Arrival

We’re here. Here being New England. Currently staying with my mother-in-law while we work on figuring out the logistics of getting ourselves onto our property.

A while ago we sold the airstream we purchased in FL (didn’t even make it long enough to have its own blog post, I don’t think). It was a project in and of itself and while we have a wood stove that we purchased from The Windy Smithy and had shipped over from England for that purpose, it would still be living in a tin can without running water all winter. I am arguing strongly for a temporary solution that works as well as a semi-permanent one, mostly because I have looked at and read enough blogs, posts, and books about old houses to know that whatever timeline you think you’re on to fix up and old house, you may as well double or possibly triple it. I also feel having some indoor space for people to move around in is important, because while I fully intend to get out and spend time in the cold weather, it’s also nice to be able to turn around in a circle or put out a yoga mat if it’s below freezing outside and move your muscles while spending time in, or stuck, indoors, whichever it is.

We may start with a large workshop and rough it until we get things finished out to a more livable state. I looked at both New England Outdoor and Reed’s Ferry who are local builders of sheds, garages, etc. who prebuild the walls and can “throw them up” within a few hours or days time depending on the size. They’re stick built (2 by dimensional lumber) and not timber framed, which would be my first choice, but we’re trying to save money so that the majority of it goes into the house, not the temporary house. New England Outdoor has a wider range of size options, and we figure 16×26 is a good size for usable space – workshop or living depending on its end use. The quality looks good to my fairly untrained eye and they also have pretty excellent reviews, so my confidence is mostly there, it’s just a matter of getting things to line up and get it done before Winter.

We talked about possibly doing a garage, since a garage is eminently useful when we’ll be living in a climate with an average snowfall of 68″ per year, however, the difference in cost is significant and thus the savings in not doing this now will help towards the end goal. A garage is still probably a good goal for later, but maybe after we’re occupying the property and have a better idea of the cost breakdown for certain needed items of repair (of which there are plenty).

So far, we met with a forester (who grew up in the town where our house is) to come up with a plan so that we can coordinate clearing space around the house for agricultural goals (garden, orchard, future animals) and house needs (new septic, possibly future geothermal?) along with thinning some of the back woods to offset some of the cost of clearing. Harvesting wood on a larger scale, aside from cutting down a few trees for firewood each year, is something that really will only happen once, maybe twice within someone’s lifetime on a property, and we’re not interested in clearcutting our woods at any point so it’s best if the clearcutting and the thinning happens at the same time, so that the cost is balanced for us and so that the machinery only has to arrive one time. The land around the house has young and poorer quality trees since it was previously farmland, so it’s also the best candidate for this use again. It’s relatively level and we have a pretty clear stopping point once we get back in the woods and get to the area where the snowmelt runs through in a small gully seasonally.

I’ve already preordered a potentially stupid amount of garlic for the fall (can one really have too much garlic though?) and definitely more new seeds than I can plant in even a few seasons, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from my experience gardening, it’s that you should overplant and experiment and see what happens and this is easiest done when you have an excess of seeds to grow. Plus, I like having an excuse to share. I’m sure they happen, but I haven’t seen many seed or plant exchanges in the NH gardening group I’m in so maybe I’ll have to host one and get it going. Might be a good way to meet the local plant nerds and get some cuttings of plants I can’t justify buying at this present moment (peonies, anyone?).

I’m happy to be here. I feel somewhat in limbo and kind of like I’m just here on another work trip since our things are still mostly in storage and we’re living out of suitcases, but this is part of the experience, and while it’s going to be wild and crazy work, I have enjoyed the process so far and look forward to really getting stuck in.

Heading up tomorrow morning sans kiddo to get some basic tasks done and talk to our timber framer about what he thinks he can/should work on next. Cheers to progress!