Lesson 1: Homesteaders are Always Busy because We have No Control

Time to Breathe

In the month since my last post things have really started to happen. We picked up our two good friends from the airport who will be staying (working) with us all summer, the notorious "excavator week" has come and gone and we have made immense progress raising the frame for our cabin. To say that we've been making moves would be an understatement. But, all that comes later. I have to first fill in all of my loyal readers (most of whom undoubtedly share my last name and know all this already) on those fateful first days and weeks on the property.

What we had to carry up to the campsite in the first few days

 So, as I said before, April 9th it all began. We had a plan for the next 2 weeks: camp. If we could do anything to our overgrown clearing or the future house site, that would be a bonus. "We must first build our home for the next 5 months, then we can focus on the next 5 years." We wanted something comfortable and weather-proof but also quick to put up. After all, the weather was only getting better, it'd be summer before we knew it, and we were there to build a cabin, not a camp. So, this is what we came up with:

It went up in 1 day, simple, protected from the rain and even had a wall on one side to shield us from what was sure to be the hot and glaring sun any day now. We also set up a tent just down the hill from camp. It would act as our bedroom until the cabin was built and move-in ready. Being for 6 people, it seemed terribly lavish. We were so used to sleeping in Felix's tiny, light-weight backpacking tent. Now, not only is our tent big enough to stand-up in but we fit a full-sized mattress and even a dresser. We're really living the life.

All was good for the next few days. We were setting things up. Unpacking. Felix built us a bathroom which was a highly sophisticated hole-in-the-ground-type. Meanwhile, I set up a nice cook-station where we have our 2-burner propane camping stove and worked on painting and filling a couple new-to-us dressers that we plucked off the roadside in New Haven, CT a week earlier. At this rate, we'd have electricity in 2 weeks and the cabin would be done by June.

Until...

Needless to say, this is the first time that we really learned Lesson 1. It was raining for the 2 days prior. I woke up in the middle of the night thinking "Wow, finally. Its so peaceful outside. Unglaublisch." Little did I know Felix was thinking the same thing in the wee hours of the morning. Foolish we were. The kind of peace we both heard that night can only be accomplished in the earliest hours of the morning and ONLY when there's snow on the ground. The tarp that we hung above our sleep tent collapsed from the weight. Our main tarp also ripped from the weight and let the snow blanket all of our belongings. Camp was ruined. Luckily, little serious damage was caused. Everything was, of course, frozen and as soon as the sun came out that day, defrosted and got moist. Toilet paper, blankets.. We spent that day building a new, weatherproof and indestructible camp. It was much bigger this time and we changed the orientation to instead welcome the few hours of afternoon sunlight.

Note the awesome circus-like tarp in the back that we use as a wall and the frame Felix build to give our camp a little structure

Kitchen

In the end, we only lost a day or day and a half because of the snow storm. And our camp is all the better for it. There was one more small collapse because of heavy rains but that was quickly amended by adding to the strength of our frame and creating a nice place for rainwater to flow off of the tarp. So, lesson learned.

That lesson, that homesteaders have no control, quickly became a theme for the next few weeks.The weather did not cooperate. Here's Felix warming his toes and me warming my butt by the mini-fire we built in the kitchen during a particularly cold and soggy day.

After we felt confident with camp, the projects continued. I worked on re-clearing our clearing. Its about an acre and will someday be our garden/orchard/chicken coop/whatever else.. Whoever did the initial clearing of the land about 7 or 8 years ago did a bad job, we soon discovered. There were piles of brush and logs (some as big as 12' long) everywhere. Some trees were fallen and forgotten about, just lying where they were cut. What could have been cords and cords of firewood or nice building logs were just left to rot. There were at least a dozen long and deep holes scattered throughout the clearing- the remnants from old perc tests, which are used to determine if that location would be a good site for a septic system. I slowly made a dent on that project while Felix took action building us a proper shower. While we lived in the yurt, we showered using water that we boiled on the wood stove and diluted down to give us an ideal temperature. Then, we poured it on ourselves or eachother while standing outside. Rustic but it worked and, really, is not as bad in the winter as you would think. His idea this time was to allow for us a little luxury. To use our faithful wood stove, one or 2 water barrels (the normal blue ones, food grade) and gravity to give us our own sustainable and free on-demand hot water system.

Before all this could happen, we needed water. We are blessed to have a feature on our land that we've been calling "the ravine." Its a low and moist spot just east of our future home-site. We've seen it in most of the seasons of the year and while it always holds its moisture, its far from a creek. In late summer you can just feel the dampness left behind by the snow and rain from months before. Initially, we'd pump the little bit of standing water left from the snow melt until we can dig a proper shallow well. That plan did not work out as anticipated. We have a pump but it just didnt have the horsepower to make it up the 45' of head from the ravine up to camp. By asking around in the community we found out that in Vernon, the neighboring town, there was a natural spring where many locals fill up on water, avoiding the highly chlorinated town water. We found a couple huge 275 gallon water tanks, called "tote tanks," for free on craigslist and our idea for unlimited water was born. We'd leave one tote tank near camp at all times. The other, lighter of the 2, we would load onto the truck when we needed water and bring it to the Vernon spring. We'd use our little gas-powered water pump to pump the water from a 5-gallon bucket (that we would bring and place under the running water) into the tote on the truck. Then, we'd drive back home, all the way up to camp, and pump from the full tote to the empty one. When the truck-tote was empty, we'd take it off the truck and Voila! We have lots of water at camp.

Transfer from one tank to the other

It works great and we've been using that system ever since.

Back to the Hot Water

Now, this was and still is Felix's baby. For a full description and many more pictures you have to go to his blog. You'll find the link on the right hand margin of my page. Yes, yes its in German. That doesn't mean you can't look at the pics! All I have to say about our hot water system is that is was the most frustrating and horrible thing we've done yet on our land but it is, by far, the most awesome. It took him weeks of planning, hours at the building supply store, and tons of learning curves to overcome. In the process of building us a warm shower, Felix taught himself how to solder (a skill he had never learned previously).

Basically, the system is as follows:
1. Pump water from our tote tanks into a smaller water tank that is raised in the air and sitting on a platform
2. Start a fire in the wood stove
3. Open the valve to a spigot that has been placed at the bottom of the small, elevated water tank
4. Gravity will allow the water to flow through a copper coil that is inside a piece of chimney pipe and then snake through 6 "ventilation-type holes" that were already part of our wood stove (see pics)
5. The water is warmed from its time passing through the wood stove in copper pipe
6. Stand in the super cute shower stall that Felix built and the water will flow out of the shower head above

Amazingly, the amount of copper pipe that the water flows through seems to be exactly long enough to create the perfect showering temperature. We had to play with the stove a bit to find the ideal conditions i.e. how much wood is in the fire box, how open the flues are, etc... In general, it takes about 2 or 3 minutes from the time that we start the fire until we begin to shower. It is truly the most impressive and awesome thing that I have ever seen Felix build. This one small creation has increased the quality of our lives 10 fold. And now, our old system of boiling water and mixing it was cold water, seems incredibly inefficient in comparison.

Shower stall with platform for water tank

In the end, the copper snakes through all of the holes

 

Final product

Basic Needs

That's where we stand now. Our basic needs are met. We have a dry and stable camp to hang out in, a roomy and comfortable place to sleep, a semi-easy way to get unlimited amounts of water whenever we need it and, finally, a nice warm shower whenever we feel like it. In the end, those 2 weeks turned into 4. I was able to get done a fair amount in the clearing. Next time, I'll share some photos of that. Beside all that I mentioned, we also made a lot of progress preparing our cabin site. We cut down the trees that were standing directly on or immediately next to the cabin's pad, the site where the cabin will actually sit on top of; Its footprint. We (I) moved a lot of brush into 2 huge piles in the clearing, just waiting for a good opportunity to have a big fire.

We were now ready for visitors. Next post.. our German friends arrive, changing camp life and doubling our manpower, our journey toward electricity, and the infamous excavator week which challenged us in such a hardcore way but allowed us to make more progress than ever imagined.

Lots of love,
Becky

Our 1st big brush fire - a noteworthy event for every homesteader

  

The Beginning of the Beginning

Here we are. At the beginning. It took 26 years, 6 spent in higher education, 11 moves (of which 3 were cross-country and 1 was international), countless love-interests, and many precious friends, pets, tents, and cars... Where am I exactly? Deliberately unemployed, married, and sleeping, cooking, showering, and using the bathroom outside on a 13.5 acre piece of Southern Vermont's beautiful mixed-woods forest. In the posts that will hopefully follow, I want to paint a picture of how we are going about carving out our own little existence in the way that we have always dreamed. Partly I hope to write this all down so that when we go to do it again for ourselves or friends, reminisce, reflect on our mistakes, whatever... i'll have a good solid platform to work from. I dont want to forget the details. I also hope to share with the world how easily it can be done. I have met so many people with the same dream as mine- to live in harmony with the natural environment, grow a ton of your own food, build your own house,  not have to work 40 hours a week for the next 40 years- and Im here to say that the hardest part (as far as I know, so far) is deciding to actually do it. First, here's some background to the story that will follow. I promise my posts after this one will be less words and more photos.

The back-story

I grew up in Connecticut with what I can only call a "priviledged" childhood. I had, and still have, parents and a sister who love and support me no matter how many phone calls they get with me saying, "I have news. Im moving here or doing this ridiculous thing.. next week." I went to a private, Catholic, all-girls (yes, really) high school that accomplished two things: It got me ready for college and made me realize that I found my spirituality outside of the Church. Come time to choose a college, I was more than ready for a different scene so I chose New Hampshire. I studied Math and Physics but, really, was more focused on friends and my new-found interests in sustainability, environmental activism, and my role in it all to care about much else. I spent a year living in NH post-graduation until finally deciding to move west, with my best friend, to Oregon. Whether we got into the grad school program that we both applied to or not, we were going! I had always been a teacher-of-sorts and worked in many diverse teaching environments but nothing that I really wanted to do long-term. Luckily, we both got in and became members of the new cohort in Portland State's Leadership for Sustainability Education M.S. program. A total life-changer! This is what Id always been looking for but couldn't quite put into words. A field of study that combined my environmental "stuff" with my teaching "stuff" and even focused on other things like the importance of community and ecological design (i.e. Permaculture which quickly became one of my #1 interests). And, since my story is really a joint story, this is when and where I met my husband.

He was a German citizen freshly in the US and happened to be traveling through Oregon at the time, the tail end of his 4 year around-the-world trip. I had walking pneumonia. After weeks of bed rest, the aforementioned best friend dragged me out for "just an hour."  We met and he spent the remainder of his 3 month tourist visa getting to know me, in Portland. From the beginning it was clear that we shared the same values, interests, and most importantly, goals for the future. Felix is an amateur builder whose exuberance and eagerness to learn new things is beautifully mind-boggling. We quickly recognized that we found something special in eachother and that's what made the next year and a half of Germany-Canada-US trips (he lived in Canada and Germany during that time) so hard. Enough was enough and my family got another one of those calls. Were were getting married.. next week. From the beginning, we knew that we were going to try to be homesteaders. He'd be the builder; I'd be the gardener.  Before we were even married, even thinking of marriage, we were looking at land for sale. We viewed buying land as a first step toward our goals (which ill explain in greater detail later). At first, we had a broad scope. We weren't sure where to buy the land, for how much, or with who. For a long time I planned on doing all this with my best friend. When it became clear that Felix and I were antsy to come back east and she was still loving the west, we had to put our joint plans on hold. For now, she knows she always has a spot to land in Vermont and I hope, selfishly, that she'll return back east one day.

Anyway.. I will always look back on the land hunting process with love but it was not pretty. We lived for a year in a yurt on the land of some close homesteading friends. It was a great glimpse into our future and we literally spent every spare minute trekking around the forests of NY, NH, VT, MA, even Virginia and North Carolina. Felix is a social butterfly who needed to be biking distance to some sort of small town. I am the quintessential Waldkind (forest child) who needed to feel completely surrounded by trees and have enough open/semi-flat space for a super awesome garden. Those became our greatest priorities. Also, we wanted to build our own earthen house. And soon. When we found out many of Vermonts counties had no zoning or building codes, it was a done deal. Not that we want to build recklessly or take shortcuts, but both Felix and I feel stifled (Issues? Maybe.) by all the rules and regulations that homeowners and homesteaders have. We both feel that Vermont is truly the "free-est" state in the country and we feel comfortable putting down roots here because of that. After probably 50 different properties, we officially narrowed our search down to the southeaster corner of the state. We spent the summer in Germany and, thanks to my parents, continued our land hunt by spotting good properties on-line, forwarding them the details, and then they would take a trip up to VT and look at 4 or 5 at a time. Our land in Guilford, only 4 miles from downtown Brattleboro (with a population of only 12,00 but still the metropolitan hub of southern-VT), was one of those. Before even steeping foot on the land, we were afraid it would go by the time we would be home in September 2013, we made an offer. Long story short, we were left disheartened and frustrated with the sellers and their realtor and without a property. They were hard to communicate with, conveniently decided to leave out some details, and refused to negotiate. All of this is not illegal but we did loose some respect for the world during that process. After much consideration, Felix and I decided that we absolutely can not let this amazing piece of land go. It was, in fact, in our budget (although at the high end), it fulfilled my need for the forest and Felix's need for an occasional party-night, and even had an over-grown clearing on the land to get us started. We'd take it!

No going back

So, in mid-November, we were officially land-owners. We were spending the winter in Oklahoma and Canada because Felix had a great work opportunity. When we got the final news from the lawyer we hired to do the closing, we were already so far out of our element that it felt like it could not possibly be real. In the weeks before we had, with the immense help of our fabulous lawyer (seriously, never changing his price even after we found out all these things went wrong) found out there were massive complications with the deed and they had to rework all the paperwork in order for us to get title insurance. We could not now really be land-owners. We could not really have a place to land, finally, after years of being nomads/travelers/couch-surfers/hooligans. But it was true. So we waited out the long winter mostly in Canada working to save up as much money as we could. In the spring, we'd have the time and finances to build our little cabin and begin what is sure to be a wild ride. 

April 9th - day 1 of forever. For the first night ever, we tiredly set up our tent not worried about being woken up at 6am by a man threatening to call the cops if we don't leave his land. In the morning we'd unpack the overflowing pick-up truck that we borrowed from my dad. But for tonight, we'll make a fire and try to let reality sink in.  We're home now.

Post Script

This is my first blog post ever. I am by no means a writer and I don't assume that people find my life all that interesting. I welcome, with open arms, the feedback from whoever happens to read this. What would you like to hear more about? Maybe I focused too much on one thing or the other.. please let me know! And, again, I hope that future blog posts will get down more to the nitty-gritty stuff. I will be focusing on the building of our straw bale cabin, the changes that we make to the land, interesting methods/tools that can be useful to the average homesteader, the gardens/landscaping, and, finally, how we, as humans, are feeling about all of this and how its affecting the way we feel we fit into the world.

Love and Grüße aus Vermont!