Sapo,

Very cool! I was actually just up in the Finger Lakes (Watkins Glen area). Went to Two Goats and also Hazelnut Kitchen in Trumansburg for dinner one night. Excellent food.

Sorry if I missed it skimming the thread, but do you have any additional plans for the land? I saw you were cutting trails, anything else?

Well done, ElSapo. I'm a huge fan of both minimalism and the tiny homes movement. Glad to see you living life on your own terms.

ElSapo,

What are your monthly expenses, and how do they compare to what your costs were when you lived in the city?

This looks like it might be an ACC hut in the Canadian Rockies.

That's high praise. Thank you.

Oh, yeah then you saw exactly where I am. Hazelnut is legit, and Two Goats has great beer - and a view so good you could sell $6 PBR. But they don't.

I do have some plans. I've been thinking about putting in between 1 and 3 more cabins, and offering them up to artists for short-term stays. When I was out traveling, even being on the road, low expenses, I found it hard to just find space to be and work, without paying too much. I'd like to be able to give that to people, and maybe create a community around that.

Initially I wanted to jump into it, but I think I need a bit more time here before I try that. Been considering a Kickstarter to get it going. I'd like to build the cabins myself (they would be v small, v simple).


From TheNoodleMan:
In the city, I paid about $1,700 a month for rent. Here I'm just paying down credit card debt. I probably spend $100 or so on gas, between transportation and power. Nothing else changed in particular, on a standing basis. Water is a fairly minor expense, I do buy it retail and then just fill up jugs whenever I can.

For the first year, and especially first six month, I spent a lot of money. Tools and materials. Wood, chainsaw, insulation, wood stove ... Those expenses have tapered off greatly, now that I'm a bit more established.

I don't have a specific budget, but I think of this as a five-year plan. I want to be debt free and have built this into an even more comfortable setup than it already is, by 2020. It's probably achievable in more like two to three years, but I'm lazy and I spend too much money on entertainment, eating out, drinking and so on.

Sapo,

Artist cabins idea sounds awesome.

I know several artists who already crap in buckets

How much do they sell it for?

Sapo, do you go to the Rongo ever?

Sometimes, but not often. I hang out at Silver Line, 50 feet away.

Rongo is an old-school institution in T'burg, full name The Rongovian Embassy, I forget why ... anyway, it closed for a while and was reopened by a group of people. Popular music spot, but not the best managed these days.

When I was in school there we used to go until one night we overheard some of the locals talking about "getting the richies". We figured out that we were the "richies" and got the hell out of there before we got got.

Sapo,

What do I need to do differently to see your photos? Some on the last page showed but all of these are just a greyed out blocked symbol.

Tiny Home bloggers wouldn't have liked Thoreau's cabin either. Knowing you write made Walden the first thing that came to mind when I saw this thread, hence the pond question.

Artist's cabins sounds like the first step down the road to cult leader imo. But them hos love that **** so more power to you.

Also don't want to derail but climate change denier as in there were no ice ages or the more usual kind.

ETA: is the plan to leave in 5 years or have an on the grid decent self-built house in 5 years.

LOL, now it's all hippies.

When I first moved to the area I was trying to find a hardware store, and the local family-owned place had just closed. A news story about its closing started, "When the first hippies came to Trumansburg, N.Y. ..."

Ellis Island for the counter culture.

I had this problem too. Super disappointing.

Same. Chrome Mobile.

I think that's the issue, I was using bad links from Google Photos.

For instance, here's a message I received on OKC the other day, was showing that not *everyone* is cool with a guy living in the woods ...

Reposting some photos that had bad links from earlier.

These are what the cabin and things looked like the other morning. You can see the temp chimney setup I build for the 1st season, basically a four-foot section supported by beams and concrete in buckets. I am considering building a permanent brick support structure there:



And, the wood pile. Work is stalled, as the chainsaw is in the shop. Built in keys sheared off the flywheel on a Jonsered.

Some photos from the pasture hike I mentioned earlier, but apparently didn't work. The map, I live basically in the middle of it. The green national forest is slightly deceptive - some of that is federal grazing land the trails cut across.

I still think it's hilarious to just wander by someone's livestock on a hike.



Perfect view down to Seneca Lake. This is a mile from my place, near a good kayaking spot:





Teeter Pond. I drag the kayak across about 125 yards to get there, but it's usually deserted and you can paddle around and watch beavers work on dams and birds fishing and all that.

I went to Walden Pond about a month or so ago - if you have any image in your head of Thoreau's solitude, that's gone. Now it's a popular swimming and picnic area maintained by the state. But the pond is much larger than I'd imagined. And now there are electric vehicle charging stations. Still cool.

Climate change: I wouldn't say hers was a well-considered position. But it came up in a recent discussion of politics. Moving here from D.C. has been fascinating, from one bubble to another.

The five-year plan: It's not set like that. I don't expect to be here and never leave again, and I don't expect to be composting my own poop forever. ... I'd like to hit the road this winter and work from somewhere warmer. I've thought about buying something cheap somewhere warm, and doing the same thing elsewhere a few months.

Long-long term though, I don't see continuing to live in a one-room cabin into my 50s. I'm not ruling it out, I'm pretty darn happy these days, but it seems more likely I either grow this into something substantial or keep it as is and also have one established digs.

Also, I've said this before but moving here just re-proved it to me: I'm convinced most home cooks don't use sufficiently high heat in lots of applications. Which leads to disappointing steaks and even veggies, whatever. But it makes sense, as many people have crappy ventilation.

So now I cook outside all the time. My cast iron pan is *finally* seasoned and pretty much everything I cook tastes better. Coming from tiny apartment kitchens next to sensitive smoke alarms, this is amazing.

This does seem like a winter/summer home situation that is obtainable.

This is what I was wondering because your situation made me think of all the Buying Alaska epis I have seen where there is a home on property similar to yours where they stayed over several years while building the much nicer, more permanent structure close by.

The repost had the same problem. Are the pics also on your blog?

I'm also using Chrome mobile. I wonder if, somehow, this is the issue?

Photos still not working for me.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

not to pile on, but me neither using tapatalk...

Sapo, I found myself wondering about food storage, how's that go? maybe you addressed it and I missed it or maybe it was in a pic I can't see, if not, as someone who got into preservation/canning a little (for the zombies, you know) and also has a decent-sized garden (300 sqft or so) that's starting to pump out a ton of vegetables, I found myself wondering how I would do out there.

you don't have a fridge obv, correct? I know you said you hit the town often, how much food do you have on hand at any given time?

also, how's the garden coming? I read your post on your blog about clearing out all the shallow roots (those are the WORST, ugh) and saw the first pics of the drainage trenches but I don't think there was a follow up post?