Backstory I
I'm sure it's glaringly obvious, but I'm new to minds. I'm just going to enter a few short blogs to start figuring this whole thing out.
The Banner picture is the house that my husband built us. We live in the rural pacific northwest, unfortunately, it has become popular with retirees and Californians, which has driven up the cost of land. However, in this rural area wages aren't high. I am fourth generation to this area, my children are fifth. So we aren't going anywhere.
Which means, to afford land, we had to get creative. Especially since we're a one salary family. I'm a SAHM and we homeschool our three young kids.
So we rented a pasture. Lived in a tent for six months. The last three months, once the rains hit, were hard. The blankets molded. The pillows molded. Our clothes, shoes, and socks were very difficult to get dry. I'm allergic to mold. But finally the roof was on (who needs walls!) and the woodstove was in. And now, less than four years later, we're on our own land.
Getting our house to our own land was quite the process. We acquired a demolished single-wide trailer. We stripped it down to the bare frame, beefed up the welding, and then built on the trailer. It is 50 feet long and 12 feet wide. Note the tent in the background of the banner picture. We moved our house to its current (and permanent) site on Oct. 30, 2017. We slept in the tent and cooked under the tarped shelter until the house was leveled and stabilized. Of course, we had the earliest snow ever. Halloween night it snowed inches. I suppose it was better than rain, but boy were we cold. Progress is slow, because my husband works full-time.
Same tent and shelter we lived in for six months while building the house.
We don't have running water or indoor plumbing. My father was the first generation of my family to grow-up with such new-fangled devices. I was the last (at least for the time being).