While drinking coffee during my morning walk through the garden, I realized something amazing. This is the start of our third summer, but these july mornings are different than those of the past two years. My previous routine, which consisted of heading to the grocery store to buy a coffee, sipping it in the courtyard, while trying to figure out where is was going to get the siding to finish my loft, or how I was going to get my roofing shingles to the property, or if the last burner on my busted old propane stove was going to last another day, and even if it did, someone else might already be using our communal propane tank today.
This summer is different, though I can't hear the morning birds through the walls anymore, the siding and insulation kept me warm through the winter, as is keeping it cool in the summer. My cabin is a tiny home now, no longer an over-glorified leaky wooden tent. These mornings I climb down the ladder into my own kitchen, with a four burner stove, an oven, a rainwater sink. The dishes all have homes on shelves, the sugar, coffee, pasta noodles, all in tins not zip-lock bags. I don't have to ask one of the property mates for the propane tank, cause we all have our own. I make coffee and an egg sandwich, and start my morning walk through the garden.
Beside the garden is a circle of chairs around a table and umbrella. Beneath the table is our winter fire pit, shut down for the summer. In the garden (which is now 5 times the size of my house) you can see the orange flowers of our collendula plant, celebrating it's first birthday. Next to it, raspberry bushes also a year old, not too far away from a blueberry bush we planted back in 2011. Our winter crops of garlic, fava beans, and tree onions, greet their new neighbors: peas, cucumbers, tomatoes, and a family or two of root vegetables.
Jackson walks down from his trailer, as a couple couch surfers emerge from a tent at our pond-side campsite. Jackson and I sit down at the table and talk about the last couple years, how far we've come, and what we have now. A solid foundation, tiny homes, that grant us (though slightly compromised) real life comforts. We can take a day to ourselves and not think about how fucked we'll be if it rains, or how we really should be putting in insulation, so we can put in siding, so we can build a desk, so we don't have to sit in the dirt to write, draw, carve spoons, or whatever. For the first time since we moved here, we can just live!
With that said, we still have an endless list of projects, and though there are still countless ways we can improve our standard of living, we are comfortable enough to also focus on the stuff that is just fun, I can go another couple weeks without hooking up my solar panels and batteries, because today I want to build an archery range....
This summer is different, though I can't hear the morning birds through the walls anymore, the siding and insulation kept me warm through the winter, as is keeping it cool in the summer. My cabin is a tiny home now, no longer an over-glorified leaky wooden tent. These mornings I climb down the ladder into my own kitchen, with a four burner stove, an oven, a rainwater sink. The dishes all have homes on shelves, the sugar, coffee, pasta noodles, all in tins not zip-lock bags. I don't have to ask one of the property mates for the propane tank, cause we all have our own. I make coffee and an egg sandwich, and start my morning walk through the garden.
Beside the garden is a circle of chairs around a table and umbrella. Beneath the table is our winter fire pit, shut down for the summer. In the garden (which is now 5 times the size of my house) you can see the orange flowers of our collendula plant, celebrating it's first birthday. Next to it, raspberry bushes also a year old, not too far away from a blueberry bush we planted back in 2011. Our winter crops of garlic, fava beans, and tree onions, greet their new neighbors: peas, cucumbers, tomatoes, and a family or two of root vegetables.
Jackson walks down from his trailer, as a couple couch surfers emerge from a tent at our pond-side campsite. Jackson and I sit down at the table and talk about the last couple years, how far we've come, and what we have now. A solid foundation, tiny homes, that grant us (though slightly compromised) real life comforts. We can take a day to ourselves and not think about how fucked we'll be if it rains, or how we really should be putting in insulation, so we can put in siding, so we can build a desk, so we don't have to sit in the dirt to write, draw, carve spoons, or whatever. For the first time since we moved here, we can just live!
With that said, we still have an endless list of projects, and though there are still countless ways we can improve our standard of living, we are comfortable enough to also focus on the stuff that is just fun, I can go another couple weeks without hooking up my solar panels and batteries, because today I want to build an archery range....
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