!

I agree with the post above. We need details!

I bounce for you! :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce:

[FedUpWithIt All]

15. You and Bvar have been inspirational.

:hug:

I read the gardening and rural/farm boards regularly.

:D

[hippywife]

16. We've not done half

of what he and Starkraven have done. Not even close. They've been my inspiration, too. This is going to be so exciting for you and your family, hard work, but truly a labor of love, working for yourselves.

:hug:

[FedUpWithIt All]

8. Details...

The property is in WV. It is mostly forest and hilly/sloping. About 75% is wooded. The property has full timber, water and half mineral rights. We were careful to make sure of these things when we searched. The property also has electricity and city water available, if needed. There is a nice 2-3 acre area that is tree cleared. The land in the cleared area is a bit rough and that intimidates me a little. It is going to take some work to level it all out. There is a shallow type of ravine below the flat section that is parallel to the slope which rises up the opposite side (and to the north) of the clearing. The clearing itself slightly slopes to the south, where the embracing low, green tree covered ranges open up. The elevation on the property ranges from 1600 to 1800 ft. The views from the higher elevations are BREATHTAKING.

The property has been timbered recently so there are workable logging roads throughout, which made evaluating the property MUCH easier.

There is spring water making it's way down the slope in several tiny streams and i suspect we will need to try and consolidate the paths a little. If anyone has advice about this i would be quite beholden. The spring water source is on the property near it's highest elevation (1800 ft). We have the full rights to it which includes the option to reroute it on the property (assuming this would even work). We are sending in a sample for testing because we were hoping (if we can consolidate some of the water) to build a very small spring house for summer cooling. All taken into consideration, it seems that there is a fair amount of the cool water trickling down slope. Right now we are going on word of mouth that the spring is year round in some form. We are also planning on creating a small pond in the spot we will be removing the building material from (we want to build mainly with Cob http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cob_%28material%29). We were thinking that it would be wise to place it in the areas where the spring water already lightly accumulates in the lower portion of the property because there are already beds leading to the area.

We took soil and water samples. A jar test is showing nearly equal parts clay and sand (the clay is slightly elevated) with a bit less silt. This is good news considering our long term home plans. The dry sample is encouraging as well. It is crumbly and darker than is appeared in the clearing. Just the sight of it in the jar makes me happy as gardening is something that i need to do in order to keep my soul content. I am going to try and clear out a bermed area along the north edge of the clearing so i can try and get in some fruit and nut trees this fall.

We will be moving to the area and living as cheaply as possible in a location near to the property through the coming winter. Local black bears and our own infant-thru-teen children have eliminated the possibility of throwing up a rudimentary straw bale shelter and trying to make do on the property itself. We are hoping to save money and begin hand clearing over the next few months to prepare for a big spring/summer level and build. Our plan is to follow through with our dream to build the Cob home. I have already investigate possible complications to this goal and have found that the official way may be more open we originally thought possible. We have been in contact with the City Clerk's office. It seems everything, so far, is a go. Clap


If anyone has advice, PLEASE share it. We are walking into a great unknown and any input would be taken quite seriously.

[hippywife]

13. You really need to talk to bvar22

over in the gardening forum. They did (are doing) the same thing, moving from MN to AR. He will have lots of practical advice and is so nice, always willing to share his experience.

I'm really very happy for you. Rural WV is a beautiful place. I used to go down there to go whitewater rafting when I lived in OH.

I wish you all the best and as smooth sailing as possible. :hug:

[triguy46]

19. Here's a start...

From our 30 years of living on a small farm, our dream too. I may be too pragmatic, but we've lived the good and the bad.

When you build, consider having a propane backup generator installed. You will experience extended outages during winter, and roughing it without power is rough. Have done it and it isn't fun.

Buy the best tools you can afford. You will use them hard and the good ones last, the cheap ones will break and have to be replaced.

Hand clearing sounds good, but a tractor can really help.

For septic, since I assume you are far enough off the grid not to have sewer, get an aerobic system, not the old fashioned anaerobic.

Clean your chimney EVERY year if you burn wood.

Good fences do make good neighbors.

Be very careful with chainsaws and use all safety devices, kevlar pants, eye protection and ear protection.

Get a couple female mouser cats from neighbors. These need to be outside cats, feed them to keep them, but you want them working. Mousing it a taught behavior, so be sure to ask if the kittens are good mousers. You should not have any mice problems with them around. Beware, if you bring them in and keep them in most of the day, they will lose that hunting edge. These are your workers.

Chickens are cheap and supply great eggs. Get pullets you don't need a rooster particularly. You must have a varmint free house for them you will loose them quick.

You will need a gun, small gauge shotgun, .410 is just fine for the small varmints that come around. Rabid skunks are not your friend. Also, you will prob encounter tick diseased racoons.

In general, it is not inexpensive to live in the country. What you gain in peace and quiet comes at additional costs of more driving, more expensive water and electricity. Its inconvenient. when you absolutely need something and its your 5th trip to town that day, its frustrating.

Keep it all in perspective. The benefits are enormous. However, we have seen so many families move out here and last a year, maybe two.

Don't expect the kids to fully share your emotions of all the great things of the rural life. They want a life too, and living "The Waltons" may not mesh with 14 or 16 year old needs. Our kids, now grown, live in KC and Raleigh. They now look back fondly of their growing up country. But it wasn't always that way.

Best wishes, be careful, have fun, work hard.

[FedUpWithIt All]

25. Thank you for all that.

We have been "collecting" and preparing for years. Your list makes me think we are on the right path.
:-)
I forgot to mention that our property is only about 2 miles or so from a small, but established, little town. It is a comfort to me to have things like a hospital and similar resources close. The residency is only a few thousand and has been very, very slow to grow to even this number.

[femmocrat]

12. It sounds incredibly beautiful.

Best wishes on your excellent adventure! :hi:

[FedUpWithIt All]

18. Thank you, femmocrat.

It really is. :)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=105&topic_id=8973670&mesg_id=8974276

[FedUpWithIt All]

17. Pictures!!!!

The views








The clearing

[hippywife]

20. Wow!

That is expansive and is going to be a lot of work to clear. As mentioned up-thread, a tractor might be a good idea but I would be more inclined to see if you can pay a neighbor to do it for you rather than invest in expensive equipment right off the bat. It will give you time to decide if you really are going to need it for the long haul.

I do hope the kids enjoy living out there. Have they expressed their opinions on it yet?

[FedUpWithIt All]

22. We found some used equipment that we could afford in a short amount of time.

We are pretty sure that the investment will be returned quite quickly. We are figuring it into our initial expenses.

We are not planning to do any heavy clearing until next spring. For now we will simply be moving loose material by hand. That will give us a better idea what we are dealing with under the growth and if we should invest in the machinery or not.

We have 4 kids. Three daughters between 10 and 16 and an infant son who will be 2 before next spring. The younger girls are quite happy. They have heard me talking about this eventuality for as long as they can remember. To them it is a grand adventure. They are also already used to living a lot lighter than many of their peers.

My oldest is torn. It is not about moving schools, the work, the obvious sacrifices. It is about a boyfriend. He is encouraging her to go because he is concerned about the future. The kids are quite exposed to environmental concerns at school and he is a big Discovery fan and as a result, a big 2012 believer. ;-)

My daughter said to me yesterday that this is her dream too and that she does not want to miss the building of it. I have given her the option of staying here with her father (they are pretty close) for the school year. We'll see. :shrug:

[Liberal_in_LA]

40. You own your own forest!

[FedUpWithIt All]

46. I worried we would get lost when we went up to look at it the first time.

:hi:

[Odin2005]

51. That is awesome!

:yourock:

[FedUpWithIt All]

57. Thanks Odin2005.

:hi:

[Liberal_in_LA]

27. congrats. That's a big hunk of land! I'm jealous

[FedUpWithIt All]

31. Thank you Libral_in_LA.

:hug:

I cannot WAIT to get started...:bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce: :bounce:

[elleng]

29. Just saw this!

For YOU!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/greathomesanddestinations/31away.html

[FedUpWithIt All]

32. Inspirational!!! Thank you. I bookmarked it for my family to read.

:hug:

It can be done. :D

[Stuart G]

34. Congratulations..

[FedUpWithIt All]

36. Thank you Stuart G.

:hi:

[Liberal_in_LA]

41. With that much land you must be planning something illegal. ;-)

Or something the freepers won't approve of. ;-) }(

[madeline_con]

37. Off the grid, man! YAY!

I'll bounce with you... :bounce:

[FedUpWithIt All]

43. Excellent.

:bounce: :bounce: :bounce:

We keep looking at each other and saying, "Oh, damn." and laughing. We are in for a long process.

[Call Me Wesley]

45. Congrats!

Light and happiness on your path to a simpler life! :hi:

[FedUpWithIt All]

47. Thank you Call Me Wesley.

:hi:

We can use all the light and happiness we can get. :)

[elleng]

48. This story somehow reminds me of you all!

Peace on His Golf Course

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/sports/golf/09powell.html?8dpc

[FedUpWithIt All]

49. elleng, you made me cry.

Thank you, that was beautiful. :hug:

[elleng]

50. And what you are doing is beautiful.

Daughter attends WVU in Morgantown, and I'm moving closer, so will think of y'all A LOT as I pass thru WV!

[Odin2005]

52. Congrats!

:bounce:

Advice: PM Bvar!!!

[FedUpWithIt All]

58. Yeah, what they have done is amazing. I always look forward to the garden porn threads.

Now we begin to set about packing and selling our "stuff". My least favorite part of this whole venture begins today. :scared:

[amerikat]

54. You are going to live my dream.

I wish I had done as a young man what you are doing now.
Good fortune to you and the family.

[FedUpWithIt All]

59. Thank you amerikat.

:hug:

The anxious part of all this for me is that this dream makes up so much of who i am at this point. I am walking blind now. I hope that the reality becomes as rich as the dream.

[MuseRider]

55. I am so glad I came in here to look around!

Congratulations to you! If you don't mind hard work in nasty weather part of the time then this is for you. I had this place for 15 years before we finally built on it and have lived here now for almost 2 years. We have never been happier. We work all the time but it is good and honest labor and it is so nice to sit back in the evening and know that the improvement you see was done by you. Big garden, you certainly have the space for it. I have been working 53 acres now for almost 17 years, 15 of those by myself. I have never been sorry. Enjoy it and the simpler life. Don't be scared, they took bets on me when I did it thinking I would not last a year. If I can do it alone you can do it. Hooray for you.

[FedUpWithIt All]

60. MuseRider, thank you.

"We have never been happier. We work all the time but it is good and honest labor and it is so nice to sit back in the evening and know that the improvement you see was done by you."

That is what i am counting on. Your an inspiration. :7

I know that we are happier working side by side. I know that we are happier without tv. I know we are happier when i make fresh meals from the garden. I know that we are happier when we build things. Now it is a matter of making these things a larger part of our lives.

While our family has been mostly supportive, i know they think we are certifiable. :rofl: It is wonderful to hear you are happy.

[MuseRider]

62. There are, of course, days....

like lately when I feel enslaved in either the garden or the kitchen but as I go on and on canning this and that I can see my kitchen fill up with things we grew from a fresh, new garden that will sustain us through out the winter and I love it. This year I am going to learn how to save and store my seeds for next year. Anyone need pickles? Bumper year for the cukes. I have resorted to dropping a few each day for the goats. Good crop this year too and that always helps. :)

We are not nearly as good as you are about this. We still have TV and we did not build our own house and while it is very green it is still way too big for my tastes but hubby loves it's size. Our kids are gone so this is what we do. We rarely have reason to leave the farm, the work is so rewarding that we don't feel like we need to do much else and we are way too tired to do much else anyway. :D

It sounds as if you have your hearts into it and that is really all you need. Our families thought the same but now they see how we are doing and they are pretty surprised and quite frankly so are we. We are hardly the type (something I hear often, type?) but we have learned.

I will look for you in the Rural and Gardening forums. I look forward to your progress reports. It is so fun.

[FedUpWithIt All]

63. Canning large quantities can do that to you.

Has the canned produce provided throughout the winter? That is what i am the most concerned about. Sufficient food storage. I want to build a cold smoke house and a fairly large solar dehydrator. I just learned, and was very happy about it, that turnips, beets and parsnips dehydrate well. Our freezer is bursting with them right now and i know that will not be feasible later.

Cucumbers...we were overwhelmed by them this year. Grew WAY TOO MANY.

Jars and jars like this...


They were delicious but you can only consume and give away so many. We did not want to can them as we knew we would be moving.

You do need to love what you are doing, especially when the work is long and trying. We so love the things we have already done to change our lives. So many things that are thought of as work, simply do not feel like work to us. I hope, beyond hope, that we find this to be true in our new incarnation. :)

[MuseRider]

65. First off

your little one is adorable! I just want to pick him up and squeeze him and listen to the lovely giggle of a child. I do so miss that. Also your other photos are so lovely, peaceful and lovely. Nice garden, very nice.

I have no idea how much it will take for us to make it through the winter but I am doing my best to see that we do! We planted another late crop of green beans and then added some pole beans and we are hoping to have them before it gets too cold for them.

I was thinking about trying to preserve the turnips, moles got our beets, by using parafin. I hate to buy them that way but if it works it works and it seems to work so I will try that. I have a very large crawl space filled with gravel that I am hoping to use like a root cellar. Carrots and potatoes and squash and the turnips will go in there. I guess this year, being our first real garden here on the farm, will tell me what I need to do.

It is a work of love and work that makes us feel good. So it may be work, sometimes very hard work, but it always feels so good that the hardness only makes it better.

[RushIsRot]

56. Mother Earth News pay attention.

[FedUpWithIt All]

64. I love that magazine.

:hi: