We gave up everything for the simple life. Part III

in #lifestyle7 years ago (edited)

Hello,
In Part II I told you about our move to Guatemala after quitting our jobs and shared the best parts of the journey through that beautiful country.
After living in Antigua for 6 months we had done enough planning that we were ready to return to the U.S. and start our homestead. We had purchased a small amount of land a few years earlier close to some of my family. (My family ancestors have lived in this area for at least 200 years) As we have been able to over the years we have added more acres to the farm. The last thing we did was build a shed/barn/cabin to spend the occasional weekend camping in while we were at the property. We were going to buy a camper, but decided it would be best to use that money to build a permanent building that we could store our camping gear in while visiting the property.

Standing on what will be our dream home on our dream farm

Once we returned to the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia the first order of business was preparing for the cold. It was early February and the shed we had built is of course not insulated. We did have a wood stove and some firewood ready but coming from Guatemala it was a real shock to our system waking up on 10 degree mornings. We pitched our tent inside the shed (which we call a barn as that was its intended use) to keep us warmer while sleeping. We covered the tent with tarps to help hold in our body heat and slept under many blankets. My days were full just cutting and chopping firewood for the first couple of months.

Here's Kimberly enjoying DSL internet in the "offgrid" barn early one morning.

We called our shed “the green barn” because all our power was from solar panels saved to tractor batteries and our water was rainwater collected from the roof into barrels. We were completely off the grid for several months but eventually we couldn’t take it anymore and had to get internet access. You should have seen the phone guys face when he came to hook up dsl at our barn! They were burying the phone line and asked “Where’s the water line?” There isn’t one, I replied. He shrugged and kept burying the line. I few minutes later “Where’s the electric line?” he asked. There isn’t any, I replied. This time he stopped completely and just stared at me in disbelief. It’s solar panels only I said. He was intrigued for sure. Two days later we lived in a pseudo off grid barn with only solar power and rainwater, but we had 6mb DSL!


The outside of our barn. The bottom floor has a dirt floor and is for storing equipment

Now that we were living in relative comfort and were in a groove (my wife was cooking every meal we ate on a wood stove or a rocket stove outside the barn) we turned our attention to getting our house built on the property. We knew our dream home was a timber frame so we started working a local timber frame architect to design it. I’m skipping ahead a bit, but I’ll share more on the building process later. After a solid year of living in the barn we were ready to move in and begin our homesteading. We did have a contractor and builders but we worked everyday with them to get the house completed. I did all the excavation work myself as well as all the grading work and anything else that was helpful to our builders. We are very proud that the timbers came from the trees right on the property that we had to cut down to put the house on top of the hill.

The timbers for the main part of the house are up!

Lots of wildlife on the farm

I wonder what Steemians would like to hear more about from us next? The home building process, the green barn, our other travels all around the world, or where we are in the homesteading process? Let us know in the comments. Follow us to see more of what’s next.

Also, see (Part I) and (Part II) of our story to learn how we came to retire young to travel and live the simple life

Join Link: https://discord.gg/VKCrWsS
Community Link: http://homesteaders-online.com

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I'd love to hear more about the home building process and green barn to keep the flow going!

Will do. More to come on the house. I think I'll do some sort of DIY type posts on the solar and rainwater collection in the barn. thanks!

awesome!

@qberry,

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Greetings, and Welcome to the Steemit Community @qberry!

Please reply to this comment, and I will share your post with the @OCD Curator group!

Awesome. Of course I accept. Thanks very much for the consideration.

I love that the dsl guy was asking about your other lines! Great post!

Thank you. We definitely have gotten some strange looks from folks like the UPS guy when living in our barn.

this is great! i found your post through @ocd, although i'm also quite active in the #homesteading tags! Always happy to meet new homesteaders, especially ones that brave the cold and truly go for their dreams!

This made me chuckle because I have so been there!

Here's Kimberly enjoying DSL internet in the "offgrid" barn early one morning.

Oh I've been there!

We live in the Ozarks on our homestead and write about our journey. I'll be following you for more :)

Thanks very much! I just parused your posts and decided I needed to follow you!

I'd like to hear more about the home building process please!

~ Kevin

Thanks for the comment. More on the home build coming!

Nice
Work around your new homestead is never ending so try not to take on to many projects at once so you can enjoy what you are doing in the moment.

Funny you mentioned that.. I have a neighbor who is 92 and that's the first thing he told me when we started. "Don't try to do too much, you have the rest of your life. Just take your time and enjoy it". I think he noticed that I was stressed about all the stuff we wanted to get done.
BTW - I'm enjoying your posts as well. We just planted 300 garlic cloves a month ago! Fist time ever.

This post has received a 13.71% upvote from @lovejuice thanks to @qberry. They love you, so does Aggroed. Please be sure to vote for Witnesses at https://steemit.com/~witnesses.

Welcome to this beautiful community ..
I invite you to visit my blog.

It's great to see you smile. :-) I would like to see the next stages of building a home.

Thank you. It's happening a lot lately. Next I'll go over the inside of the house.

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