Living the Simple Life

Building and planning a homestead, the journey continues.....

I was once told that a true test of a marriage is building a house together, and while I don’t think out marriage was ever in any big trouble building our home out here it was truly a test of patience. We both had our ideas of what we wanted in a home and we tried to mesh our ideas together but as the plans stated getting drawn we both got caught up in what I call cabin sprawl and we ended up with a larger version of the house we had envisioned. We knew we wanted a finished basement, complete with a kitchen, bedroom, bathroom and living area, the original idea was so that when my dad got older we would be able to take care of him here at home. Things never seem to turn out the way you think they will and we never thought dad would be gone so quickly and that our daughter would be married and have a child and a home of her home so quickly either. So here we are with 4 bedrooms, 2 full baths, 2 complete kitchens, a formal living room on the main floor and a family room in the basement, an office area, laundry room, sun porch and a prep/ safe room for 2 people. I love my home but there are several lessons we have learned along the way, the first being don’t let is get to big!

 We also knew as we were planning out home that we wanted to have more than one way to heat and power our home, even though we had lived in town we had be subject to power outages from severe storms that had lasted for a few days at a time. We wanted to have the means to run our home without being dependant on the power company. So solar power was one thing that we both knew we wanted to invest in. It takes a chunk of money to get started but if you have the money do it. Our highest power bill we have had since moving out her has been $52.00. I must admit I don’t understand all of the complicated working of our system but my husband does and it took some getting used to but it has been worth the investment. You have to take the time to turn off power strips and watch your consumption and learning about phantom loads was an education all unto its self.  It is a good feeling to know that come what may we will have electricity and heat.

Heating was another basic necessity we wanted to have more than one way to provide for our needs our.  LP gas is expensive and it seems to be getting more and more expensive as time goes by. My husband is a HVAC technician so his knowledge of different systems helped us figure out the best ways for us to use to heat our home. We heat with corn stoves, one on each level of the house when it is not to terribly cold, lows in the 20’s and highs in the 40‘s or so and when it gets colder than that we heat with an outside wood burner. We did have a traditional forced air LP furnace installed but we have only actually used it a handful of times in the two years we have been here and that was when we were going to be gone for extended periods of time. Some folk’s think we have gone to far in planning our homestead but we feel secure and safe here….. More later the journey continues!

Preparedness, when properly pursued, is a way of life, not a sudden, spectacular program. -- Spencer W. Kimball, 1976