The Journey Begins

Finally, the journey begins! We are going from a cookie-cutter house in the burbs to a homestead property in the mountains. It has always been my dream to live off the grid, have some chickens, maybe a few goats to make my own goat cheese. Where I live not that is not even close to possible. Last weekend, we finally started to build our tiny cabin. The first step was probably the hardest. We needed to dig seven holes for caissons. I don't know if you have ever dug holes at 10,000 ft but let me tell you, it is a nightmare. One hole took two of us four hours. We only dug 12 inches wide and two foot deep. I am not kidding. We literally pulled out 200 rocks double the size of softballs. How in the world they fit in that hole will never make sense to me. At one point, I was ready to just build the dang thing right on the ground, but cooler heads prevailed. It took five of us four days just to dig the holes, but it's done! Yeah!

This weekend we are setting the beams and roughing in the plumbing. I have no experience building anything, but I have some great family helping me along the way. I keep going because I see a light at the end of the tunnel. Soon we will be able to leave the rat race and pay ourselves for doing work we love. Just imagine like this. I can enjoy myself fishing and fill the freezer, cutting wood is paying the public service bill. Raising chickens for eggs, a couple of cows for meat, goats for milk and growing a garden will be my grocery bill.

I've done the math and with some downsizing & hard work we can trade working to pay the bills to doing what we love and having the free time to adventure when we like, without answering to any boss. It will be better than the lifestyle we currently live in the city by far.

Packing our bags and moving up is still a couple of years off. We need to downsize significantly, finish building the cabin, install the septic ad well among other things. The great news is that in the meantime we will have a great place to go on the weekends and get away from it all. It will be a long journey, but every journey starts with the first step.