Today was a very productive day on the land. My cousin Mike and my Uncle Larry, both of whom are very familiar with campers and RVs, came to help us set up the camper. Mike, who has his own home restoration company, is likely going to be our contractor when we build the yurt. He pulled the camper from the home of its former owner and we found the right place for it on the new land. His wonderful wife, Cindy, and their three awesome blond daughters all came along. There were five girls, age 3-13, mine included,romping all over the land.

The best thing that happened today is that we found what appears to be a perfectly good septic tank!! Woo-hoo! Shit happens! That will save us thousands of dollars. The last picture above, although barely visible, is the top of the tank.

I'm looking forward to getting some sod around the camper for a start. Eventually, we'll have luscious Zoysia grass and terraced rock walls and beautiful flower borders. But--for now, some sod around the camper would be nice.

We also put up the mailbox. It's a sweet one that Greg's grandfather made years ago. It's ornamental iron, which has been the family business for years. It's got a cute little squirrel on it. We plan to paint it purple or blue or both, keeping the squirrel brown. It was psychologically very satisfying to get the mailbox set up. Made us feel for real about the land.

Our electrician finished his work yesterday, so that's ready to go.

Greg and I have both been coping with occasional freak-out moments where we wonder what on earth we're doing. It happens usually when people more knowledgeable than we are regarding home building talk in words we don't understand. It makes our heads swim! I try to remind myself that all of the skills that we've learned--acting, cooking, gardening, singing, sewing, knitting, teaching--all those things were not easy to learn and took time and patience. And so will this process. We'll learn the words and we'll gain skills. We'll work hard and eventually we'll have the haven we've dreamed of. For now, though, we're still freaking out just a little and we're awfully glad for family members with sweet skills and big trucks!

Some links, pics, and thoughts

I thought I'd do a quick post listing some various links we've been looking at about yurts and yurt-like homes. Uncles and grandpas and neighbors are all doing their own research about yurts and coming up with new links and new ideas for our home. We've got a lot to decide! The pics above are a wooden yurt and a modern traditional yurt. I'll do more pics later!

Here's a basic yurt company we began looking at:

Colorado Yurts

Here's the wooden yurt company we're considering:

Smiling Woods Yurts


Besides the full kits they have, they also sell kits with roofs only. We could build our own traditional yurt walls, or we could even do even do circular straw bale or cob walls! The roof kit is only about $9000.

Here's an interesting company my uncle sent me:

Greywater Homes


Terribly cool, I thought!

And finally, a link my father-in-law sent us to a geodesic dome homes:

Dome Homes


I don't like the looks of the domes for a house, but I think they'd make a great greenhouse!

Now, we just have to figure which of all these possibilities will cost the least, get done the soonest, give us the least headache, and be the most beautiful and livable. Thought? Votes?

Endings, Beginnings, and In-Betweens

Sunday was a day filled with lots of good work finally getting done. The land we bought was finally cleared of all (or at least, almost all) the junk from the previous owners. It felt so good to see it gone at last. Also, we finished the clean-up of the old house and turned in the key. The picture above is our almost empty living room. I left the chair in case anyone coming to the house needed a place to sit. A nice touch, I thought. We were just crazy exhausted at the end of the day. Sooo tired.

The bad news of the day was that there was a serious communication breakdown between the men who sold us the land and the contractor they used to do the clearing. We told them, quite clearly, that we wanted the chicken coop left on the property. We also told them that we were going to be taking our chickens to live in the coop before we moved onto the property. Well, they must have just forgotten, because when we arrived at the property, the coop was gone. The coop that had three pet chickens in it was just GONE. We saw a good bit of feathers, but nothing else. Gabby, Grandma, and Lucy--just GONE. We all are pretty upset about it, but the land guys are very apologetic and are building us a new coop and paying for more chickens this spring. I guess that's the best they can do.

Meanwhile, we are living with Greg's parents. They are very, very kind, welcoming, accepting, and tolerant, but, boy, are we ever ready to get into our own place! First, they live farther away from town than we used to live (or even than we will live in the country). Also, we have to constantly worry about our cats getting in the way of their dogs. Finally, we just want to be together as a family in our own place (even if it is just a 28 foot camper)! Transitions are hard. We believe that one of the lessons of this entire adventure is patience. Now... if we can just get these events to progress a little faster!

Look Beyond What You See

(This entry was actually a part of my "morning pages" several weeks ago, but I've reworked it and am posting it here belatedly.)

We've been looking at land for what feels like months, but I know it's only been a few weeks. We were feeling pretty discouraged because pretty much every piece of earth we've seen is either too expensive or too far away, or it doesn't have utilities, or they won't allow yurts and camper living. Actually, the last problem has been the biggest factor. Most places have building codes that we won't meet, and even the really country places that would accept a yurt wouldn't allow us to live in a camper for 6 months to a year.

Has anybody ever seen Lion King 1 1/2? Remember the scene when the monkey mystic tells Timon that in order to find his haven, his home sweet home, he will have to "look beyond what you see?" That's what we had to do today when I believe we actually found our haven. Here's the deal: on the land we saw today, there was two junky broken down trailers, two old boats, and mountains of junk. Most people would have turned around in a heartbeat. But here's the deal: the owners had no problem with the yurt, the were fine with the temporary camper living, and the land itself was 3.3 acres, half wooded and half cleared, AND it takes only 15 minutes to get there from the university!! We couldn't afford to turn and run when we saw all the bad karma junk that the previous owners had left. We had to "look beyond what you see."

And we were really able to! We could see the yurt right up against the edge of the woods, we could see the garden on the elevated part of the yard, a beautiful rock wall along the side, a path through the woods leading to a meditation labyrinth, everything. Also, it seemed that the land was speaking to us, asking us to come save it--asking us to restore it to the beauty we saw the potential for.

So, we're making an offer and we're putting a stipulation in the contract that all the junk and the trailers and the boat will be hauled off without charge to us. Cross your fingers! This is our land--I feel it!

Visions and Revisions

OK. Here's the vision: 3-5 acres of beautiful land, part cleared, part wooded, within 20 minutes of work, with a beautiful 35 foot wooden yurt on a large deck, all paid for, mortgage-free. Also on the land, a large vegetable garden, a chicken coop, several goats to keep the woods cleared, a meditation labyrinth, and an outdoor stage with terraced rock seating. Future cob or straw bale house possible.

Current reality: Renting a small house on 0.3 acres, large vegetable garden located 20 minutes away, crappy chicken coop, plenty of college debt, little to no savings, and credit too low to get a home loan.

Hmmm . . . how to get from here to there? One of the first ideas we had was that my parents had just reached the age when Dad had access to a good bit of his retirement from a previous job. Though they aren't rolling in it, they could perhaps give us a small loan. Finding out about owner-financed land was another biggy. We found plenty of land in the range of $1000-$2500 down, $8000 an acre. The monthly payments were around $250 for most places. The interest is higher than I'd like, but there's no penalty for early payment.

Still, though, a wooden yurt is about $20,000, even more once we lay the foundation, put in the wiring, plumbing, etc. We certainly couldn't borrow that much from my parents! Time for a revision of the vision! My friend and teacher, Marna, who I'll write more about later, says that you have to figure out what the "touchstone" of your dream really is. What's the important part about the dream? What's at the heart of it? We knew the answer right away--it's freedom and independence. Freedom from being a renter for forever, freedom from never quite having enough money, freedom from living within fifteen feet of neighbors, etc. So if that's our touchstone, is there a way to at least get that part of the dream?

Here's what we came up with: We borrowed $6000 from my parents, a very reasonable amount that we knew we could easily pay back. We used $2000 to pay for the land down payment. At first, we thought we were going to buy a used mobile home, but we couldn't afford anything decent, especially factoring in the cost of moving it. We needed some place to live while raising money for a yurt, perhaps for about nine months. We finally decided on a 28' camper, with a full kitchen and 3 beds. We paid $3000 for it, leaving $1000 for utility hook-ups, etc. Meanwhile, we're not having to pay rent, so we can save for the yurt!

So, for $6000, we're getting our touchstone in just a few weeks. We still have a long way to go before we reach the full dream, but we're a lot closer than we were before!! Onwards and upwards!

“You wonder how these things begin. . . well, this begins with a glen.” Or a dream of a glen, at least. This quote from the musical “Fantasticks!” seems appropriate to describe the origin of the dream that we have of owning our own land and having a beautiful house, mortgage-free. We dreamed of our own little spot of Earth, our very own sweet glen, away from the hubbub and without hefty monthly payments. I’d like to tell you that, of our own accord, we moved mountains and manifested this dream into reality. The truth is, however, a bit more prosaic and certainly less inspiring. Our catalyst was a crisis.

The crisis came in the form of an email from our landlord. He was a Marine and had been away in Iraq and Afghanistan for two years. He hadn’t raised the rent in all that time and stated that expenses required him to either sell the house or raise the monthly payment by $200 when the new lease came due in a month. I received this lovely little missive while teaching a class. The students were doing some group work and I was taking the opportunity to check email. My heart sank as I read. There was no way we could do $200 more a month! And we certainly didn’t love the house enough to buy it! I knew we would have to move.

I hate moving. I am so tired of moving. I don’t hate the new places and changes; I just hate the actual packing, sorting, and loading and unloading. I am also desperate for a place where I can really make it our own and do WHATEVER we want to do. Greg and I have been renting ever since we got married in 1995. First, we were just a couple of poor kids in a cute little one-bedroom apartment. Then, we were a family with a small child, going to grad school and not wanting the responsibility of home ownership. After that, we were new professors in a new town, with poor credit thanks to the lack of credit cards and the college loans adding up to over $100,000, which were almost always in late payment status. Over the past fifteen years, we have lived in 9 different homes. N.I.N.E.!!!!!!!!!!!!!! For pity’s sake, we’re not even military!

Each move had a clear purpose. Losing a job, going back to school, expanding family, saving money, etc. One of the funniest/worst reasons was when the Assembly of God Foundation in the city we were in at the time (which was, incidentally, the national AG headquarters) placed a printed slip on our door informing us that they had bought the house and we had a month to vacate. They were systematically purchasing all the rental houses in the neighborhood, trying to make it into a (please do insert a strongly sarcastic tone here) “godlier” environment.

So, after telling Greg about the email, we began the familiar and detested chore of looking for a new rental place. After all, the country’s in a recession and there’s no such thing as a sub-prime mortgage right now. And we certainly haven’t been saving money for a down payment—we’re barely able to make rent and school loan payments and all the other usual bills. Though we may dream of home ownership, and though our socio-economic status would seem to indicate we “deserve” it and “should” have it, it’s just not feasible. OR IS IT?

Is there another way? A “back-door” to home ownership? We’d been dreaming of yurts and cob houses for several years, but assumed it would have to wait until we made more money or won the lottery or something. But what if we assumed that renting was no longer an option? How could we stop the cycle? We desperately need to get to the place where we own our own home, mortgage-free. Every month, we pay the equivalent of a mortgage payment to the college loans. We’re never going to save any money or take vacations if we always have to pay $2000 a month between rent and loans.

One day, as we were driving around looking for rental houses, I saw a sign that said “Land for Sale—Owner Finance.” Hmmm . . . I wonder how tough their credit requirements were? But what use would that be, if we couldn’t buy a house to put on the land? Just as I thought that, I saw a mobile home--an older one—that appeared to be uninhabited. Hmmm . . . I wonder how much a really used mobile home would cost? Though the very idea of a trailer reviled me, if it meant we could get our own place and save money for our yurt or cob house, maybe it was worth it. My mind began spinning and I saw the faint glimmer of a new path. The crisis had become an opportunity and I was determined to embrace it for all it was worth. I’m going to try to lay out that journey here, with all its successes and foibles, for you, gentle reader, so that if you need the same “back-door” to home ownership, this may give you ideas. If you are already a home owner, it might provide you with either a laugh or a moment of gratitude. Either way, welcome. (*SPOILER ALERT* We don’t end up in a mobile home, after all. It’s much crazier than that!)