New Friends from Craigslist July 21, 2012

Angel (my bad dog) and I have just returned from John’s Island where we went to the home of Mike(not in this picture), Liz (who wasn’t home at the time) and Edith (their bad dog, who for the record is not nearly as bad as my bad dog).  We met through my craigslist ad.

Mike showed me around his place and offered up a wealth of building materials, tools, and equipment.  Being able to borrow things like ladders will save me money, just as much as getting a free window will.  He said I can leave it all there until I am ready for it.  He even has a small number of cedar shakes that I think will be perfect for the gable peaks.  Mike also took me on a mini-tour of his neighbors nurseries and says he’ll fill my place up with as many plants as I want once it is ready for that. Thank you so much!

Sincerely,

Jennifer and Angel

Sustainable Warehouse July 19, 2012

Sustainable Warehouse

A non-profit organization that disassembles houses for reuse.  The warehouse is awesome with a little bit of everything 🙂

The first craigslist ad :)

The first craigslist ad 🙂

I put an ad on my local craigslist last night and got my first response within an hour.  It is from a couple on Johns Island (and their bad dog) with some free building supplies.  They and some of their friends are also gardeners so I’m sure they will be able to share a ton of information on local growing conditions and what works here.  It is so nice to know that there are still people out there willing to help a stranger. 

A Victim of Good Intentions July 16, 2012

Sunday is my only real day off all week and we finally got a little break from the 100+ degree heat so I figured I would get the materials for a shallow well and haul them out to the property.  I went to Home Depot and got a well point, check valve and variety of pipe and fittings.

Then came the task of fitting them into the little hatchback car I drive.  The pipes are 10′ long and not real flexible.  I managed to get them in through the back and diagonal across my car with the ends near the windshield on the passenger side, but they would not fit inside so I could close the hatch.

The man parked next to me saw what was happening and decided to try to help.  Unfortunately he tried harder instead of smarter resulting in a cracked windshield.  He asked if I had full coverage, I told him no, and he was out of there in a flash.  What could I really do?

I figured out that if I rolled down the front passenger window, took off the front passenger seat’s headrest, pulled the seat forward, and then leaned it back, the pipes fit just fine in the car.

I paid$175 today for a windshield replacement.  (The well parts were only $74.)

I’ve been through so many things so much worse than this that I can laugh when telling this story.  While it was an expense and an inconvenience for me I hold no ill will toward the man who tried to help me.  I know he saw me struggling and had the best of intentions  Having something broken when you have the money to fix isn’t all that bad, it’s when you don’t have the money or even have a clue how to get the money that it can really suck.  Been there, done that, over it!

P.S. Dad, this happened about 10 minutes after we got off the phone.

Looking up July 14, 2012

I spent the night on my plot of land for the first time last night.  I stayed up until 2:30am slowly feeding a small fire limbs from the 3 trees I cut down on 7-4-12 .  When I woke up this morning and crawled out of my makeshift tarp shelter I looked up.  I actually have a small clearing now 🙂

Some tree IDs:

Lower middle- southern yellow pine.  I have many of these but plan to take most of them down because they seem to rot at the base and fall over.  The one you can see in the picture is actually quite a ways away but leans quite a bit.  It seems stable and that particular tree isn’t showing signs of rot yet, but another one out on the property is rotting at the base, and leaning.  I want all of these away from my future building site so  won’t have to go through the hassle of removing them while trying not to hit the house 10 years from now or have one fall on my home or outbuildings.

Just left of the pine, on the lower edge of the picture, is a swamp magnolia, also known by sweet bay, and many other common names.  This is not the same as the sweet bay leaves used in cooking.   The sweet bay used for cooking is Laurus noblis.  Magnolia virginiana is the tree I am talking about here and it does have some folk remedies associated with it but to my knowledge is not used for culinary purposes.   It produces a white flower, much like a magnolia tree and I guess they are cousins.  The swamp magnolia has a smaller flower and isn’t quite as messy as the southern magnolia tree common to my areas residential landscapes.  These can get bigger here than they do in other areas of the country but typically they only get 20 ft tall, which will make them easy enough to manage.  Their fruit/seed pod isn’t anything I have heard of people eating but they are a valuable food resource for birds, squirrels and other wild life.  http://www.bellarmine.edu/faculty/drobinson/SweetBayMagnolia.asp

Entire right side is a gumball tree.  Notice the lovely star shaped leaves.  Unfortunately they also produce “gumballs” which are a nasty thorny seed pod.  They will get stuck in your foot if you step on one barefoot.  Since I prefer to go barefoot 90+% of the time, the gumballs must all die MUAHAHAHAHA

I have not identified the other trees in this picture (or on the land in general) but these three types of trees seem to be dominant.  Right now I can’t even see the tops of some trees because it is so thick.  The variety of trees here is different from my home state of Michigan so it is a bit of a challenge sometimes.  I would not have been able to ID the swamp magnolia so easily, but the flowers are all on the ground and I noticed the leaves looked similar to the magnolia trees commonly used in landscapes here, but with silver on  the underside.

Yay for the good guys! July 13, 2012

This is a red assassin bug.  When I first noticed him he was eating a housefly.  They are a great insect predator to have in your garden.  When chemical pesticides are sprayed they kill the good and the bad.  Bugs like this actually help your garden all season, instead of a few days.

What to do when you don’t have a truck

Growing up on the family farm in a rural area trucks were everywhere.  Most families had a truck and in some family that was the vehicle of choice for all family members including the lady of the house and junior’s first vehicle too.  Now I feel I have been citified.  I drive a little Hyundai Elantra hatchback.  It is good on gas, gets me from point A to point B with minimal hassle, and can even haul quite a bit if I fold the backseats down.  I even drug home a sectional sofa one piece at a time in it.  In my current day to day life a truck has more minuses than plusses, but now as I begin to collect building materials I am finding my car very inconvenient.  Not a single sheet of plywood will fit 😦

I first thought of the idea to rent a truck.  This seems like a good idea as a short term solution but would mean renting the truck every time I need to haul something.  Since I am on such a tight budget I don’t have the money to just go out and buy all of my supplies at once.  I will need a truck many times over the coming months.  I might have to do this once or twice, but I can’t consider it a long term solution so….

I thought about buying a truck.  If I were to buy a truck I would probably have to sell my car to afford it.  My car has over 180k on it though so it is not going to be an acceptable trade-in at any dealership.  Do to money constraints I would have to sell my car and then buy the truck.  I still wouldn’t have much money though and would have to buy an older truck.  My car is getting up there itself, but at least I know what issues it has.  I think my chances of finding an old clunker pick-up that gets anywhere close to the mileage I get now are slim to none.  Except for hauling the building supplies I have no real use for a truck right now.  It all seems like an unnecessary risk for me to take at this point so….

I could borrow a truck.  My brother-in-law has a truck….a nice shiny new one…that he probably wouldn’t want all scratched up.  Who else do I know with a truck???  A WORK TRUCK….not one of these city trucks around here with their chrome rims and fancy paint jobs. I don’t know anyone with the kind of truck I need to use so…….

What else is left?…

Maybe I just need to figure out how to make my car do a better job of doing truck stuff…  Maybe a trailer!?!  YES a trailer!  My little car can haul plywood after all 😀

http://www.harborfreight.com/950-lb-capacity-foldable-4-ft-x-8-ft-utility-trailer-with-8-inch-wheels-and-tires-42709.html

For a few hundred dollars, a good, realistic, long term solution to my hauling needs.  This will be my next purchase for the mini-homestead 🙂 but this weekend….I think I’ll rent a truck!

Adjusting to a different environment for gardening July 11, 2012

I grew up on a small family farm and we always kept a garden that managed to provide most of the veggies during the summer.  Some people kept a root cellar to have some veggies like potatoes, carrots, and squash through the winter, which seems like a great idea to me.  Winters in Michigan freeze everything and kill off the majority of garden pests each year.  Having a farm we always had plenty of free fertilizer and chickens to peck the bugs and small weedlings.  You could even make a temporary pig pen and have them do most of the tilling and aeration of the soil.  They add to the fertilizer and eat grubs too.  Our soil was so fertile that tomatoes and pumpkins would volunteer to grow all on their own from spoiled produce from the year before that had simply been thrown back in the garden bed.  Well, now I’m in coastal South Carolina and things are different here to say the least.

The soil on my plot consists of about 6″ of decomposing plant matter, which is mostly pine needles, and then at least 3′ of sand.  Every time it rains the sand drains away the water and nutrients, resulting in very acidic soil that is not suitable for many plants.  In addition to this problem there is also a pest problem, which I am already witnessing in my yard and garden.  Having had an especially mild winter, the bug populations are insane right now.  The fleas are insane, there are so many cockroaches hiding in my mulch that it seems to crawl away when disturbed, and the caterpillars nearly took out my 3 tomato plants, not to mention putting holes in my herbs.  Another major problem down here is fungus.  It is very humid and rains quite often.  I think the moisture in the air keeps the leaves from really drying out, promoting mold and fungus growth on the plants.  For now the garden consists of 3 tomatoes, a container planted with asparagus (which I plan to put n the ground now that I actually have my own ground:) ) and a variety of herbs including basil, greek oregano, 2 types of lavender, sage, chives, and rosemary.  I tried tomatoes in containers last year and they didn’t do well and never produced a single tomato.  I tried a container with corn also, but my bad little dog kept chewing on them and tipping over the pot so they never got over a foot tall.  As I develop my plot I plan on using raised beds in order to be able to build up the soil for the plants in the beds so it won’t be too acidic.  I also plan on using plants that are suitable to the soil I already have, like blueberries, which don’t do well unless the soil is acidic.

Once I get things going on my own land there will be chickens to help with weeding and insect control but for now I’m stuck picking the pests by hand, spraying dish soap solution on the leaves, and sprinkling tobacco dust around my small garden.   I also had to buy “garden soil” and bags of manure.  Gardening is a whole different ball game down here and it is going to take some time to adjust my methods but the long growing season makes up for it (mostly anyway) and I look forward to the challenges.

My BAD dog

I live in an urban area for the time being and share this roof with my husband, mother-in-law, her 3 cats, and one VERY BAD dog.  Now don’t get me wrong.  I love my dog, but the fact remains she really is a very bad dog.  She is absolutely good for nothing except hogging the bed, guarding me from being kissed by my hubby, and generally being a dog I guess.  She barks, eats the cat food, begs at the table(and anywhere else anyone happens to be eating) jumps up on us as well as visitors, gets on the furniture, steals socks, wash cloths, and used hankies, and if all that isn’t bad enough she is also one of those jealous types.  When she was younger she kept asking for a puppy, but now that she’s  little older and set in her ways I don’t think she would be very nice to a puppy so now I can only have one bad dog instead of two or three.  Despite what many would consider faults I love her and would not change her for the world.  Her name is Angel.  Ironic right?  She is curled up around my back right now making me too hot and forcing me into an awkward position but I wouldn’t change a thing.  This happy, funny, mischievous little dog (almost 40 pounds) brings me so much joy with her silly games and antics, not to mention her remarkable intellect and problem solving capabilities.  I wouldn’t trade her for the world, luckily no one else would want her anyway!

Flexibility

I began my search for land looking for acreage with seller financing, and ended up with a plot of land that is only .3 of and acre paid for in cash.  Well a cashiers check anyway 🙂  The lesson, BE FLEXIBLE!  When I started google searching and checking my local CL for land I had a list of needs and wants for my land.  I never did put it into writing, but here is the gist of it.

My land needed to be within a reasonable driving distance of my jobs, but out in the country.  I wanted to have some privacy and be able to have a compost pile and keep a few chickens without it bothering the neighbors.  I found a bank owned plot in Ravenel, SC.  I will be about a 30 minute drive from work.  I wanted more land but the plot I ended up buying is surrounded by vacant plots so there is both privacy and the possibility to acquire surrounding plots in the future.  I hope to eventually work from home, both performing massages, and selling the produce from my gardens, but for now I had to be realistic about transportation costs.

It needed to be usable.  What I mean by that is it needed to be usable for the uses I have in mind.  To me, being high and dry enough to build on and not having any zoned use restrictions or protected areas is all I needed.  I am actually quite happy to have found such a wild plot of land.  It does mean more work but it will be a labor of love and I’m sure I will get plenty of building materials and mulch from the process of clearing the building site and garden areas.  How great is that!?!  The first steps of sustainability 🙂

It also needed to be affordable.  Be imaginative and flexible when figuring out how to afford a place of your own.  Last year I made about 15k but have managed to keep my living expenses very low and saved up about 1.5k.  I had thought that could be used as a down payment and I could get owner financing on the rest but when I found a plot that was bank owned with a price of only 2.5k I knew I had to figure out how to come up with the rest and buy it outright.  With the plot being bank owned and priced to sell I knew they wouldn’t put up with a bullshitter for long so we had to get everything in order quickly and make our move.  I put in an offer with no clue how we would come up with the rest of the money.  We skimped on everything we could for a few weeks so we could get together the rest of the money for closing but it seemed like an impossible task.  Luckily my husband is a full-time student right now and thanks to a student loan and a good couple of weeks at work we were able to come up with the money. I know we will have to pay back the student loan but it would have been nearly impossible for us to get the money quickly enough any other way.  Many people use these loans to pay for their living expenses while going to school, but this money was spent on making sure our living expenses are minimal for the rest of our lives.  This made it more than worth the small debt.    The bottom line is, yes we went into debt, but it seems like a sound investment to me and it was a small enough sum that we can reasonably pay it back in a short time without it putting much of a strain on us.

We all have different circumstances and restraints but to thrive you have to figure out how to work with, around, and sometimes in spite of those restraints.  Be flexible and learn to revise your plan if there is a difficulty.  Be willing to have-not so that later you may have all your heart desires and appreciate it all the more, knowing the sacrifices made in obtaining it.  If you cannot obtain whatever it is you desire, maybe you desire too much.  Take a look at yourself and your life and decide for yourself what you want.  From that point on you are responsible for every success and every learning experience (sounds so much nicer than “failure” doesn’t it?) in your life.