What is your solution for cooking/eating in the winter? great thread/blog GL


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You should think about planting a couple peach and apple trees. A lot depends on how good your soil is, but a mature peach tree can produces 200 or 300 peaches a year. You can't eat all those, but maybe you could trade some of them with your neighbors for other stuff. Just dig a shallow hole and drop a peach in it. Back home in AZ our backyard tree got a half-dozen saplings started just by peaches that fell on the ground that we didn't pick up because they had bird holes in them.

Do peaches grow well in upstate New York?

Peaches come from a can. They were put there by a man. In a factory downtown.

My parents peach tree took like 5+ years to fully mature but yea the thing has tons of peaches now.

Nice.

Much better.

Also re: the insulation thing... More is better unless you compress it. It needs to be expanded to it's full size. If you've squashed it at all to fit into the space, it would be worth your time to remove some and let it puff up. It's the air spaces in insulation that do the insulating and by squishing it, you're just reducing the volume of air and hurting the r value.

I wouldn't worry about insulation. Your neighbor is Amish, he can sell you one of those fireplaces he builds

But that's gotta flatten at some point, right? Improperly installed insulation must still be better than none? This is the energy nerd in me asking, not looking for practical advice. Like, I could shove more up there and do what you said I shouldn't. And while it might make it worse, why? At what point do you stop getting negative returns .... I get it, not totally.

Shoulda read this before posting my other response.

The prefab route was the result of a long process of eliminating other options. I didn't have a lot of cash on hand, and they let me pay with a credit card. That was a factor.

I looked at campers and trailers, but nothing felt right. I was considering installing a wood stove in a pull-behind trailer for a while. I also looked at mobile homes that parks were trying to get rid of - either to move it, or before I pulled the trigger on the land, to consider renovating it in trade for a free home.

I went to look at one mobile home a fairly nice park wanted to give away. My brother and I pulled up around 11 a.m., and while we were there three couples came to look at it also. It was a ****hole. I knew it was beyond my construction abilities immediately (all three couples, the dude was a carpenter). Also, so sad, probably the result of the region's nasty opiods epidemic. A kid's birthday cake, half eaten, empty Jack Daniels bottles in the bathroom. ****ing criminal to have a child in that environment.

In the end, I realized buying a cabin was the one thing I probably wouldn't be looking to have hauled off, eventually. It was a bigger expense, but I'm happy I went that route. I'm not sure if that answers your question or I took a left turn, but that was some of the thought process.

And yeah, I've definitely looked into Air BnB'ing it or something. In the right season, there are similar setups (typically they have an outhouse) getting $50/night. This place is an awesome tourist destination in the summer.

I want to build the artists' cabins I mentioned earlier. You know all those UPS trucks? I suspect it would be easy, given their shape and ubiquitous nature, to turn them into cabins. I'd like to try and do that as a proof of concept. There must be tons sitting around in junkyards.

Yeah, when I get the field cleared out completely I'd like to plant a couple of trees and have been looking at different options. Apples are huge here, and with Cornell research there's a lot of cool stuff going on. There are large nurseries that supply commercial operations with trees that also sell to individuals.

There are a couple of apple trees but they were never pruned and they're crowded by other trees and have basically grown out of control. The soil here should be good. I have not had it tested, but I'm surrounded by successful farmland and while I'm sure they do some soil management it can't be that big of a leap. Or maybe it is.

My Grandparents built a little trailer out of a Linen truck. Bought dirt cheap @ Auction, retrofitted with a propane stove top, sink, bunks, banquette.

Like this one.

When a friend of mine went to college, he bought a small 2 br trailer for $1500. His dad towed it up there behind his pickup. He parked it in a cheap trailer park. They had a gas line break somewhere, so instead of fixing it they just said they would no longer provide gas, lol. Luckily they had community showers, and my friend bought a space heater. This was in snow country, so the walks to and from the showers in the morning must have been interesting. No idea why he did it, the dorms were very nice and very cheap. I'm sure he broke even at best.

You're probably better off the route you went. Many towns have ordinances against living in "temporary" housing like campers. Even if they don't now, it could be coming in the years to come.

I mean to each his own, more power to you if this makes you happy, but man not a single thing about this is the least bit appealing to me (other than maybe not having neighbors right next to you).

Mia,

What if you have someone over and accidentally murder them?

I imagine that would be quite a dilemma for you to handle, but it would be nbd for sapo to take care of.

That must be at least somewhat appealing to you, right?

The thing is, it's the juxtaposition of backwoods livin' with the visiting of the market, patronizing the bar, etc.

All that artificial lighting and modernism ruins the whole Thoreau motif.

But that's what this oddly is: your version of pragmatism.

Whole thing is random bruh

Where do you find girls to hook up with?

easiest "your mom's house" ever...

.

You guys realize that's enough land to raise a whole heard of sheep, right?

Yeah, I've heard of sheep.

How creepy was sleeping at first compared to now? If at all. I'm sure there's enough noise at night to hear w/e. I would

Yeah, though my town has no zoning and has right to farm laws enacted, and "No Zoning" is a pretty serious political platform around here. But yes, it absolutely could change down the line.

It's definitely random. Wouldn't argue with that. I just see it as the best of both worlds: All the freedom of living on a big plot of land in nature, many of the conveniences of modern life.

I didn't come in here to advocate anyone go the same route. That'd be crazy. And three years ago, none of this would have been appealing to me.