2 Weekends in January - The Build Continues

By the time I return to the homestead, 3 weeks will have passed since we laid our beams and began framing the subfloor.  Over the next 10 days I hope to finalize the foundation improvements (this weekend) and then finalize the subfloor (next weekend).  Those 3 weeks brought the first snowfall since we have owned the land.  It also saw me run to Texas for a short term work project.  The consensus is, after a scientific study that measured my satisfaction with life, level of stress and frequency of times when I felt the urge to drop everything and hightail it to the woods, that 3 weeks is approximately 20 days too long to be away.

But as fortune would have it I am required to continue trade my days for dollars in order to advance this project.  And, truth be told, everyone here enjoys eating way too much to simply drop everything and move to the woods.  We are beginning to make plans for this Spring's garden.  Much of what we plant at our full-time residence will be done with transportation in mind.  Berries and perennial plants will be planted this year in portable containers that will find there way on the homestead next season, already a full year into their maturity.

Homeschool for the kids is now delving into Hydroponic gardening and the beginning stages of electricity generation, not too shabby for K-5th.  I have taken advantage of this time away from the physical work of the build to hone the design plans, start a few new projects and begin to plan out some website improvements.  It appears that multiple lines on the graph will begin to converge over the next few months and I want to be ready.  While the progress at times appears to be painfully slow I am reminded that 24 months ago it was all still just a dream.  Now, 11.5 acres later and with a floor rising from the rocky soil I am encouraged to think that my faintly whispered goal of moving in by Thanksgiving 2017 could actually be a bit more of a reality.

I leave with a quote from my man, Henry David Thoreau.  It's been taunting me for years and now, as my 38th year winds down I see it coming into view clearly and becoming fully attainable.

“There is some of the same fitness in a man's building his own house that there is in a bird's building its own nest. Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged? 

Here's to fitness - intellectual, spiritual and physical - poetic faculty and not falling off ladders whilst framing roof trusses.  More to follow.  Stay tuned.