There and Back again. We are finally home.

 We are home.  What a long strange trip it has been. Almost 5 months after our house burned, 3 temporary residents and we have finally found our way back home.

It isn't much, but it is ours.

Having lost everything, and then spending several months in a furnished house where nothing belonged to us, there is something to be said about having something to call your own.  We are slowly filling it with lovely things we have been gifted or collected. My new fruit bowl was hand carved  locally in Floyd.   A french press i found at the goodwill. An antique coffee grinder we purchase from a garage sale, and kitchen towels a gift from my grandmother.  The blue mug that now holds my kitchen utensils was a favorite of mine recovered from the fire. It is cracked and chipped, and missing it's handle but i am still happy to have it back.

i used to have a stained glass dragonfly in my kitchen window. i used to love to look out at the garden while washing dishes.  i am now on the opposite side of the yard. i have a beautiful moon wind chime hanging in the kitchen window (thank you Cathy!) and i can still look out at my garden while washing dishes. 

Of our three cats, Talulleh was the only one found.  She has spent the last 4 months living in Kenan's glass shop.  She too seemed very happy to be home.  

We officially moved in on June 1st. So we have been scrambling to make up for missed time.  4 months away from home, and the gardens and flower beds are completely out of control.  i'm still struggling to finish planting my garden, and even though many things are getting planted too late...i'm still happy just to be here planting them.

Now that we are here we have begun the stages of trying to rebuild. i spend an extra ordinary amount of time online searching house plans, and realty and alternative housing options. We still do not know what we are going to do.  We have a very limited amount of time to lock something in with the insurance company or we basically forfeit the money they would be contributing to the rebuild.  So although we are home, we can not even begin to relax yet.  Still so much to do and think about. 

The first week that we were in RV the kids told me 'this feels just like our old house. Like we have always lived here'.  i almost cried when they said it. i admit i was worried that pulling them away from the comfortable home that we were renting might be a mistake. The 'moving again' was so hard on all of us that i really questioned whether i was just being selfish in wanting to come back here. 

So many people have said 'Home is where the heart is. It is not a physical place it is something you carry with you.' Although i agree there is some truth to that, as long as our animals were not with us, our hearts could never totally feel at home.  We had a huge emptiness caused by the separation.  Returning home has given us a sense of peace that has been missing for months now.  We are back on our land, back in our garden, and back with our remaining animals. 

We are home. 

Progress, i think?

In 4 days we are packing up and moving again.  After 4 crazy months, we are headed 'home'.  We are finally moving back onto our land, into an RV until we can rebuild the house. i am both excited and a little scared. :/  We always enjoy our time at the property, but there comes a time each day when the kids are ready to go back to the house. In a couple more days that won't be an option anymore.

Kenan has been out of the town for the weekend at a glass expo in Toronto. Leaving all the packing, organizing , cleaning etc up to me.  It is also Memorial day weekend, so i'm frantically trying to get my garden in all while keeping both kids entertained. The contractor finally came back out to hook up the electricity/water, which was supposed to be set up May 15th.  We could have called a plumber and a electrician to come out and do it, but we thought it would save us some stress to hire a contractor to just take care of it all.  Yeah, we were wrong.

There always seems to be a lot of destruction that goes hand in hand with progress.  This was of course necessary to run the electricity to the camper and the well pump. i don't love what they did to my yard, but it's progress.  right? Because i'm starting to wonder.  

We had a spiget installed so we can access water easily, and they hooked the electric up to the pump and...NOTHING. The pump is dead. We don't know whether the pump burned out during the fire because of electrical wire melting together and shorting out, or if one of the water pipes broke and drained the well before the pump/electricity was shut off.   All we know if that we still have no water, and now we have to call the well guy out to pull the pump.  Seriously kicking ourselves for not doing this in the beginning. We could have saved ourselves a lot of money by avoiding the middleman. Also, if we had just contacted the pump guy to start, he would have figured out the problem immediately when he hooked it all up (back on the 15th!), and could have pulled the well then and had it fixed...and we would have water right now. But no, nothing is ever that easy.  

i had a water barrel set up behind the RV to collect the rain water that was running of. It filled up super quickly, and i had a full barrel to water my garden plants.  Unfortunately it was in the way of hooking up the septic, and had to be moved. :( The contractor installed this fancy septic pipe that goes from the RV and connects to the pre-existing septic system.  So we should have a working toilet right now...IF we had water. i plan to create a little platform over the tube so i can set my rain barrel back up.

i have already started researching how to make a composting toilet. Even if we are able to get it all set up by the time we move in (i'm not very optimistic) it  makes sense to have a back up system, and the humanure approach seems much better/safer than just digging an outhouse.

We wanted the electricity to be totally hooked up on the 15th.  The electric company brought out a temporary electric pole and set it up on the 21st, but it was not connected to anything. On the 25th, the contractor came out and installed an outside outlet that we could plug the RV into.  So we technically have power!
However, after the RV had been plugged in for a few hours, i noticed that the inside of the RV was getting really hot...as if an oven was left on. i checked to make sure the heat was turned off then tried to find the source of the heat. It was coming from the breaker box/converter panel. It was actually hot to the touch.  i don't know what that means, but it did not seem right and so i unplugged it. It was mentioned to the contractor, and he said the electrical system of the RV is not his problem. So when Kenan gets back he'll take a look at it, and we will probably have to call out an actual electrician to check everything out, make sure it's set up correctly and make sure the RV's electrical system is okay.  Last thing i want is a fire hazard.  When we purchased the RV, it was plugged in and we walked through it and checked to make sure everything was working.  We also purchased it from the fire chief of the town next to us, and i really do not believe he would sell us an RV with a faulty electrical system knowing that we just lost our house to a  fire a few months ago. So i really don't think there is anything wrong with the campers electrical system, but i am unfamiliar with how it all works and do not feel comfortable leaving it plugged in if it is going to generate that kind of heat until i know for sure everything is fine.  So all that means is that although we have power, we still don't have power.
 It also means we will probably have to call out an electrician ourselves even though we hired the contractor so that we didn't have to deal with all this. Honestly, if it is this difficult (and expensive!!) just to get an camper set up, i am really dreading the house building process.

So yeah, that's where we are.

Simplifying a Simple Life.

So we are about to embark on a somewhat crazy journey. In just a couple weeks, we will be packing up everything (not that we have a whole lot) into storage and moving into this 260 sq ft RV.  This will be our home until our new house is built.  We are anticipation being in the RV approx. 10-14 months. 

i hope to be able to document the journey and share some of the challenges and benefits that come with small space living.  Although i have always considered our life to be  very simple, it is about to get a whole lot simpler. 

We looked at a ton of RVs, checked craigslist daily, and drove all over SWVA (and sometimes NC) to look at them. We decided on this one.  It is a  1999, 30' Dutchman Supreme.  It is a little older than some of the others we looked at but it has so much more space and was still within our price range.  The Supreme has higher ceilings, which is really nice for my super tall husband. It has a master's cabin in the front with a queen size bed, a closet and lots of cabinets.  It also has bunkbeds for the kids. We'll be hooking it up to the existing septic, electricity and water.  So although it will be simple living, we'll still have some modern conveniences...including internet. :) 

The RV has a little kitchen with a gas stove/oven and a microwave.  It's a small space though, and i don't really see myself cooking up too many elaborate meals.  During the summer i'm expecting we will be cooking over the fire quite often. i'd like to get a tripod and some cast iron so i can cook directly over the fire. We should probably start looking for a grill as well, and start collection some vegetarian grill/campfire recipes. 

This is the view from the sofa. i can look right out into my garden.  Up the steps is the masters cabin, and the bar stools are up against the kitchen counter. It's really a nice space. i expect that in the summer we will spend very little time inside it, and during the winter we'll be playing a lot of board games. :)

Right now, the packing has begun. We were able to secure an extra month at this house, so we do not officially move into the RV until June 1st. We are slowly beginning to pack and move things over.
Kenan will be going to Canada for a glass expo near the end of the month, so i am trying to make sure we are 75% packed before that. Despite losing absolutely everything 3 months ago, we have managed to acquire a lot of stuff in a very short amount of time, due to the extreme generosity of so many people.  So much of our stuff will be moved into storage, and we will each get to bring one box of belongings into the RV.  The other items will be in storage either at Kenan's shop or in our shed, so we will be able to access them now and again to get different clothing or swap out toys, books etc.

So if you were limited to one small box of belongings, besides the obvious like toothbrushes and underwear  what would you keep?  Because i lost most everything that had sentimental value, my box will probably contain mainly practical items. Craft supplies of course, a few books, garden seeds, a jar of acorn caps, a journal and a few of the really special  handmade gifts i was recently given.

i do have a bit of apprehension about spending a year in such a small space.  However, i know it will be good for us to be back on our own land, back in our own space and i really think it will be a good experience and lesson in simplicity for all of us.



Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.  ~William Morris