I am in WA state visiting my Mom while Jeff works here for a few weeks. I spent all of December at Rancho Mañana and experienced the weirdest weather-not normal at all. First, it rained INCHES, twice. It snowed for days twice. The temp dropped to 9 degrees once. On the day I left for Albquerque to fly out, it snowed INCHES and covered the Florida mountains.

This picture was from the first snow. The second was much heavier but all I have is pictures our great neighbors sent us in an email and I can’t seem to lift those buggers out so I can use them here.

When it rains, I can’t get out for 3-5 days, period. I tried. I actually did get out and went to town but when I pulled back onto our back road, the truck stuck like glue in the mud. My neighbor across the street came over the next day and pulled it out with his tractor. I don’t know what I’d do without good neighbors.Our front road was entirely flooded, making me so grateful that after much consideration, we did decide to put in both a north and south gate, so that we could get out if one road was flooded.

After I got unstuck, I knew more rain/snow was coming so I HAD to park out on the graveled county road overnight or I would not be able to get out and head to the airport. It only rains like this a few times a year, but if you are one of the unlucky ones who don’t yet have their raised county road in (like us) then you are stuck until the roads dry out.

We got the electricity in pretty quickly, for an obscene amount of money. Obscene. Propane was way cheap by comparison.

The well going in was a nightmare. For real. It was supposed to take 3-4 days. It took a month overall.

The well made the biggest mess. There were trucks everywhere, parked her for weeks. Our place looked like a parking lot in a construction zone.

Our valley has “problem” soil. Some of the sand is micro-fine like baby powder and it’s so hard to get it out of your water. We used a great driller, D&J Well Drillers and are so glad we did. There’s another driller who did a neighbor’s well and it’s been an unusable disaster. D&J did a great job, refusing to give up until they’d gotten the water running clear. They’d come out and drill and work those bloody loud machines all day long, testing the water over and over. Some hours it was dark, dark brown, then the next hour would run almost clear, then back to black.  After awhile I sort of lost hope and figured we were going to end up with a $10,000 hole in the ground and no water at all.

When they’d leave at 5 they’d run their generator all night long, pumping out thousands of gallons of water in an effort to clear it. And that’s when I’d cry and cry. All that lovely water that I needed so much! And the noise was so bad I don’t think I slept for more than a few minutes at a time for at least 2 weeks.

Between the well people and the electric people, they tore up all of my gravel, big time. So I have that job to take care of in a few weeks when I go back home.

This is 1/4 of our ditch for the water pipes, dug for us for free by the well people. (Their bill was the cost of a small car, so the gimmie was nice.) The electric people dug us a ditch 1/4 of the length of the water pipes, for which they charged us $1300. Apparently all of the issues in land developing are settled by whipping out a pen and writing a check for $1000, at least.

I’m at the property most of this upcoming year by myself, because Jeff has a really heavy-duty travel schedule this year. So when things happen I’m on my own and it’s a little dicey sometimes, but it’s getting better. Why? Because electricity and water make a world of difference! I have warmth in the camper and the cabin, a refrigerator, stove. I am civilized. And it’s good.

I’m able to turn on the space heater in the cabin first thing in the morning, eat, go run, and then in an hour or two the cabin is warm and I can go paint for hours. One little space heater warms up the cabin to 68-70 degrees. Not shabby! We can use 500 killowatt hours for our minimum and for the 3 weeks I was at home in December, I didn’t even hit 200 hours. I think I can afford to plug in the big fridge in the garage and use up a little more electricity-since we’re paying for 500 hours.

I do have a lot to catch up here on the blog. I keep saying we’re going to get internet but I’m/we’re never home long enough to actually follow through. Plus, we had to wait until the electricity was in place. So now it is, and when I go home, mid January or so, I’ll be home for at least two months and it will be the first thing done. The phone and internet is how Jeff and I stay connected. I’m tired of standing with my nose in the one corner of the camper where I can get 3 bars and only have dropped calls once or twice per call. So, it’s time to finally get the net in. And I cannot wait.

From where we live, the Mimbres river is about five miles away, as the crow flies. But from what I hear, the Mimbres is mostly an underground river, only showing itself above ground during the monsoon season when the river can be high and therefore moves up where it can show itself. Basically, I don’t know what I’m talking about except I know where it is because someone finally pointed out this oddly striped, long hill in the distance that everyone calls “Rattlesnake Ridge or Hill” or some such thing. So I suppose the water is close enough that the birds can find a drink of water when they need it either from the river or from the cow tank about a quarter mile from our place.

But when it’s 100 degrees and up it’s just hot and sad for those birdies. They sometimes are there one day and you find them dead the next, from lack of food or water. They LOVE our place now because there’s:

A. Lots-o-shade from all the buildings/structures
B. There’s bird seed!
C. There’s a bird bath
D. There are 2 beings that they must assume are just large birds

When we first started working on the property in May, I rarely saw a bird anywhere. I wondered if there really were any around or if it was simply too wild out there for them. After we got the fence in, they started coming in and sitting on the fence line (which is super sweet). Then, I hung a bird feeder in the only mesquite tree we have and a few more came and lizards began to come too.

I have a bird bath that I’d taken apart and sat on the ground as you see here. Later I realized that rattlesnakes would also love it, so I reassembled it so that only the birds can partake of the water.

We were sitting in the courtyard one night and a few birds flew in to sit in the shade. It was so hot out, they partly opened their wings and sat there heaving with their little beaks open until they cooled down, then they’d stand there for at least an hour, watching us, not moving a centimeter.

After around an hour (And every single bird that comes does pretty much the same thing. It’s like they have little birdy pocket watches or something.), they’d see we weren’t interested in killing them and we could walk around them doing our work-3 feet away from them and they wouldn’t move from their pocket in the shade. Then they’d find the bird seed that’s scattered throughout the gravel and would have a party having a snack, then they’d find the birdbath at last, several hours later. It’s so cool watching them drink and take baths on a hot, hot day. I know it must feel like heaven to them.

So now, at any give time, we have many lizards hanging around, sunning themselves on the cement bricks that line the buildings and about four or five birds at a time including a beautiful road runner who started coming just about two days before we had to leave. I hope he’s still hanging around when we get home.

We were having dinner and this little bird went through the whole above scenario and then decided we were his parents or his best friends. He started walking no more than 2″ away from where our feet were as we sat watching him, with not a care in the world. We were marveling at that when he hopped up on the handle of a hoe beside me so he could be closer to us.

I was all big-eyed and just as I said to Jeff, it’s like he wants to climb into my lap and have me pet him, he jumped up on the arm of my chair! Jeff moved very slowly to get a picture but the little guy was spooked so he moved to the back of the chair right beside me.

He sat there and fell asleep while we talked, his little eyelids just slipping down. He was uber cute!

We aren’t intending to have pets out at the property as anything small will be eaten by coyotes, so birds and lizards will have to do. But who knew they had so much personality?

One day we had a bird with a foot that must have been crippled in his birdy youth. He got around just fine, it just was a little clumsy. He stayed around for two full days, eating and drinking, resting in the shade and then one day he just cheeped out one time, which surprised me so I turned around to look and he flew off and never came back. Maybe we’re in a flight pattern or something?

I did find a few more photos, though not good ones. This one shows the garage in place before we had it raised up a full foot and put a “foundation” beneath it of bricks.

And here’s a shot of another 15 tons of gravel we had to spread around. We got all but about 4 tons of it spread out, so hopefully we’ll get that done in November.

A graveled courtyard is 10,000 times better than a dirt courtyard. It’s amazing how much the gravel keeps the dust down when the wind blows.

We got that grill for free because when we moved into the Albuquerque house, the previous owners had left it there. We’ve had it for several years now and the propane has never run out, that’s how seldom we use it. But we use it now! It’s turning out to be quite handy to fire up the grill and put a pot onto cook outdoors, because even cooking oatmeal inside the camper can get the whole camper pretty hot in the summer. It’s our “outdoor kitchen” now. I need to figure out how to grill veggies and black bean burgers made from scratch on it without them slipping down through the grill. Aluminum foil? A cooking sheet? I need ideas, people. I’m sure it can be done, I’ve just never given it a shot. I know that women in the past often had outdoor stoves so that they could do their canning outside instead of inside where they’d be suffocated from the heat of the fire. So having that grill gives us the best of both worlds. Once I learn how to use it.

It kills me to look at these pictures and to know that we’ll only get to be home for about one DAY during our final move in two weeks. But, I remind myself, quite vehemently, that it’s just meant to be, that we have other things to do right now. And, we get to be home for about 2 1/2 weeks at Christmas, so I’m living for that. And in late January or February, I’m staying home for sure! The weather here in Washington is starting to affect me and I need the sunshine to stay on top of my game. But it’s lovely to be here with family, so all things in their time.

We picked up our camper in Las Cruces and happily moved into it and it’s such a luxury but it also makes everything incredibly easier. Since it’s “self-contained”, the powers that be are OK with us living in it for up to 6 months each year which means they can’t force us to install septic, electric and water. It works great for us because we travel at least half of the year. So, it works out well all the way around. We don’t have to worry about being carted off to jail and we have a SHOWER and a SINK and a microwave and a queen sized bed and a little table. Campers are really a wonder!

We bought the camper without seeing it, based on the previous years model because the Albuquerque store didn’t have it in stock. So when we picked it up in Cruces, we got some really happy surprises as the newer model was configured in a much better way with the bed positioned in such a way that it makes the whole thing look more like a studio apartment, less like a camper. I love waking up in the middle of the night and staring at the stars out the screened windows and I love, love, love sleeping in a bed.

It got up to the low 100′s again the week we were there but we were able to move between the cabin and the camper to find the coolest spot to work or to just sit and read.

It’s perfect having 2 homes, so to speak, on the property because I can get up at 5 a.m. and go to the cabin to have coffee, to journal and to change into my running clothes and I don’t bother Jeff while doing it. When I come back from my run, he’s up and working already, usually in the camper, but because he’s working from home via tethering off of his computer, he can pretty much work anywhere.

The poor phone signal and Jeff’s work was a troublesome worry to us, so imagine our surprise when he was able to easily tether to his cell phone and even with our pathetic signal, he was able to work 8-10 hours a day, no problem. Incredible! It blew us away and made us giddy to realize that, son of a gun, this is going to work!

Silly me, I forgot to take pictures of the cabin after we’d moved in all of the furniture we’re keeping, and after we got all the books put away in the bookshelf and got all of the kitchen stuff moved out and into the camper. I’ll take pics when we go home and post them. I got a few pictures of things as we moved along, so I’ll share those.

In the corner where the kitchen was, is now my studio, which is pretty sweet, I’ll tell you what.

I was able to move all of the kitchen stuff into the camper and the things I rarely use, into the garage where I can still get at them in just a minute if I need them. We’re finding it absolutely a perfect set-up. The camper meets all of our living and legal needs (plus, hey, it’s a camper so we can go CAMPING in it.) And the cabin now makes a good-sized 12×26′ living room and dining room-and studio. It’s so comfortable and completely uncrowded. We even emptied out the two huge lofts because we have so much storage room in the new garage. In fact, we’re only using less than half of the storage space in our camper. When I say we’ve simplified, I mean it.

The garage is really quite humungous at 12×32′. Our tiny amount of stuff looks lost in this big building. We’ll build floor to ceiling deep shelves in December and that will organize everything nicely. In the meantime, things are “organized” on the floor. It’s turning out to be a great system to keep the things we don’t use very often out in the garage and the things we use all the time for work go in the camper and then the things we use to relax we put in the cabin. (cross beam things were just for stabilization during delivery)

Again, I forgot to take good pictures when we were leaving, of the whole place as it’s set up now, but here’s at least a shot. The garage has been raised up now and is on a cement block foundation so it’s about a foot higher than in this picture. The camper now sits all the way at the end of the garage and in the middle we now have a graveled courtyard where we hang out every evening until well after the stars have come out.

I found a shot of the courtyard area in progress at least. Again, the garage hasn’t been raised up in this shot:

We had another 15 tons of gravel delivered and between the two of us we got the courtyard in, the driveway to the garage in and we started a peel-off driveway from the main driveway, along the south gate side, so we could drive around the back of the buildings without disturbing the topsoil. Man, I really fell down on taking the pictures of our progress on that last day because we were in a rush to get back to Albuquerque and catch a flight.

I have more stuff to share but lots to do so I’ll do another update tomorrow.

We really wanted to build our own buildings but with Jeff’s ridiculous travel schedule we simply don’t have the time. If we waited until we had the time we’d be 95 years old. So instead, we’ve bought a 12×32′ garage by the same Mennonite builders who made our cabin. We’ll have that delivered this week while we’re out on the property. We’ll be picking up our 19′ camper tomorrow morning too, so we’ll be wallowing in the good life with a shower and water and a stove AND a fridge. Basically, we feel rich.

Our options were either to rent out a costly space for who knows how long, or to build a good sized shed to house our motorcycles, boxes, extra furniture, etc. Since we have no time, in the end we went with this building. The place that sold us the cabin actually had this garage sitting on their lot ready for delivery in days instead of the 5 weeks it took to build our cabin, so we’re very happy to go with it. It means our move will go super smoothly and it gives us another almost 400 square feet of space to work in/store things/spread out in. The finish already exactly matches the cabin, which is so sweet. It’s going to look like we planned it all out in advance as opposed to the truth, that we are flying by the seat of our pants on many of these things.

I’m looking forward to taking pictures to share now. We’ll be configuring the buildings and camper in such a way that we’ll end up with a u-shaped courtyard in the center. This will block out the wind quite nicely and we’ll be able to spread out our lawn furniture and grill there, giving us a massive outdoor living space. In the spring we’ll build a huge, low deck that will take up much of the courtyard and we’ll cover at least a good portion of it so we can have shade throughout the day.

I’ll share pictures next week when I’m in Seattle and Jeff is in Michigan. But in the meantime, we’re together and life is good so I’d better get cracking because there’s lots of boxes to haul this morning!

We’ve decided we’d like to spend our retirement traveling and doing fun stuff like out-of-the country work for places like, Little Hands, Big Hearts, in Honduras and Habitat for Humanity, wherever they want us to work. We estimate that we’ll be traveling 1/3 or more each year in the future and we got to thinking, do we even want to sink a lot of money into a house?

At this point, no. We probably will in the future, but for the next 5 years or so, we don’t see the necessity. We have a sweet cabin and this week we bought a new camper, the first we’ve ever owned. We’ll be picking it up in Las Cruces on Saturday and moving it out to our property to set alongside our cabin (with a huge deck stretched out between them at some point in the spring time).

We went with the camper as a solution to a WHOLE host of problems. Now we’ll have a good sized, comfortable bed, lights, a shower INSIDE for the wintertime, a microwave, a 2 burner stove and most important, a refrigerator. I cannot believe I’m going to get ice cubes out of this deal. It’s all about the ice cubes!

We started looking at how much it would cost to add a kitchen into the cabin along with a propane fridge and stove and all and thought, you know what? Let’s put that money into a camper that we can then take all over the place whenever we’d like to head to the Grand Canyon or any other place we’re dying to hike or walk or run or just rest.

This week we get to remove all food/kitchen items from the cabin, effectively giving us a 12×26′ livingroom to spread out in and for me to set up my easel. So basically, it’s an art studio and I’m going to let Jeff live there too. Because I’m generous like that.

We are also bringing along this generator:

It’s a quiet one, built for campers. It holds 2.5 gallons of gasoline and will run for 10 hours or so. Which is GREAT! It will constantly charge up the fancy big battery that powers the lights in the camper and when we want an extra dose of electricity for appliances, for charging phones, computers, or for power tools (a huge plus there!) then we can turn it on and it uses gas pretty efficiently. We opted for this route in lieu of putting in the solar just yet. Because we are not able to be home in Deming for much more than a week a month, we’d like to hold off on putting in the full solar set-up for 2 years. Then just before Jeff retires, we’ll put it in.

Jeff’s going to try tethering off of his iphone for work next week because he has to work from home. We don’t get a roaring good signal out there so he will most likely need to drive into town and bounce between Starbucks and McDonalds all week long to hammer out his work hours. But for one week, he doesn’t mind.

Now that we’ll have some kind of a power source, via the generator, we’ll look into getting hooked up with an internet service that does satellite internet, like Blue Skies or one of those guys. I THINK we can get internet now, as long as we have power to run the equipment when we need it. Even if we run the generator for 10 hours a day it will cost less than it does to drive into Deming and back, much less than driving into Cruces and back. If it weren’t for Jeff’s need for internet access and computer power, we’d most likely only run the generator a few minutes a day. And so we shall, when he’s not working. So there are details to hammer out, as you can see.

This week we’re looking into buying a shed kit, possibly 10×10′ and we hope to be building on it each evening after Jeff’s done with work, and on the weekends as we have 2 weekends to us before we both have to fly out again, him to work in Michigan and me to spend 3 weeks with my little Mama in Seattle.

I’ll take lots of pictures next week and will be able to give an update on our shenanigans in a few weeks.

Wow. After this trip, the next time we head to Deming, it’s to live there. Wow.

Here’s how you keep cool between the hours of 1:00 to 7:00 p.m.:

Well, this plus a big spray bottle and an outdoor shower whereby you can drench yourself every few hours. Just sayin’. If you ever find yourself in an uber-hot place, this stuff works. As long as there’s no humidity. Humidity, I hate. Really hate.

It’s really not all that hard to install insulation. It’s just that you’re SUPPOSED to wear long sleeves and long pants and a mask. Yeah, right. I wore gloves, shorts and a tank top and a mask only when I actually had to lift the stuff up and put it into the wall studs. Because seriously, I think I’d rather die than be completely covered up in July in New Mexico.

The big pay-off for putting in insulation is that for every day that I worked, every wall that I completed, the temperature lowered in the cabin. Nice! So if it was 105 outside, it was only maybe 99 inside. Those few degrees made all the difference in the world. (After I got up the paneling it’s quite nice inside-maybe 96 or so when it’s super hot. It’ll get better too when we insulate the roof and under the cabin.)

When I’m out at the cabin my life seems to be ruled by keeping my cell phone charged and obtaining water. We have 3 brand new 35 gallon trash cans that we keep tightly covered in which we pour any extra water we get in town and then use as non-potable water for showering, watering plants and cleaning up stuff. We have between 50-90 gallons, depending on the week and in a pinch, I’d drink the stuff but I’m not crazy about the idea. So every time I go into town it’s me and a cab full of stupid water jugs which I then take into Walmart and fill up for 37 cents a gallon or to any “water station” in town that’s actually working (!) and pay 25 cents per gallon.

Because it costs $12 to drive into town and back, every time I go in I try hard to get between 10-15 gallons. I say I try hard because-it IS hard. I have to keep the jugs in the front of the truck because when I kept them in the back, hello, within a few hours, the sun had melted my $8.99 jugs into an unusable, unrecognizable form. At this point the $7000 to put in a well feels like a bargain. Surprisingly, it’s not all that fun to constantly have to bring water home. It’s like that line from the movie, ‘Baby Boom’, “I just want to turn on the faucet and get water, I don’t want to know where it’s coming from!” Oh, Diane Keaton, you are so very right.

When you have a water shortage going on you learn to shower in 1/2 to 1 gallon of water, outside, NAKED for all the world to see you. Only all the world? They aren’t there. They’re off at the movies and the mall or watching TV in their air conditioned homes. So you can go nuts with your little 1 gallon shower. And by the way, if you have long hair, there’s no way on God’s green earth you’re going to get your hair actually CLEAN with just a little water, you just hope for “less crappy” and go with that, braid up your hair up and forget about it.

I present to you the “outdoor shower”:

It’s actually pretty nice because the black of the bag makes the water heat up pretty hot. And all you have to do is scan the horizon and watch for big dust plums because if someone’s coming, you have like a 4 minute warning time by watching those plums-that’s how far out we are. Anyway, I put that shower in all by myself. OK, it wasn’t hard, I dug a hole. But I did it!

My favorite job this month was the laundry. I can’t overstate how much I love washing my own laundry with a washboard and then hanging it out in the sun to dry. Oh wow, it’s so awesome. You can actually get your laundry clean if you scrub the fabric as opposed to dumping it in a washing machine with an over-abundance of laundry soap.

Here’s what I learned about the pioneer women: they must have been super buff. Pick up a shovel and heft 16 yards of gravel and see how much it works your abs, your back and your arms. Then take a “break” and go scrub every single item of laundry with the same muscles for an hour and then move to cutting and hammering wood with the same muscles. For Pete’s sake, those muscles are actually FOR something. Wow. I got a kick out of seeing the only gym in town and thinking that I should go in and tell them I’d save them all some big money, they should just come out to the property and do laundry with me and they’d get some pretty nice, free muscles.

Well, not that I’m all muscles but hey, it helped. I HATE lifting weights, but now that I’ve gotten some sort of muscle I don’t want to give it up so I picked up some 8 pound weights to keep my arms occupied when they aren’t actually doing real work. I’d rather get the work out of them but hey, you do what you gotta.

Because we have the composting toilet I was able to do nicely on about 2-3 gallons of water per day. Isn’t that strange? That’s not a lot of water. (OK, but trust me, when you’re the one that has to haul it in it’s a LOT of water.)

To this:

And to this:

And this, which sort of makes us look civilized now:

I learned that I’m one tough chickie and that I can do far more than I ever thought I could. And that a person can work in 106 degree heat while pouring sweat and not die. I know, who knew? I also murdered several animals, most unintentionally and some on purpose I’m sorry to say, but that’s life in the wild. I had to toughen up pretty quick.

When I dropped Jeff off at the airport in Albuquerque for a month of business travel and then headed to the cabin with a full pickup load of supplies and furniture I had no idea how I would work everything out. But, I’m stubborn and persistent and I knew I could do it even if I had to figure it out every step of the way and make mistakes all the way.

Surprisingly I wasn’t afraid out there all alone. From our front porch I can see 5 neighbors over a 5 mile or so spread, so I felt like I had some company. And of course there are always the cows and coyotes. But my first week was fraught with emergencies and fear because-my cell phone wouldn’t charge in the car. I’m telling you what, when you’re 30 miles from town without a phone, panic will ensue my friends.

And it was because? Because I was using a fancy 175 watt charger that you plug into the truck lighter and then plug your AC/DC cord into it. I was charging my computer with the truck just sitting there not running and in truth, it was dinging away for about an hour off and on but I just thought the connection was loose. No. The truck battery was being drained DEAD. Plus, the 175 watt thing burned out one of the lighters. Maybe. It might have been failing anyway. No matter. What mattered was that I had 30% power left on my phone and a dead truck, which I would like to remind you, was in the middle of nowhere.

I wonder if Jeff is used to my panicked phone calls yet? From a million miles away, he sent me a guy from the far side of town using our AAA card (best investment ever) and in a stroke of brilliance I managed to calm down and NOT fly into Las Cruces to buy a new iphone (What? I said I panicked.) Instead, I drove to Deming and bought a new charger cord to see if that was the problem. It worked! Then the next day it didn’t.

Honestly, at that point I was so freakin’ tired of the drama that I just sat down and tried to calmly figure it out. Turns out we had TWO of those cigarette lighter things and the second one worked-I had no idea there was a second one, so I felt like a chump. But a chump with a phone that was charged up.

At first, everything seemed terrifying. I had to make all the decisions on my own and I was planning on big things: putting in a long circle driveway with a wheelbarrow and a rake, doing the insulation in the whole downstairs of the cabin when I’d barely even seen insulation, and putting up some kind of paneling over top of it. Which would involve cutting it-somehow, and hanging it-somehow. All with no water and no electricity.
I preferred not to look at the whole picture because it would freak me out. I can do anything if I do it one step at a time. I’m a huge fan of just taking the first step. You’ll never get anything done if you don’t take the first step.

One day I called Jeff and said, “I have an idea I’d like to discuss with you and I want to warn you, it might blow your mind.” He said, “Every single thing you say blows my mind.” And to his credit, he didn’t even sigh or anything. What a guy. I have to give him such credit because he just rolled with all of my ideas. He told me he’s the money man and I’m the work horse. Hmm.

I’ve been without a computer for a solid month so it was impossible to share though I was able to upload a lot of pictures to Facebook with my iphone, bless it. I got a great little gadget for my phone for $80 when I was having such problems with keeping it charged. We were afraid that if I kept relying solely on the truck to charge my phone, that the other cigarette lighter thing would blow and then I’d have no way to stay connected. So we did some research and found out that Radio Shack had a wonderful little solar thing that you sit in the sun all day and it can charge your phone up to 100% in about an hour or so. I LOVE that thing. LOVE. Seriously. So between the truck and the solar charger I knew I would at least have contact with the world. But a computer? Please. It was hard enough just trying to keep the phone charged. And anyway, no internet.

I’m heading off to travel with Jeff for the next 4 weeks, but I’ll be where there’s electricity and internet and AIR CONDITIONING so I’ll be able to share my month over the next few weeks.I took over 2000 pictures over the past month so I’ll share some. I’m packing tonight so I’ll just share a couple and do another post very soon:

I am not a “sweater” but here, working a hand saw and hammer and shovel all day long? I’m a sweater. Not too pretty but, eh.

OK, also the part where the plans had us cut the legs too short for our 5 gallon bucket, that wasn’t cool. That part was just annoying. They should have taken into consideration that not all buckets are created equal, or of equal height. Fortunately we had enough wood to cut four more legs.

Our creation has now been stained a nice dark chestnut, which I would show, but right now it’s tucked into the back of the truck with about 9 million other things because we’re heading out to the property in half an hour.

We’ll be there for four days, putting in the cross-posts for the fence so that we can finally, finally, hopefully, finish up, or at least start, the barbed wire around the whole place. That may have to wait for a bit but we have to get those cross-posts in place before it happens. So our mission is to work in the 100 degree heat to get those posts in place. We’ll work from 5 a.m. until around 10:00 a.m. and then again from around 8 p.m. until 10:00 p.m. so we don’t melt into a puddle.

We have a finalized order of business at last: We have a quote for a little more than $3000 for a solar system we’ll install ourselves. Get that done and then we have a quote from an internet place for around $90 a month to get satellite internet and then we’ll be all modern. Except that we’ll still have to buy our water at Walmart for 25 cents a gallon until we can drill our $7000 well. 25 cents vs $7000. We’ll do the 25 cents a gallon for a year.

Four days out at the property and then we drive back to Albuquerque so Jeff can catch a plane to Seattle/Michigan/Seattle and I turn around with a truckload of furniture and head back to our tiny house for a whole entire month on my own. To which I say both “gulp” and “yay!” I reserve the right to be scared, but I’m going to do it anyway. I hope to achieve:

Having 15 yards of gravel delivered and raking it around the house and 50 miles of driveway, leveling the entrances to our property and the exit off the county road because all four spots are “humpy”, installing insulation in the whole cabin and sanding and finishing the floor with a dark stain/poly finish. That should keep me busy. July is the hottest month in Deming so I’m going to have to juggle my work hours and try not to die. That part feels a little tricky at the moment.

I’ll be in town once a week and will be visiting a frosty-cold Starbucks so I can feel civilized and use their free internet. Plus the coffee, the coffee is at the top of the list, actually. I’ll post updates when I can.

When it’s super hot, I hope to sit and swelter while I start some watercolors. It’s been way too long since I’ve painted and being out in the middle of nowhere gives me time and space to create.

We’re heading to the property toward the end of next week and we’re going to take our new toilet with us-our composting toilet that will require no water at all!

Our neighbors out in Deming loaned us a great book called, “The Humanure Handbook”. It’s irreverent and pretty hilarious at times and it’s all about leaving a light footprint on the earth and utilizing some of the best fertilizer ever, if you chose to.

You can inspect the plans here. These are the plans we’ll be using. I’ll take pictures as we work so I can share. You know, just in case you all want to run out and build your own toilet.

Quite simply, a composting toilet can be purchased for upwards of $1000 plus, or you can build your own for under $100. A composting toilet does just what it implies, it allows you to collect and compost human waste and paper. After a period of time has passed, 6 months some say, 2 years, some say, you can literally use the resulting, rich black compost in your garden or on your trees if you’re a chicken about it. It’s quite safe, though you may not believe that unless you research it for yourself.

Instead of flushing away hundreds and thousands of gallons of water each year, you use exactly none. Instead, you keep a bin of either sawdust or peat moss right beside your toilet. You pour about one cup over your “deposit” and that’s it. There is NO smell, nada. And in the end, not only did you do your little part to save the planet, you get to ADD something good back into the soil. And goodness knows our soil could use some help.

And the best part of all is that you don’t have to put in a septic system. Hello, savings of thousands of dollars. Well no, truthfully, the best part is not having to use that lame camp toilet we used last time. What an unpleasant experience that was.

I bought all of the supplies to build our toilet, so when Jeff gets back from his travels, we’ll be working on it in the evenings to pull it together. We like building things together so it should be fun, and Jeff gets a reciprocating saw out of the deal so I’m sure that makes him happy.

Speaking of building, the Tiny House Blog is my all time favorite blog. As we move forward with this grand project, the more we consider what we want, the more we think that it’s possible we’ll NOT build a house in the future, but rather, may end up living very happily in our tiny house, which we already love more than any house we’ve bought, and it’s just a bare shell at the moment. Once we get to spend some time pulling it together and getting it all decked out, I think we’re going to be so happy there.

We’ll be putting up a Steel Shop Kit at some point in the near future, hopefully this winter. We’re thinking the 24×30 foot one will suit us best and we’ve marked off a spot for the concrete foundation to be poured on the South end of the property. In having this large shop we’ll have a ton of space to both work and to store things we don’t want to keep in the house: bulk groceries, off-season clothes, books, sports equipment, etc.

We don’t want a large house anyway, just about 700 square feet. Our little house is already around 350+ with the lofts, so we’re contemplating NOT spending an additional $80,000 or so to build a house that’s just a little bigger. We’re kicking around the idea of adding a small 8×8′ cabin just to the side, to store our solar batteries, the composting toilet and a shower, and then building a 10′ wide, 26′ long, covered, wide portico along the length of the house for year round outside shade and living space.

Our dream has been to live in a tiny house, so the thought of spending 1-2 years building a home ourselves, and spending the money, isn’t sounding like something we’re completely sure we want to do. Maybe we’d like to spend that money in other ways. There’s a lot we can do to make our little tiny house perfect for us and we’re not in a huge rush so we have time to live and work and consider.

This video is just wonderful. Their tiny house is just about the size of ours, though our porch is bigger and while they have a small cottage to work from next door, we’ll have a very large shop, so we’re thinking, hmm, we LOVE what they’ve done with their living space and maybe that is exactly what we’d like to do. Watch it, it’s loads of fun.

We’re entering “interesting” territory. I think it’s appropriate to replace the word “scary” with the word “interesting”, or maybe “exciting” would do just as well. But we won’t call it “scary.” Even though it is, a little. We’re pretty sure we’re going to go ahead and install our own solar power system on the cabin. Like all by our lonesome selves. Like ALONE.

We’ve been watching the Solar Cabin guy on Youtube and he’s just full of helpful information on all kinds of things, including a set of four videos on installing your solar system yourself and on installing wind power, which we also intend to do. He explains the complicated system in such a way that it’s understandable., He sort of takes the mystery out of the whole enchilada.

So we’re checking out systems this week, comparing prices and confusion so that we can find a system that will meet our basic needs. Installing it ourselves can save us thousands of dollars and we like saving thousands of dollars. Of course we don’t like electrocuting ourselves, so we’re also open to tips on how-to-not-die while installing a system. It looks like we could easily get the job done in a few days, or a few weeks if things get dicey.

This company, Northern Arizona Wind and Sun, is the company that supplies the Solar Cabin guy. So far, it’s in the top running because they’re apparently uber helpful in answering all questions, they’ve been around for 20+ years and they put out a good product that’s also affordable.

It’s June 1st today. That means we have approximately 16 weeks left before we move, give or take a few weeks. We’ve been juggling our option lately. We could live in a small apartment in Deming until we get the solar and internet installed at the cabin, but because Jeff travels so much, we’d be paying a full month’s rent just to stay in that apartment for one week out of the month and we’d also be locked into a lease.

So in the end, we think a hotel in Deming for one week when we first move down, is the better option. Jeff can have Wi/Fi to work from home during the day and we can drive the 40 minutes out to the property each evening to work on installing the solar, then staying the weekend at the cabin and hopefully finishing up the job that first week. Hopefully.

Worse case scenario, it takes awhile and we have to repeat the hotel visit the next month when Jeff is home. No big deal. It’s far easier and less expensive to do a hotel for a Monday-Thursday night so he can work, than it is to rent an apartment for the 4 nights per month.

Speaking of all consuming work, we hit a landmark recently. Jeff now has 2 years and 10 months left on his job, at least in its current form. Less than 3 years. Woo hoo! It’s strange to be getting to this point. We’ve literally been working toward him retiring at 55 since we were in our late 20′s. Hopefully this will be one of those “best laid plans” and it’s going to work out like clockwork. You know, like the universe usually does things. Hmm.

Because airline travel and add-on fees are going through the roof, it’s unlikely I’m going to be able to travel with him very often now on, so it’s important to keep pressing forward, doing as much as we can to get out of the Albuquerque house and into the cabin. Our money can be used much more efficiently improving the property. If we can get power and internet in place by the end of this summer it would be awesome. I can easily live without electricity, water and internet for awhile so it doesn’t matter to me if I’m home for a few weeks or months without the niceties, though we really do want to resolve the phone signal issue soon, if we can.

We’ve noticed that the phone signal drops off completely during the night, or almost completely, often we have only one bar, usually none. So we need to resolve that. It may mean that we need to switch from AT&T to Verizon. I think I need a personal assistant to help me with all of this research. Though I guess that planning to live off-grid and having a personal assistant are two things that shall never meet.