Anyone want some trees??

The pic in the first blog was taken during our 'winter'. It isn't much of a winter, but it's enough to drop the leaves from hardwood trees. It isn't winter any longer. At this point it's past 'summer' and we're in our 'too hot to die' period. The trees obviously love it.

When I told mom and dad they are gonna be in the woods, I wasn't kidding.

The second pic is my 'pasture' lol. At the moment I'm sort of glad that it will be late fall/early winter before we ever get around to worrying about it, let alone clearing it.



The above pic is a 'before' shot of where our tiny little house will be. The bottom two are 'after' shots. When I say 'tiny', I mean tiny. I've managed to fit a kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and an eight foot desk into a 14 x 17 foot building. I'll get a pic of the floor plans up shortly.

We initially had planned to build the guest cottage and live in it while we build the rest, but because of the time crunch opted for something a bit quicker. This will be a cement block, tin roof, solar hot water cabin. It will still be a guest cabin, but it will be in addition to the cordwood cabin.

IF ~ and that's an ornery if ~ we can find a concrete supplier to pour the slab for something under a gazillion dollars (or prove that their cement has gold in it) our home should be up in a week.

Once the roof is on we're building pens pretty much all around it. Two dog runs, a cat house, and a chicken run ~ along with a fenced area for the other two dogs. Some of you have met my dogs (and the cats). I love my critters, but I don't know if I love them enough to let them live very long if I have to try and fit all of them into 238 square feet of living space lol. To be honest, I'm not sure if even the dogs love me enough to share that space with two humans ...

We've been rooting through our stash and except for a few of the cement blocks and a shower faucet we've got everything we need. We've managed to scrounge most of the blocks and hopefully the last few will be at the same price (free!!). If not, the entire cost of this will still be ridiculously low. That suits us just fine.

Tomorrow I'll tell you about paper kitchens and wooden toilets ...