To The Work Squared

I'll be goin' on up t' th' land come Satiddy. It'll be warm like that day, so's I can stomp 'round a bit and pick me out a good place t' build muh playce.

When'n I be gittin' back, I'll post sum pitchers hair fer'n y'all t' see.

Preeshadit.

Eureka

Which one is the farmer in this picture?


After our last, unproductive trip to Middle Tennessee in search of land, we decided to redouble our efforts to find land--even if it was a smaller parcel--closer to the friends my sister's family had made two decades earlier.

I knew that the people in that area had several large land holdings but didn't know if they would be willing to part with any of it. I asked my sister about that, but she put the thought away. She'd not dared dream of such a thing; not only would she never ask any of them (she has couth, my sister, whilst I have chutzpah), but she would also never think such a good turn of events could befall her and hers.

Yet, in a series of phone conversations with the people in the valley over several weeks, one such opportunity opened.

The farmer is depicted above. He and his family have an old farm of several hundred acres. They offered to sell us about 11 acres of it because they so dearly love my sister and her boys and because the farmer's mom and my sister were close back when the dear old lady was alive.

We were ecstatic.

So, we immediately planned a trip back to that area to not only look at the land that was offered, but to also talk to those there about practical yet inexpensive building methods. Middle Tennessee State University is one of the leading institutions in the south in using slip-form insulated concrete in construction. One of the people in the church teaches in that department, so my sister and my brother-in-law picked her brain on that method of building their house.

Meanwhile, we scheduled a viewing of the property with the farmer for Sunday, May 18th. We met him at his barn near the proposed site; he revved up his 'gator' and we clambered aboard and took off into a field that lined a thick wooded area.

He proposed +/- 11 acres that is roughly shaped like a backwards flag or a hatchet; a 100' wide road frontage (where electricity is and, recently, city water has been added) that cuts a 300' long swath up alongside the field through the woods and the flares out left (towards the west) into a large, gently sloping area with several flat places for building sites. Behind the gentle slope--and beyond the proposed property--is a 1200' hill, or what they call a 'mountain' in that part of the world. Ralph owns all of it.

Now, the farmer has had the proposed site tested for septic and found at least three 'perc' sites, so we're good there. As we walked into the woods, we crossed a wet-weather creek (the farmer says he will put a culvert in for us) and came to one smaller cleared area in the trees. This is one possible build site--probably for my house.

We continued on through a slight thicket and came to a larger cleared site. This is where my sister's house probably should be built. The electricity folks will pay for one pole and will 'give' us the first 100' feet, but then we pay for installation per foot to the pole/house. I'll find out the exact amount and let you all know soon.

Anyway, we took in the site, enjoyed the woods, and saw walnut trees, mountain junipers, a dogwood or two, and a bunch of blackberries as well as fragrant honeysuckle. My sister paused a moment and begged us to be still and silent; she wanted to listen to the sweet sound of...nothing! We heard the birds, heard the breeze in the leaves, and the buzz of the odd insect, but that was it. No car noises, no highway traffic--nothing but nature.

The farmer says the land isn't worth that much to him; he'd rather sell it to us than have it sit there and do nothing. Thus, it all looked too good to be true, but there was more.

As we trudged up the slight incline ahead of us, we heard my BiL cry out, "Come on, you two! This is amazing!"

We came up the hill and the path (an old logging road, actually) broke out into a cathedral-like clearing with knee-high grass (see picture above). It was as if God had created a special glen, a forest sanctuary, for us.

My sister was literally moved to tears; the BiL had a goofy grin on his face; my nephew, despite his allergies, smiled broadly. I was snapping pictures but was as amazed as they were. It was so lovely!

The farmer showed us another logging road that ran to the back (top) of the glen and then another that ran along side it. He said he would include this area in the parcel as well. It's farther from the road than the other site, so to build there would be more expensive to run water/electricity, but it could be done. He reminded us that we would have access to the mountain behind our land to roam at our leisure. No one could build around us--ever.

My sister thinks we should leave that area as-is and use it as a park-like area or commons for gatherings or reflective time--a natural chapel, of sorts.

We asked the farmer one more time if he were sure he wanted to sell. He assured us that he did.

With hugs and handshakes, we agreed. Who says you can't do business with a handshake these days?

The farmer will now have the land surveyed, staked, and a contract drawn up for the purchase.

Looks like we've found it.

Badlands Here We Come

Off the grid, scrubby trees, and mud-caked tires--if you want cheap land you gotta go here!


So, with a general idea of wanting to be somewhere within the triangle of Nashville, Pulaski, and Chattanooga, Tennessee, we struck out one weekend after perusing the interweb to take a look at some land.

Now, we were wanting somewhere from 20 to 60 acres--and didn't want to pay more than $3500 an acre for it. That meant the land we would be looking at was largely 'unimproved'--that means, usually, far REMoved from water and power sources.

While that was OK by me, the sister and family want to be grid-tied, at least at first, and to have some--emphasis, some--of the mod cons at their disposal (although not necessarily a disposal).

So we looked. And looked. And drove out to parts unknown in the backwoods and meth labs of middle Tennessee to see what we could see.

Yes, there is land that is less than $3500 an acre. Yes, it is usually unimproved and filled with trees. What we saw that we liked was far from--well, let me back up a second.

Years (as in over 20) ago, my sister and her husband ministered to a congregation of about 100 folks outside of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. They fell in love with the land and the people, finding solace for their bodies and minds there. Our objective for choosing middle Tennessee was to be within an hour of these people so those relationships--which never faded when my sister and my brother-in-law accepted teaching positions at a university--could be sustained into redundancy.

Fast forward to the land hunting again; what we saw was too far away from these good people in that lovely valley. Besides, what we saw was too wild for us to consider.

So, yes, we found land. And no, it was not land we would buy.

We returned from our first land-hunting trip extremely depressed because we were right back where we'd started.

On the other hand, we now had knowledge that 20 acres was quite a bit of land, and we knew we could and would take less land in the right place.

Background To It All

We've lived in urban or suburban areas most of our lives. My sister, who is 16 years older than I, is nearing retirement age (beyond this information she would kill me) and was looking to get away from cities and back to a more simple, more efficient, and more 'robust' lifestyle in retirement.

I wanted that, too. There is something good--a good, in fact--about building your own building, about producing your own food and having care of the land. Perhaps it goes back to our being made from 'dust' and returning to 'dust', something profoundly spiritual and physically re-creative (in both senses of the term) at the same time

There are socio-economic and political implications for wanting to do this, too. The American experiment may have run its course; rising gas prices put constant pressure on the consumer. All of this will be explored in detail later.

For now, here is the basic plan:

1.) Get land in conjunction with my sister, her husband, and their son.
2.) Start gathering information on how to 'homestead', live off the land, lard the lean earth, etc.
3.) Find methods of building that are low-maintenance, cheap, but strong and long-lasting.
4.) Build my (small) house first (within the first six months after purchasing the land); I move there.
5.) Start the fruit trees, start the outbuildings for food production, and get the land 'ready'.
6.) Build my sister's house within 18 months of land purchase
7.) My sister's family retires to the land.

AND do all this for as cheaply as possible.

Now, the caveats.

I am not a builder. I can hammer, patch drywall, lay tile, or do pretty much anything only because I don't know that I can't! Show me how, and I'll do it.

On the other hand, I know people who do know these things. I can act as facilitator for a collaboration. I can look for creative financing. I can scrounge for scrap and supplies. I'm in my late 40s and in poor shape physically but am a former athlete trapped in this now-sedentary body.

My sister has never been a 'worker' per se; she and her husband are academics. Their lovable, clever, but anemic son has never really used any sorts of tools other than whilst working on a car engine.

I plan to channel my deceased father's knowledge--he was a builder--and will this plan into actuality.