Communities

12-28-09

Winds, they are big around here, last night we had the strongest winds yet, it made the first night’s weather seem like a walk in the park. A couple of gusts must have been 70-80 mph, it really made the cabin feel like it was going to blow over. Fortunately Bob had strengthened the cabin up a bit more, he put in a few more cross braces and the biggest improvement was a heavy cable that he strung up from the windward side. The winds seem to come mostly from the west to east, so he placed this cable from the top of the southwest corner of the cabin going to two different trees, that really made a big difference, the cabin didn’t shake nearly as much as it had before. I spent several hours last night in prayer, praying for the wind to calm down and praying that the cabin would hold up. Both prayers were answered, the wind died down around 2 in the morning, and the cabin held up just fine.

Today we found one of our fans, we placed in next to the wood stove, it really helps circulate the heat around the cabin. So far we are running 2 lights (low voltage), a fan, recharging my cell phone and laptop, and a portable radio on a 45 watt solar panel and one of our golf cart batteries. We don’t have all of our electrical systems set up yet, we have 4 more solar panels to hook up and the other 3 golf cart batteries. The only time we ran the single battery down to the point that the inverter started fussing about it was when we tried to recharge 3 of Bob’s 18 volt rechargeable batteries for his tools, we were also running the 2 lights and my laptop at the same time. Actually I stayed up late and watched a couple of movies on my laptop, and it was enough to run the golf cart battery down. I don’t know at what point the inverter starts fussing, but it will not allow the battery to run down completely, that is a good thing.…

Well, our first Christmas on our property, the day has really been just like all the other days, we have just been working on everything. We got the compost system set up, I spent several hours gathering grass and leaves for the base, if you want to learn more about composting toilets, go here: https://www.jenkinspublishing.com/humanure.html it’s pretty eye opening, and it WORKS! Nothing smells, believe me, I would know it in our small 16×16 cabin! It’s just as sanitary and works great as any other system, especially considering we don’t have running water.

We were invited to our new friend’s house for Christmas dinner, everyone here is so nice! We assumed that we would move out here and pretty much keep to ourselves, we didn’t expect to meet such nice people, we are truly blessed! Sorry if I keep referring to people without using their names, I am trying to maintain our privacy as well as our neighbor’s & friend’s privacy, I just feel it is better that way for everyone.

Woo hoo! I took a shower today, it’s amazing how good that feels after not getting one for a few days, we still don’t have our water systems installed, that will take some time, but our neighbor has graciously allowed us to use his water as much as we need.

Today I was tending some of my plants that I brought from Irving, I have 2 containers of garlic flavored chives, a rosemary plant, and a few other plants, they weren’t very happy with the trip, then change of altitude & weather, but I believe they will survive ok, I was watering the plants with a 5 gallon water container, the kind that goes on a water despenser found in offices and such, the water was left over from our last trip out here, I found a dead mouse in the bottom of the container (eeewwww!!!), poor thing, I hope it didn’t suffer too much, it was well preserved in the icy water, I guess I will not be using that container for drinking water! :)

Well, merry Christmas everyone, and have a safe and happy New Year!…

Finally, we made it, we left Irving TX for the last time. We had everything ready to go, our 28 foot trailer was packed, the bug was hooked up to a tow bar, the bug was full of boxes, the wiring on the trailer and the bug (for the tail lights) were hooked up (and working properly). All we had to do was get in the vehicles and go, it was a some time after 1 pm and we heard a crash, I went outside to see what had happened, my husband’s son had a car accident right outside, wow, we were minutes from leaving when this happened, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, but fortunately everyone involved was OK, though both cars were totaled, the other person involved had to go to the hospital, but the officers and the fire personnel there told me she would be OK. Anyhoo, when we pulled out of the driveway, I looked at my watch and it said 4:30 pm.

The trip was fairly uneventful, after the first few miles, we realized that the trailer would hold up, the tires would hold up (on all the vehicles) and the load would hold up just fine. We had to stop to adjust the tarps once, that took about an hour, we couldn’t just move one thing, it was like a big 3D puzzle, if you touched one thing, you had to move 3 other things, we finally got it straightened up and we were back on the road.

We arrived on my property at about 3:30 in the morning, the moon was all but full, we could see everything, including our breath, it was cold, COLD COLD! And the wind was blowing, I estimate around 15-20 MPH, gusting to 40 on occasion. Our cabin is not completed, it is, for the most part in the dry, meaning that our stuff inside doesn’t get wet when it rains, but some of the walls are basically heavy builder’s plastic and hog wire. We are sitting about 8 feet off the ground. I was really tired when we got in, once we got inside the cabin, I zonked out, even with all the rocking and rolling of the cabin, I told my husband that the cabin would fall whether I was awake or asleep, according to what our neighbor had told us, there had been heavier winds before and the cabin held up just fine, so I had confidence it would stay in one piece for one more night… fortunately I was right.

12-24-07

I found out the the wind gusts the first night were really close to 60-70 mph, and I believe it, but the cabin held up pretty well, nothing fell or blew off, even though it sounded and felt like something was about to give away a couple of times. Fortunately it has …

Well, believe it or not, I’m finally here, we left yesterday at about 4:30 in the afternoon (long story!), the trip was for the most part pretty uneventful, we got in about 3:30 in the morning, the moon was nearly full and it was great! Cold. but great, I just overheard someone mention that it is 28 degrees F tonight, it’s supposed to get down to 18 tonight, we have GOT to get that wood stove hooked up… another night snuggling under 6 or 7 blankets, it’s great! Sorry I have to be brief, I’m using my neighbor’s computer, and I’m ignoring everyone, so I have to cut this short, I’ll write more and post it in the coming days.…

Well, it finally stopped raining, but the temp dropped to well below freezing for a couple of days, so we decided to wait until the weather warmed up a bit, doesn’t sound like we are very hardy pioneers… well the reason is a very good one, our food. We have several cases full of canned food and we couldn’t afford to allow it to freeze. We are relying on this food to keep us fed through this winter, so we can’t afford to let anything happen to it.

It got above freezing each day, but it got well below freezing each night (28 F), we knew it would take at least 12 hours to travel the 500 miles we had to go, there would not have been enough time to get there and still have enough time to properly stow our food and keep it from freezing.

The last two nights, we used a portable heater to keep our food from freezing on the trailer, the food is packed in a big cage in the middle of the trailer, we wanted to take the food off the trailer and take it into the house but getting to the food meant removing too many other things off the trailer, it became painfully obvious that we had to find a way to keep the food above freezing, there was no way we were going to get everything off the trailer to get to the food. So we used heavy builder’s plastic and canvas tarps to enclose the cage, then we placed a piece of stainless steel panel inside the cage as a base, and placed a small space heater on the stainless steel panel, there was a good 3 feet of clear space between the front of the heater and the first set of boxes so it was safe. We secured the whole thing to keep cats or any other animals from getting inside, we have lots of feral cats running around here and they would have done just about anything to get inside the heated space, it worked out great, our food stayed good, and no animals got inside.

Now that the freezing weather is past, all we have to do is make sure the vehicles are ready to go, we have to wire up the VW bug’s tail lights so that while it’s being towed, it will be legal (the brake lights will come on when I brake), and tweak the trailer load. We should be leaving for the final trip either Tuesday or Wednesday. Hopefully the next post I make will be from my property.

Oh, one last thing, I can send messages from my cell phone to this blog, the problem is I don’t do the text thing very well, I can type on a regular keyboard just fine, but it takes me a bit more time and …