April 7th, 2022 The Last Nail

Our first homesite plan.
It mostly failed.

There's a saying I like to use. Happiness comes of pride, pride comes of achievement.  Today I feel like we achieved something great and, filled with pride, I am a very happy man. 

Our newly built home.

We put the last nail into the structure of our Farmhouse today, completing its intended shape and function.  The details I will write about today are the broad strokes of out home's design and construction, what we were trying to build when we had nothing but empty dirt. 

This building project started in 2015 when I  Photoshop-ped a Google map image while playing around with possible farm layout. (The picture is at the top.)  The site planning went through ten, or so, reconsiderations before we ran into reality and had to site the house in a different place. 

This is the actual home
site plan we used.

In the early site plans, our intention was to make the Farmhouse look as small as we could. We wanted to hide the house by siting it in a back corner. In the end we were not allowed to build where we desired, so the home site was move to where it would be agreeable. This brought a complete change in how we saw the house project because once we had a home site we hired a nice architect named Eric to give us signed drawings.  Eric was worth most of the money we paid. He put fresh eyes on our  design ideas and made our plans work better within the space we had. Some of my early ideas were used, but the idea to re-orient the house along it's long axis presented the house as large and the central object central of the Farm.  

We loved the design Eric came up with and secured an engineer to provide structural details. Neither of these sets of drawings gave any guidance as to building the house, so we made some minor changes to the plans as we built it. Most of  our changes, or interpretations, were about being efficient with money. We used many used parts in furnishing the house. The bath tub, bath sink, cabinets, and doors  were all re-used from other houses. Where we couldn't re-use parts, we made decisions on a cost/benefit basis. All of our plumbing and electrical installations were done to minimize energy and water use and  also be well lit and heated.  Shopping for things we would find useful became a habit. 

This is my original design.
Eric made it work.

The house plan was fairly simple. Since our intention was to open our Farm up to the public, later on, we designed the house to look like a farmhouse might. The main design element in making this appearance was a wrap-around porch where we placed the last nail today. The porch we finished added 750 square feet to the footprint of the house, but also cuts cooling costs and decreases road noise. As we made the many thousands of decisions we added a seven foot ceiling and solid floor in the attic space adding a full 425 of highly usable storage space.  The entire useable floor space of our 1000 square foot house, is 1925 feet. 

This is what we built.
We adjusted it a bit.

Having never built an entire house, but having a great deal of experience in the building trades, we spent a time avoiding, and making up for, mistakes. The County's building inspectors chipped in quite a bit and gave us enough guidance to piece the whole thing together successfully. We had to come up with some idea of how the structure would go together, designed and built an entire water and waste system, then learned how to make a safe and effective electrical system.  Buying materials, learning how to pour a concrete foundation, and piecing a million things together only brought us to a point where we could decide how to finish the house inside and out. A million decisions, all well considered, mostly correct, brought us to today. 

Though we still have a long list of things we need to do before the County signs off on our permit, the broad strokes are done.  

Our last nail is figurative and not literal. But the shape of our home, and the pride of place feeling it gives us seems complete.

February 6th, 2022 A Quick Update

 Though quite a bit has happened since my Christmas post there hasn't been so much that I felt the need to post an update. But time flies. So here are the few good things that have happened since Christmas. 

In my last post we had moved into the new Farmhouse and Jackson moved into the tiny home.  Since then we have finished the kitchen cabinets and counter-tops. The cabinets all needed to be painted but we had primed them in white prior to moving them into place. Once they were all put together I painted them all and put knobs on all of the drawers and doors. The knobs we used had been sitting in a bag of knobs I had collected throughout the thirty years I worked in home renovations. I don't know why I toted that bag through four house moves, but the fact they are now in the new Farmhouse makes it seem worth it. Ann simply loves her new kitchen and has not spent much time out of it since we got it finished.

The new bathroom seemed so luxurious when compared with the tiny home. The water heater is ten times the size and we really appreciated the long showers it gave, but waiting for hot water to reach the bathroom, from the pantry, was about eight minutes. We had planned for this with the intention of putting a secondary tankless electric water heater in the linen closet in the bathroom, so when the time was available I put one in. Now the hot water is quick on the draw and when the hot water does reach the bathroom from the pantry the new tankless heater shuts down to save money. 

Ann got our exterior lights installed a few weeks ago. They compliment the electric candles in the upper windows and will eventually light the space under the wrap around porch we'll build in the next few weeks. The outside of the house is very well lit, but the picture my phone takes of it makes the house seem overly bright. It isn't. The house looks spectacular from Sell Road and Highway 26, looking so much bigger than it really is. This was all to plan, we did everything we could to make this little farmhouse look very large. People often think this is a two story house of about two0thousand feet. It is only one thousand feet and only one floor.

Every house has some things that show up only after beginning to use the space. One place needing attention is the big room heating. The bedroom section of the house is very well heated, but the big room stays a bit cool most of the time. Our really huge ceiling fan wasn't working when I installed it and I found a bad wire nut at the wall switch. This solved the problem with the fan working but showed us another -We didn't put in a furnace to heat the house, using underfloor heating instead. We did it this way to save energy. The plan was for the ceiling fan to moderate the heat and bring warmth back down from the high ceiling. But in the cold of Winter the heat wasn't sufficient and the fan only cooled things down a bit too much. We had a plan in place to put an auxiliary electric heater, but haven't got it done yet. The weather has warmed a bit and the heating system we have is sufficient so long as we don't turn the fan on. We'll figure it out before next Winter.

Other than a few things: painting the laundry room and putting in some Craig's List cabinets; hanging the many dozens of pictures we had packed away in the shipping container; putting up closet rods and bringing our clothing in from storage; etc; . . . All of these have combined to make us walk around enjoying the new house more every day. There are still a few things needing done, but things are in motion.

I ordered part of the wood for the new wrap-around porch last Friday. Our permit extension is likely to time-out before it is built so we are likely going to apply for another extension to give us some time. We still have a lot of little stuff to do before the final inspection so a bit more time will ease things a bit. We are coming into the busy season.

One of our girl dogs, Laffee Taffee, is having a litter in March. Since we couldn't put the new kennel in place before then we are building temporary accommodations in the Pantry of the new house. She will be comfortable there and we will work hard to keep the new house from becoming dog worn. 

I have begun making dog coats for sale and have a good pattern which I came up with after a few less than perfect attempts. The new coats fit Basset Hounds very well, can be washed in the machine over and over, and so far haven't had much go wrong, so I'm confident enough to let them go out to people needing them. It's not certain that our coats will be a success on the market, but our dogs love them.

We bought ten new Orpington chicks to replenish our flock. We have done this every year because we lose them to cold or other causes and occasionally have given older hens which have decreased egging. This time we bought Lavender Orpington chick, which are slightly purple, to set them off from the buff colored hens we have been raising for four years. The idea is, and always was, to cull our own hens and put the meat in the freezer, but we've never been able to tell how old they are with certainty so buying a different color every year will tell us when the cross into the third year and are ready for the soup pot.

The Farm is nearing Spring, so soon we will begin tilling to prepare the soil for planting. We brought in many yards of hardwood leaves to begin turning the Farm into a no-tilling concept  and these pile will be mulched enough to till into the soils we have. This ought to be a pretty good year and we have begun buying seed for April planting. 

Much more to do. So much has been done. 

December 25th, 2021 Doing the Impossible: Christmas in the Impossible New Farmhouse

  

I'll try to be brief . . .

This post is a retrospective on Creekside Farm since its beginnings. The sort of thing I like to do when we hit a major milestone. Finding the property was one such posting and I included all that had gone before it in that post.  Another such opportunity to read an abridged version of that story was in Redefining the Plan. Plans changed when the former plans stopped making sense.  When we Moved from the City and into the tiny home cabin I wrote the story again. There may have been a few more moment when reflection seemed a good idea, but the point stands that occasionally the story needs retold and refined. 

This post is another brief restating of our experiences here since we began. I cannot possibly write the whole story in a simple post so I'll keep the details simple. You can read this entire story using the links of our blog's Histories section (to the right of this). 

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In the beginning . . .

Ann and I went to Las Vegas to have a second wedding. 

Our slate of life goals had been achieved and we needed a plan for the second half of our lives. So we took long driving trip to decide what and where we wanted to be when we retired. It took four days to decide on a direction, landing on the idea that owning a wedding venue would be a happy business (and one that we might be able to do). Soon after we decided that a farm themed venue sounded the most achievable so we began making what would some day be called The Plan. 

We were actually planning to do the impossible. We needed a two million dollar farm themed wedding venue to grow from a dead standing start and nearly no cash to begin the project. 

To fund our initial efforts we decided to leverage our experience in dog breeding. The idea at this point was to use small chunks of available cash (to buy dogs) to make medium sized chunks of cash (from raising puppies), then use the medium chunks of cash to buy a Farm (with a house and barn). We bought some dogs and got started right away. But things didn't go as planned -a continuing theme for the bigger project . . . 

Early on in our search for a farm it became apparent that any property suitable for our early plans was going to be financially out of reach. Any farm with ten acres, a house, and a barn, was going to be too expensive to move forward in anything but a fully fledged farming business and we didn't have that sort of experience. So we began looking for a "stepping stone" farm. 

It took some wildly optimistic searching but eventually we found a derelict piece of abandoned land, with dubious ownership, under tax foreclosure, without a house, and having no barn, that might become a "stepping stone" toward buying a bigger place. 

The idea of a "stepping stone" farm seemed one possible way to get to where we wished to go, while learning how to farm while we built up enough money to buy what we needed. Though seemingly impossible to do, we found a place and bought it on owner contract. For our next impossible trick we somehow found a way to pay off the tax lien. The project could then begin in earnest and we began to clear away the trash. Simply finding land suitable for homesteading was just one of the impossible hurdles we would need to jump over. It took a year to clear the trash. We still needed to develop the empty lot into a farm, build a house, and the project was just getting started. 

We had decided early on in The Plan to buy some land and leverage a combination of the land value and the equity our house (in town) to get a building loan and develop the Farm quickly. But following the Real Estate Crash of 2007-8 the banks had decided only to fund larger development projects and small building loans were not being made to single family developments. So we changed the plan once more. 

Deciding the best way to move forward we built a tiny home to live in while we built a Farmhouse. It took almost a year to build our temporary tiny home and the entire story of that period can be found in the Histories section of the BLOG. We moved the tiny home to the farm under cover of darkness, no knowing if it would survive the trip to the Farm (which at that point was simply a piece of cleared land). And once we were settled in we began remodeling our house in town so that we could get top dollar for it. We sold the house quickly and began our Farm building efforts in earnest. But things took a lot longer that we thought they should.

It took two years to get the required architectural and engineering drawings and secure the necessary permits so that we could go ahead with building the Farmhouse.  We made many mis-steps and a few minor changes, but we actually achieved the impossible this year and moved into the new Farmhouse three days ago. Our Plan contained many points where failure might become an issue and stop us from doing as we wished.  But the Plan also had many points where failure could become a success. The Farmhouse completion was one such point in the plan.

Step one of the larger Plan was always to build a house because if we completed a house the Farm would become a  residence and not a simple plot of somewhat valuable land to home buyers who are looking for a two acre plot with a house. In the larger scheme, building a house creates a safe stopping point. So, our moving into the Farmhouse three days ago is a significant step forward that allows us to move the project forward much more readily. If we never make the next part of the plan a reality, our investment is fairly safe and the return significant enough to think things through into a change in our Plan.

Bearing in mind that Creekside Farm was, at first, intended only to be a stepping stone farm; something that we would build up and sell, so that we might buy a property more suited to our ultimate goals. We have been planning since we found the land to continue with our initial plan here on this Farm, but most things have their own dynamic. It may or may not be possible to do what we wish to do. It may be actually impossible to complete our bigger plans here. In the case of our Farm, the future of the Farm may be two (or more) things at once. We may become a farm which makes enough money to continue; The Farm might become another family's residence (if we decide to move our plans where they might come to fruition); The Farm might continue to grow into the complicated plan containing hospitality and wedding venues we dreamed up eight years ago. The end is still not certain.

But building our House (with our own hands), buying our Farm, both from a dead stand-still, with no cash on hand, both of these were mere possibilities most people would simply not begin with. Both would had seemed impractical or impossible, depending on your personal optimism. We once said we were rolling the dice with all of our future on the line.

Only time will tell how things will work out. But if you've been following our progress so far, you will know that we have done the impossible more often than not. 

December 18th, 2021 Our Christmas Letter

 

November 26th, 2021 Thanksgiving

 Thanksgiving at Creekside Farm is a simple thing. We sit for dinner, as most do, and contemplate our good fortunes. This post will be a retrospective on our year and not a recounting of the month as is usual. Occasionally I like to recount an entire history of the Farm and this is a possibility as I begin to write, but I will try to be brief and keep things relatively on point. To this end I must say the generally this year has been very good to us, but not without a some spill over of drama from outside, both good and bad. We began the year with our world in a pandemic lockdown, a newly elected President, a horrific  revolt against the government.

Our world seemed in turmoil and I wondered how far Trump, the traitorous ex-president, would take it. I wondered how much war I make at my age. But things never went that far. Political things have slackened off, but not without qualifications, which I will not go into since it really is not Farm related. 

The year has been a financial success even though Farm production was not really involved. We had two litters of Basset pups, both litters sold within days of birth and all of the new parents are ecstatic with their new fur babies. The financial gains from these two litters allowed bills to be paid, but there was other income as well. We decided to take our Social Security retirement at sixty-two because the numbers were right and full retirement had been raised to sixty-seven. And there were a number of large chunks of cash, doled out by the government, intended to stimulate the economy and assuage the negatives of the pandemic. We had a barrel of cash when moving to the Farm three years ago, but our long ranged planning included income to keep things level. The year brought us good fortune and we became self sufficient this year. But our long ranged planning requires farm production income to succeed and we made some large moves in that direction this year.

Since we are not yet settled on the sort of farming we will do in order to be successful farmers, but not knowing what this means in action, we continued to experiment with the sorts of plans and practices that might make our farm work successfully. As this past year began we continued to work withing the bounds conventional organic farm practices. Tilling the soil,  making compost, bringing compost in, and pushing the dirt into rows before planting seeds and starts, all seemed the right way to do things. And we had some success, but it was our crop of peppers that proved the only worthwhile thing we did. Once more we didn't reach the point where we could open a roadside produce stand or take things to a Farmer's Market, so we took what we did grow to local food banks.  In July we decided to get some outside advice to move things forward.

A nice woman from the USDA came out to survey our farm and discuss USDA subsidies to build infrastructure. She gave us some wonderful advice and described how we might go about things, but none of this advice seemed right for the level of development we have. One of the things that came of this visit was an invitation for Ann to go to a class on cover cropping in the off season. I had been spending some time learning how to make good compost, but reading a book Ann received at this class opened some new possibilities to explore. In the end we decided to begin building a "no-till" farm and this led into procuring hundreds of yards of hardwood leaves to make into leaf compost, leaf mulch, and leaf mold. The Farm looks a bit of a mess today because hauling the leaves around is a messy and muddy affair. And I won't go into how these things work together to make soil until it works, or does not, but the system sounds about right and we look forward to our attempt at farming in the coming year. Farming is the second business we had planned, the first being our dog breeding business as described above. So, while we are able to stay on the Farm even without farm income, production of sellable farm produce is our chief concern, second only to finishing the farmhouse in immediate importance.

We have nearly finished the Farmhouse we began to build two years ago. At the beginning of the year we had raised the frame, put a temporary roof and siding on, and wrapped the whole place in a weather resistant layer. During the year we wired, insulated, and finished the interior walls. We also put the exterior siding and finished the roof. There is still the exterior porch to build and the exterior of the house still needs painted, but plans are in place and we hope to get all but the painting done in Winter. We will move from our tiny home to the new Farmhouse in the next few weeks and celebrate Christmas in warmth there. One thing we are very thankful for is a long hot shower, but there was much more that happened, and did not happen, this past year. Things are generally going forward fairly well. Objects will come up to block our plans, but as in the past we will find a way around whatever we find. The Farm has a schedule which our careful plans fit into, but only in a general way. 

In the coming year we will attempt once more to make a profit on farm produce, finish the house, birth two more litters, move our new kennel into place, and begin producing things to sell in service of our long termed goals. All of these plans will be guided by the weather and the world's need for what we can make of the gifts we have and we look forward to finding out how we did when Thanksgiving comes around once more. But this past year showed us much and gave us much more than we expected, even if less than we hoped for. The thanks we give is for the help we received in making our plans work and not to plans that failed. We have had, now have, and will have, much to be thankful for as time marched forward.