Life at Haven Hills
Our little "homestead" is planted on 12 acres of rolling land in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains, about 30 minutes away from Virginia Tech in the quirky county of Floyd. Our tract of land is about half wooded and half open pasture. In one of the corners of pasture land, we built ourselves a little one-room cabin of 192 square feet (12' x 16'), affectionately known as "the Shanty". We are not connected to any public utilities -- electricity, water, phone, etc. Below is a description of how we have turned a life of "roughin' it" into a comfortable little universe.
Our Humble Abode
Click here to see Joe's CAD drawings of our place.
Our cabin was built over a period of three months using traditional stud-frame construction. The porch was added shortly after completion and has been a wonderful addition. For one thing, it provides a hanging spot for the hammock - the place for relaxing and surveying one's domain during the warm, summer months. It also provides a sheltered place for our propane refrigerator, which was too big to fit inside.
Storage space was, and still is, our biggest challenge in designing the Shanty. The first step in making it work was a huge purging of unnecessary belongings. The fight to keep stuff down to a minimum is an ongoing, but therapeutic, battle. As you can see, we love books. Shelves, shelves and more shelves is the key to keeping things out of the way and maintaining a large library despite the limited space.
The bed is elevated about 4 feet off the ground (no, we have not fallen off) which makes room for our dressers and other clothes storage underneath. The kitchen is ultra organized, with the shelves custom made to fit the sizes of common grocery items (a box of cereal, two cans stacked, etc.) with no wasted, unusable space. The closet holds linens, towels, and miscellaneous as well as doubling as the "control room" for our electrical system.
The Power of the Sun!
For almost a year, we lived without any electricity and really didn't miss it much. Our heat comes from a small woodstove, cooking and refrigeration are powered by propane, and we used old-fashioned oil lamps for lights. However, recently we were very excited to instsall our very own solar-panel powered electric system and have been rediscovering the magic of electricity. Our south-facing porch roof supports two, 135-watt Kyocera PV panels which store the sun's energy during the day for our movie-watching pleasure at night. It really is almost magical. Our system is small, but our electricity needs are equally modest. We primarily use the electricity for watching movies, running a stereo and a laptop computer, and lights. In addition to the two PV panels, we have three gel batteries and a 300 watt inverter. But, enough of the technical talk.
Water
Our water system is constantly evolving, and looks like soon it will be getting a major upgrade. At the moment, our drinking water source is a delicious, sparkling spring downhill in the woods below the house. We've captured a small bit of this spring and carry it up to the house for drinking purposes - five gallons at a time in a water cooler. All of the rest of our water usage comes from rain water catchement. We have about 350 gallons worth of rain water storage which we use for showers, dishes, garden watering, etc. Alas, the weather is not always favorable, and our water usage sometimes exceeds the free supply. For those occasions, we also have a hand pump at the spring that we can use to pump larger quantities of water uphill to refill our rain barrels during dry spells.
The above described water system is primitive but has served us well for three years now. However, we are planning to do a more complete capture and development of our spring in the near future and put in a large storage tank with a solar or generator powered pump. The hot dry summer of 2010 has meant weeks of daily pumping to water the garden, but it has also proven the staying power of our spring.
For showers, we use the greenhouse in cool weather. Even on a cold snowy day, if there is any sun at all, the greenhouse will be warm, steamy and blocked from wind. In the dead of winter we have the added bonus of huge pot of warm water always ready on the woodstove. In milder weather just leaving a bucket of water in the greenhouse will quickly warm it up to a nice bathing temperature. For those hot summer days, Joe has built us a beautiful outdoor shower complete with a solar heated water supply.
Joe has also built us what I can only call the "World's Nicest Outhouse". It is a timberframe structure complete with attic storage space, a front porch, hardwood floor and wall paneling, and an extensive library. The toilet itself is a composting toilet that 'flushes with sawdust'. We use 55 gallon pickle barrels with tight fitting lids as the compost chambers. The finished compost will go to our fruit trees.
Homegrown Food
Our garden is comprised of raised, permanent beds bordered by cinder blocks. The holes in the cinder blocks create perfect planting spots for flowers and herbs to give the garden a boost of color. The recent addition of a fence has greatly improved the look and feel of our garden. The deer had determined it was their favorite restaurant and made nightly stops to browse on the buffet. Now that the garden is secured from marauders, we will be adding a few more beds and blueberry bushes. We also have several young fruit trees scattered about. We have a particular interest in native, lesser-known fruits, such as pawpaws and serviceberries.
Livestock
Goat update - March 2010: After almost four years with us, Banjo and his partner in crime, Yoda, have moved on to another home. Actually, I prefer to think of it as a promotion because they have taken a job as groundskeeper and assistant groundskeeper for a nearby business. As much as we loved them, we really didn't have a good setup for them without a fenced in pasture. They seem very content in their new home and always appreciate when we stop by to say hi and feed them some carrots while we are in town running errands.
Chickens!
As of spring 2009, we now have a small flock of chickens. Our flock currently consists of 8 hens and one pseudo-rooster (He was a hen for the first year of his life). We average 4-6 eggs a day. Finally, some creatures that actually provide something other than just entertainment! The flock spends their time free-ranging the compound and occasionally getting chased off the porch. We also have a small "rasp" of guineas that largely take care of themselves and roost in the trees at night. The number of guineas varies frequently due to predation, but we've recently had a new generation of guineas born on the farm!
