It's a mess but a beginning

I don't have a lot of time to write, but I'll post when I can, hopefully at least once a week.  It has been very busy with our lives lately.  Quentin's vacation time is coming up soon, along with his vacation paycheck, which we are using for a few essentials.  One is a vehicle for him, hopefully a truck so we can do hauling and such easier on the mountain once we've moved.  These photos were taken about 10 days or so ago at the property.

A bit about the property.  It's 5 acres of mostly woods, bordered by county road, neighbor's fence, bluff and a small wet creek.  It has three trailers on it, only one of which is remotely habitable and we are rehabbing it for our home, one is the landlord's and not to be touched (along with two junk vehicles) and one is ours from the landlord/landlady to do with as we wish.  We wish to tear it down and scrap it is what we wish, but that's going to be a bit along the road, later this summer.  It's been abandoned for three years, and the last tenant kind of left it a ... well, a mess, really.  No easier way to put it.  It's a crying shame, really, as the place is gorgeous, with all the trees and wildlife. (It's not the last tenant's fault, really. She is physically disabled in so many ways it's not funny, and her family isn't in much better shape. Nobody can really do much with it because of all the physical issues.)

It's far enough from town and others that it discourages casual visits, being UP an Ozarks mountain road, but close enough for relatively easy access to necessaries like Wal-Mart (the ONLY place to shop around the homestead, lol), Home Depot, the mail, gas stations, etc.  It's also half the distance to both my job and Quentin's.  We work in the poultry processing industry for major producers - me in turkey, him in chicken.  Currently, we rent a small efficiency apartment an hour from his job and 90 minutes from mine.  You can imagine what that is like on gas, even with a fuel-efficient car.  So when the chance to rent this place came up, at an extremely reasonable rental rate, we jumped on it.  Oh, Quentin wasn't too keen on it at first, after seeing the place.  His words were, "It's a s**thole and neither I nor any member of my family is going to live there."  I could see the good bones of the place and the potential, so I quietly arranged to be able to start cleaning up the livable trailer, so I could eventually show him what it could be.  He cottoned on to what was going on pretty quick, and finally agreed to let me show him diagrams of what I thought could be done, photos of what was being done, and photos of things online that could be purchased to make living there easier.

You see, the plumbing is shot to crap, the electric needs some work, and the flooring isn't the BEST in the world in some spots (it has a few soft spots - we can work around those by spanning over the soft spots with furniture so we don't walk on them - the floor joists are pretty good, it's the plywood floors that are shot).  It needs a LOT of cleaning up, inside and out.  But it's cheap, and has potential, and it's half the commute for us both.  That last alone is a deal-maker right there.  We're tired a lot from work and the commutes, and right now we only have one car, which I use for my drive.  He rides with a friend for another couple of weeks till he gets his vacation paycheck, which we plan on using part of as a downpayment for him to have his own vehicle.  But then he'll be driving an hour each way again, and with my 90-minute commute to boot, it's a bit much for us both.  We hardly see each other, being on different shifts anyhow, but the long drives are a killer financially and physically.  I know we'll both be glad to get moved!

But as I said, the place is rather a bit more than a mess.  It's a borderline disaster, but it's one of those disasters where a lot of elbow grease reveals there's something decent there to work with.  It's not a permanent solution by any stretch, but the rental agreement states we can have animals and a garden and such, so I can get my garden going again, and we can have a dog or two, and get some Angora rabbits (I spin, knit, crochet, weave, craft and make jewelry as a sideline business - I want to get that going better, too!).  Eventually we want some Angora goats for their mohair, some Katahdin sheep for their wool [Katahdins are hair sheep, so they shed rather than having to be sheared] and chickens and guinea hens (the place is tick central and I am a tick magnet). Guineas and chickens and a dog or two are first priority.

So, anyhow ... photos.

Standing about halfway up the drive to the house, looking back at the county road. That's my little Aveo at the end of the drive. Lots of tree branches and some broken glass and such IN the drive right now, so I don't dare pull in too far. Not too long a walk to the trailer to clean things up, though, so not a problem. You can see how overgrown with brush and such the drive has gotten in the 3 yrs it's been left alone ... we will be clearing back 2-3 feet on each side of the drive to open it up for vehicles to get through without scraping the brush!

This is the whole of the drive. I am standing right in front of my car looking up the drive. The lightish blob in the middle is the Falcon mobile home we're (me alone right now due to time constraints on hubby) rehabbing and will be living in.

This is the trash pile near where I park the car right now. There was a truck with all this in it near the deck but when the truck was taken out, the people who took the truck just dumped all the trash along the drive, iincluding this lovely pile of god only knows what that we'll be cleaning up and probably mostly burning.

This is a plastic tank of some kind, possibly for water storage.  Even Quentin isn't quite sure what it's for, but it's in good shape, so we'll figure out a way to repurpose it somehow.  It's about the size of a small car.

The landlord/landlady's old vehicles that don't run that they want left alone. Okies ... I have no problem leaving the things alone, lol. They're not in the way, after all, just sitting there being eyesores. (The car makes a good outdoors seat as well when we're working up there. Just park our butts on the thing and grab something to hydrate with, and relax for a few.)

More of the trash that got left behind. Yes, that IS an old portable basketball hoop thing.

More of the junk left behind next to the drive. The lightish thing there is an old recliner. If you squint really hard just in the middle, you can see an old bit of fence and gate that was a goat pen and will eventually likely be where the chicken coop goes. We'll be putting a garden in back further on the property where the Falcon mobile home currently sits - it'll already be cleared, pretty much, so it'll be just a matter of putting in raised beds and getting going.

More trash ... you get the idea here, right? LOTS of cleanup time.

This is the trash pile that got left by the FRONT DOOR. Yeesh. There's a ton of old pop cans in there I can pick up for the scrap metal yard, lol.

The brier bushes at the end of the house closest to the road. The window is the end window of the master bedroom.

The front deck ... yes the middle is sagging, cuz a couple of the joists have come loose. Still can walk on it as long as you're careful to stay near the trailer side of the thing.

Closer shot of the deck. You can see where the joists have fallen better. Hopefully fixable.

The briers by the "front" of the trailer (the tongue end) - they surround the end bedroom and kitchen section of the house. Must cut back to reach ....

The other two trailers on the place. On the left is the owner's Fleetwood, which is non-touchable except to put stuff into from the one on the right, the Merlot, that is the owner's if it's in salvageable condition. The Merlot is ours, per the rental agreement, to do with as we wish. We wish to tear it apart and haul the scrapable stuff to the scrap yard.

A picture of the back yard such as it is and another view of the Merlot and a trashed tool shed (trees came down on it a while back and crushed it). Taken from the window of the "front" bedroom off the kitchen.

The lines are the screen in the master bedroom end window. You can just see my car at the end of the drive.

My view out the front door. In winter and early spring, the trees will not block the view of a mountain a ways off that is a pretty slate blue/grey color.

This is much of the trash piled up in the living room. It's been cleaned up from living room, hallway, master bedroom, bathroom and part of the smallest bedroom, so I can get all the old carpet pieces out of the house. The trash will then be stored in the small bedroom until we can haul it to the dump.

The view down the hallway - the jutting out thing you see at the end that causes the hall to jog is the laundry area. Quentin wants to eventually build a small storage cabinet under the upper cabinets there, so we have a place safe from kitties and puppies to store indoors tools.

Looking out the back living room window (hence the screen lines) - that is some scrap metal on the ground I need to clear back to and part of the fence around the "back yard."

The last of the trash to clean up in the small bedroom.

The oiutside wall in the small bedroom. Yes, the paint's peeled off a lot.

The back yard with all it's trash in it. Another project for down the road.

The bathtub as it is now - the photo came out dark but it's not as bad as it seems ... it's just got dirt caked in the bottom that has to be scoured out for the most part.

The bathroom sink that was full of acorns and dead light bulbs.

Part of the linen closet in the bathroom that had about 50 pounds of musty dog kibble in it, six to eight inches deep on every shelf.

The view from the door that goes from master bedroom into bathroom, looking toward the master bedroom closet.

Part of the baseboard area in the master bedroom. Yes, it's missing the floor vent grille and that IS a hole in the wall. I've since patched the hole with gap patch expanding spray foam insulation.  Still have to cover up the vent holes in the floor.

Where I usually sit to catch my breath. The table and chair were already up there.

The view of the front porch trash pile (the place is a Bountiful Farm right now only in that it is bountiful in trees, ticks and trash, lol) from the front door. You can see even better how the one deckboard has badly warped.

Part of the kitchen at the back. The freezer was left there and it's ruined ... it doesn't smell but I am afraid to open it.

The fridge - again afraid to open it as it wasn't cleaned out when the place was left. Yikes!

The kitchen countertops as they are now. Another week or so and they will look much better.

The floor in the kitchen. Yes, it is this bad. The whole place was when I started. The other end of the house is looking pretty decent now. Just needs cosmetic stuff like rugs and curtains and furniture to look like home.

The rolltop desk  in the "front" bedroom. (I say front in quotes because it's actually the furthers from the drive, but it is at the tongue end of the trailer.

The floor in the "front" bedroom.

So as you can see, there is a LOT to clean up.

However, this past Saturday, we visited Home Depot and got a bunch of stuff.  Things are going to be rather inconvenient for a bit with the plumbing, but we've talked that out and have it figured out what to do while we get busy fixing it.  There's quite a bit we picked up.

Wal-Mart found us buying a chainsaw, and I already had a shovel and loppers up there.  I got Quentin the chainsaw as a "every present for the last year that you didn't get" and three-years-at-the-same-job gift (we've been married almost two of them - my second, his first) combination ... he loves it.  Home Depot found us buying replacement light switches and outlets and most of what we need for a sawdust toilet.  The one that's there is a nightmare.  Something got into the tank for it and we're not sure what it is, but it looks like some mad scientist's experiment gone badly awry.  (Addendum: With good lighting we now know what the mad scientist's experiment is. More acorns and goodness only knows what that SQWIRLZ!!!! stored in the tank of the toity!)  The toilet that's there is going to be yanked out, plywood put down over the hole, and our temporary sawdust toity put in until we get the plumbing fixed.  That'll be a few weeks of changing out the bucket every week and dumping the honey bucket into the existing sewage lagoon, but it's that or don't use the bathroom at home for several weeks!  We agree that a sawdust toilet isn't IDEAL, but it's better than no toilet at all.

So we spent quite a few hours this past Saturday up there at the trailer on the mountain, cutting back some brush and a few trees that were either too close to the house and growing out of a pile of dead brush and downed trees (making for a major house fire hazard should lightning strike the tree), or that were growing FAR too close to the drive to allow passage.  The chainsaw got quite the workout, but Quentin and I worked out a system of hand signals that worked for us to get a lot done.  We have a pitifully small woodpile started ... I shall take pictures this weekend, if I remember my camera.  We also have a couple of small brush piles started where we need to lop small branches for kindling off smaller trunks and cut the base trunks down to logs for the woodpile.  With good forest management practices this summer, between cutting up downed trees and taking down and cutting up dead and dying trees, we should have a solid woodpile by fall.

By then, we also hope to have a small woodstove installled.  Nothing huge for the three-bedroom trailer we're going to be living in, just something enough to heat the living room and kitchen and hallway to the bathroom.  We can close off the bedrooms and bathroom, the latter of which will be DARNED cold, but oh well.  We figure we'll survive with lots of blankets on the bed.  With all my crocheting and knitting, we have several afghans to keep us warm in the colder parts of the year, and a woodstove will help cut down on an electric heating bill.  (Plus will allow us to burn trash in the winter indoors, a firepit for the warm weather is going to be used outdoors, and if the electric goes out due to a winter storm, we'll still be able to heat the house and cook.)

With any luck, we'll be moved in by sometime toward the middle to the end of May.  Future posts will cover more of the cleanup and all the things we do to make the place more livable and more of a homestead.  For us, this is a dream come true on the cheap, as improvements can mostly be taken off the rent, which is cheap enough already.  But it's a good thing.  If we can hack it together, we learn a lot of things fairly inexpensively about homesteading, and when we BUY a place, we can take those lessons with us.  (Along with our animals and belongings!)  If it turns out that a place that far out isn't for us, we can determine if we want to be further out from, or closer in to, town.  Do we want more acres or less?  Do we want more trees, or less?  Or maybe homesteading won't be for us after all, and we learn that lesson, too.  On the CHEAP.  Much easier to say, you know what, we need to quit renting this place and find someplace else and not have to try to sell a place in today's economy, than to buy a place and get stuck with a white elephant we can't sell or even rent.  So there's the homestead lesson for this week - if you've not homesteaded before or haven't done it in a long while (as I haven't, last time I did it regularly was ... well, I was about six years old), do it as cheaply as possible to start, preferably with a rental property, so you can determine what you can handle before you commit to a purchase.

I'm off to bed for now as my wakeup time of 4 AM comes mighty early.  More news from the farm this weekend.  Night!!!!