A new Garden of Eden

Mid-late April and May - 2006
Once Sue and I had some semblance of organization to our home's interior we surveyed the area around our home. We first decided that we'd create an orchard on the North side of the house and begin two simple vegetable gardens, one on the South side of the house and one on the South side of the shop. Sue pointed out thought that we should take advantage of the heat reflected by both buildings for heat loving plants like tomatos, peppers and basil. We did not then, nor do we yet own a tiller or tractor, and so with pickaxe and shovel we started the creation our garden of Eden.

Eden comes with rocks
One thing we are blessed or cursed with is a plentitude of rocks, in various sizes. The larger ones, say the size of a bowling ball or large watermellon, I gathered to form the borders of some raised planting beds and to line our main pathways. The first project I started was a simple gravel path from the driveway to the back door of our residence. Sue had read about the technique of using newspaper to retard the growth of weeds. So, we laid newspaper down on the ground I'd picked and smoothed for the path. On top of the newspaper we put a layer of stones, from the size of golfballs to a small fist. Next came a 2 inch deep layer of gravel. It did not take too long before we ran out of newspaper and so we started to use weed retardant fabric.

Over the Summer and into the Fall of 2006 I extended the pathway to the shop, from the back door of the house to: the SW corner of the House and the NW corner of the house. I had also develped some planting beds between the house and shop.

Plants like nice homes too!
For the planting beds I pickaxed the designated areas, setting aside all the rocks from the size of a golfball on up. Sue ordered ten yards of mushroom compost which we put into most of the beds. Some plants don't care for this compost we learned, blueberries in particular, so they and the cane-berries were treated to a special locally made compost. I constructed the rock-bordered raised bed, along the south side of the shop. It looked pretty good once I was done. The vegetable beds were planted in late June. I devised various fencing systems to discourage the local wildlife from feasting on our baby plants.

Before planting the orchard it only made sense to put up a tall fence first. Deer feel completely free to munch on most anything we humans desire to plant; we learned the hard way on a few of our favorite trees and flowers. I dug post holes and put up 4X4 treated posts and then tacked up a 48 inch high by 2X4 inch mesh utility fencing, at a height of 6 feet 6 inches. Under the untility fence went a row of 24 inch high poultry fencing, to try and keep out the rabbits. We are still fighting it out with the rabbits.

Our orchard is home to: 2 Filbert Nut trees, 2 Pear trees, 3 Apple trees, 8-9 Blueberry shrubs, 9-10 cane-berry crowns.

Tea Time! (June-July 2006)
To try and recapture one of Sue's favorite Spring and Summer activities, her morning Tea Time, Sue began to create a patio off of the south-facing glass sidding doors. Sue and I had thought about a nice large deck running along the south side of the house from west to east, but, we also wanted to plant tomatos along the south side of the house. So we chose a patio option as being the one which gave us the best use of the space. Sue placed the patio at the base of the southside porch, extending it toward the south. She used 12" square red concrete pavers. Sue's patio was ready for use by July 1st, 2006

Springing Forward

Hooray for spring! I visited our home site on April 3rd and there were stacks of cinder block and of sacks of mortar waiting for brick-masons to put them around the base of the house. I returned on April 7Th and the cinder block skirting was completed, tar applied and the roof and foundation drainage system installed. Sue and I were told, that if we didn't make too much noise we could move in, so on April 9Th we did just that. It was just like camping, we slept on a double wide air mattress for five nights.

On April 11Th our contractor Gary and his daughter Diana, constructed our three porches. Gary finished back filling around the cinder block. While they were doing that our wood stove was being installed. Little did we know on that day just how important a decision it was to go ahead and purchase the wood stove. Yeah! the County Inspector came, checked out the house and signed our certificate of occupancy.

The next day, April 12Th, the top layer of gravel was laid over our driveway. Gary hooked up the water and septic system to the garage shop. In the house, our new carpet was installed. A little rain fell but our spirits were not dampened. Now we were ready to move in our furniture and set up our home.

Thursday April 13Th came and the move commenced. I had lined up my good friend Glenn and he helped me move our furniture from storage out to the house. The down side was that it rained hard that day and for the two following days as well. Because we had no proper walkways Sue and I had decided to purchase two bales of straw. I laid straw down on a track leading from the driveway to the backdoor and from the backdoor down to the south facing glass sliding door. Glenn and I were able to get the furniture in without tracking in any mud. This was the most unpleasant move-in, from a weather point of view, I ever had. I truly thank Glenn for helping.

We did do a wee bit of furniture arranging that evening. On previous occasions I had moved many of our boxes of belongings from the storage units we rented into our garage/shop. It took Sue and I many days to get really settled in. To some degree in fact, we're still getting settled. The garage/shop still has to be put into order. As April moved into May we felt a strong need to get some sort of garden and landscaping done.

Trial by Nature: Building in the Winter

Winter in the foothills presents a few challenges to any building project. Though a contractor can pour concrete at fairly cool temperatures, there are other considerations such as wind, snow and rain. The rain creates soft earth and/or mud. There is also the dance between site developement and construction. Our contractor Gary was asked by Dale, who was building the garage/shop, to hold off digging the trench for water & power until he had the concrete floor of the garage/shop poured. Dale was delayed on putting on the garage roof because too few sheets of forest green metal for the roof were delivered. The next lot were the wrong color and then some of the sheets of the correct color were damaged when dropped off the truck, so several days were lost do to human errors.

The two halves of our house were joined within a few days of arrival, Dec 9th, and the interrior finish work was begun. In transit several cracks in the wallboard appeared and they and the joint seams had to be covered and painted. We had to wait for the carpet to be laid until electrical power was provided, so the shell of our home sat empty for several weeks. The good news was that the garage/shop's shell and the house were ready for interrior work at about the same time. Snow, cold and the Christmas Holidays slowed work until the new year.

The floor for the shop was poured on January 5, 2006 and the water & power trench was dug on January 19, 2006. This brings up the matter of working with the power company. While arranging for electrical power, Sue and I werinformed that we needed to provide a diagram showing the locations of our house, shop and our well's pump-house in relation to the electrical vault and indicating the distances the power cable would run to each. One of my good investments was a 200 foot flexible tape meassure. Using this tape I got the required measurements. I created a diagram, on my computer, using the shapes, lines and text frames in MS Publisher. I submitted the digram along with our power application and we waited. One has to wait for several inspections to take place. The depth and quality of your trench is looked at and of course the electrical panel and wiring has to be checked and a green tag applied. We got hooked to the power grid on January 25, 2006. About two weeks later the shop was wired by Lane, Gary's electrical sub-contractor, and the shop was ready to be used. Power meant that the heat could be turned on to warm the house in preparation for laying the carpet. Turning the power on inside the house was done by the home seller's set-up crew The process felt so slow, Sue and I wanted to move in so badly but we had no water and the septic system was still not hooked up.

The month of February came and on Feb 13th, Gary and his daughter Diana worked on hooking the septic system to the house and in laying the water line from the house and shop down the trench to the electrical vault. A trench from the vault to the well's pump-house pad still needed to be dug. It was dug on Feb. 15th. Constrction was begun on the pump-house on Feb. 21. The work was done by Gary, his son Gary Jr. and Lane.
Oh, and I watched and took photos as I did for many of the construction activities. The well's pump installation and wiring were completed by March 17th. One wiring feature we had installed on the pump-house was a Gen-tran, so we could easily hook up a generator to run the pump in case of a power outage. I informed the power company that we were ready for the power cable to be run from the vault to the pump-house. The electrical cable was laid by March 26th. On March 28th Gary and Gary Jr. hooked the water system to our house. We then waited for the home seller's crew to turn the water on inside the house, to make sure there were no problems. The weeks we spent waiting to move in wore on us but at least the weather was getting somewhat better and we were now officially several days into Spring.

Home Sweet Home

The key to staying out of finacial trouble is pretty simple: live within your income! Sue and I were more interested in having space around us than of having a large home to take care of. Of course it is easier for us because we are both introverted personalities, hence we don't feel a need to entertain much nor do we feel a need to be constantly connected to someone, anyone, by means of radio, TV or phone. Having a modest sized manufactured home kept us within our budget. Being so far away from a city does make it necessary for us to plan our trips into "town" so we make the cost of travel work. So we plan to run mulitple errands when we drive into town.

(We had about a 1/2 acre brushed-out on our 10 acre parcel. The photo above left shows the pouring of the foundation pad for our pump house. The right hand photo is the pad for our home.)

When trying to choose a manufactured home, Sue relied on her sister who told us about a company whose homes are so well built that they offer a 10 year warranty - probably the best warranty in the manufactured home arena. We checked out a variety of floor plans and Sue settled on one she particularly liked. The square footage came to about 1400 sq. feet. The house was ordered in the Fall of 2005, once our loan was approved. While the house was being built the site had to be prepared. The home dealership we bought the house through gave us the business cards for several local excavating businesses. The one we chose turned out to be a family run business and we really enjoyed working with them. Whenever I went out to our home site I took along my trusty digital camera to document the process.

I met Gary, the contractor, out at the site in late October, 2005 so we could discuss how to approach clearing a building site. I tagged some evergreen trees which I hoped he could bypass while clearing the area. The site included an area for the house, the garage/shop, and a septic system drain field plus room for a small orchard and garden. On November 23, 2005 the concrete pad for the house was poured. Two or three days later it snowed. In very early December the garage/shop was started. On December 9th, I think it was, the two halves of our house were delivered. It was December 12th that the crew came to put them onto the pad and join them together. I was present and took lots of pictures. It was a very impressive process to watch.

Going for it!

Now that my wife Sue and I have been living in the foothills of the North Cascades for over a year, I thought it would be interesting to set the proverbial pen to paper and write about our experiences. Moving from a medium sized city out into the hinterlands was not an easy task. For one, finding a suitable piece of property was a bit daunting. A good year before our move Sue and I took a few trips into the country just see what felt like a new home to us, to see if some area drew us to it. In fact we were drawn to a particular area and with it in mind I did a computer search to see what was listed.

(The two photos above show Sue and our realtor looking over the plot diagram. In the right hand photo note the tall trees on the left side of the background. Look for them in later post photos to help you orient the house & garden as our place grows.)

I think I found the big lead in a local newspaper, a realtor was himself selling a 20 acre piece, described as being on the side of a hill. When Sue and I visited the property we enjoyed the commanding view but neither of us desired to try and get up and down the hill during the snowy months. Though there was plenty of land it was not very usable for what we had in mind, we wanted a vegetable garden and an orchard. Sue and I wanted nature trails however we did not want to fully exhaust ourselves on a steep slope. But the good news was that this realtor knew of several others parcels of land being prepared for sale.

A few miles away from the hill top property there were some five and ten acre parcels. After visiting both Sue announced she preferred the ten acre parcels. As it turned out, three of the ten acre parcels were ready to sell, though one already had buyer. Sue and I did not waste time in making our move, we made an offer on the parcel we now own. From the County highway, our parcel is one mile in distance along a private road. At present most of the other ten acre parcels have been sold. On the one next to ours, the owner is nearing completion of her house and on another the owner is just now preparing the forms to pour a concrete foundation.

Once Sue and I decided on the property we had to decide how much house we could afford. The short platt covenants stated that the house could not be less than 1200 sq feet in floor space and there also had to be a two car garage. Sue and I decided on a manufactured home and a pole building for a shop/garage. In order to make sure we could handle the mortgage we based our home loan around the monthly payment we felt we could afford to make. The sale of our previous home netted us a fair amount, but it never goes as far an one hopes.

Fortunately we had a place to stay while the home site was prepared, the home set up and the garage/shop built. We were able to move in during the month of April, 2006.