Landed Gentry

Well, one goal of all the frugality was to buy land...where upon I could live "simply."
I just bought land (check).  And now for the living simply.  

It's all seeming a tad complicated at the moment.

I've got 36 acres.  Basically bare.  There is a constructed pond of dubious quality, but it does have water in it.   There is a creek.  Near the road so I'm not drinking out of it.   The next step is figuring out what I need and want to do, to have, to live in, etc.

Do I get a well drilled?  I think so.
What do I live in?  Well...and underground house would be nice but drainage, soil type, depth of bedrock (I'm not up for blasting in bedrock), etc.     Once I pick a house type, were do I put it?  The flat bit by the road is well...RIGHT BY THE ROAD and soaking wet part of the year so not there.  I do think I'll put a garage/shed there so when it's crap out, I can snow shoe to the house rather than spend a lifetime shoveling or working to afford some mechanical device to clear the drive.

The place is mostly hills so I'm going to be getting in shape one way or another.


Here's an aerial photo of the land:

I added the yellow bit all by myself.  That's not the exact boundary.  Parabolas are not normal boundaries in this country.   The dark blot at the top is the pond.   You can sort of make out the three hills or at least the two gulches dividing the hills.    It has been in hay and you can just make out the tractor near the tight circle in the lower middle of the picture.  Well, you can if you see it zoomed in on google.

The middle hill melts first, is not so far from the driveway, and has good south and east exposure and some shelter from the north and west, which are the windy sides.   So I'm thinking of that as my first try for a housing site.

Jonny (HI JONNY) will be here next weekend and he's an architect and sh*t so he can tell me what to do and I can do it and it will be all his fault if I don't like it.


I'm going to keep trying to do this without debt (hear me knocking on wood?).  Let's hope I can handle that.

I decided that a first and easy step is to sort through my stuff, it's winter after all and I'm not moving to bare land in the winter (weak).   I'm going to try to cull back to 50%.  I got rid of about 1/3 of my crap last year so this is the second cull.  I've pretty much burned out my shredder since Jan. 1.   Reduced 7 file boxes down to 3 half filled boxes.   Old paperwork can be culled again.   Then photos and books.

Then furniture and kitchen items.  I'll probably end up with things in storage for a year or two until I can build something with a fairly stable interior temperature and weather proof.  I see a trailer in my future...or a shanty.  Something CHEAP to live in until I can get a house built.  It could take a few years.   I'm going SMALL since that is more cost effective in both the short term and the long term.  As much passive solar as I can get and as much earth sheltering as I can get.  A root cellar rarely freezes.  Not freezing is good.

If I can swing it, a summer kitchen would be great.   Maybe a summer kitchen with attached shower room to start with.  I could live in that.  We'll discuss potty options after I've read the county regs more thoroughly.

Wish me luck!