Tiny Free House

Some exciting events happend at the farm this past week, although not with the tiny house.

A crop duster was taking off nearby and shortly after take-off had engine trouble and crashed in a nearby field. My in-laws immediately went to investigate and found the plane upside down in a rice field. The engine was snapped off and flipped backwards.

My father-in-law made his way through the water and mud and found the pilot alive and kicking, but stuck inside with the doors pinned shut by mud. He helped pop a window out and helped the pilot move away from the plane. Gas was leaking and it had a full load of fertilizer.

The pilot is doing well, partially thanks to Dick and Sherry’s quick action!

The good news is that I’ll most likely be moving the Tiny Free House off the family farm and closer to home. In fact I may squeeze it along side my regular house and fence in a little more of my side yard to keep my neighbors from freaking out. This is good news because having it here will allow me to work on it much more often.

The sad news is that it looks like the family farm is going to have to be sold. Both the primary legal owners are retired and living there… and living way out in rural anywhere doesn’t always make the most sense as we all get older. So both are carefully working through the details of selling and moving. It’s sad because the land has been in my wife’s family for over 100 years. But then again 100 years ago the world was a very different place and the needs of folks back then were quite a bit different from folks these days.

So while this is good and sad news it also seems like the right thing to do all the way around. Although it does increase my interest in finishing the house soon and finding some cheap land to set it up as a home away from home.

So stay tuned… now I’m working on moving day preparations like finding the quickest way to batten down the pallets and exploring the best freeway-free path to safely make the 60 mile trip. The house IS on wheels but it’s far from complete and will need some added support to make it through all the bumps and turns.

I spent another half day at the farm this past weekend right before the storms blew back into northern California. I got a few more pieces of plywood screwed onto the exterior of the house.

The only wall left is the back wall and then I’ll trim off the bottoms of the plywood where they run too long and cut the wheel well openings. The trailer has no fenders like you see on so many tiny houses built on new trailers so I’ll need to frame the wheel openings in with wood and cut the exterior wall sheathing and siding over the wheels in arches to make it look right.

I’m still on the lookout for the right kind of roofing. I’m holding out for corrugated metal roofing. I hope to finish the roof before moving onto the siding.