The big news I have to report for 2011 is the adoption of a baby girl – growing our family to 4 (mom, dad, and two daughters). Our little one is almost two years old now and we’ve had her in our home full time since she was about 8 months old – but we’ve known her since birth.

You see our daughter’s birth parents are relatives who’s lives spun out of control and into the lap of the law. It’s a sad story but at least their three children (13, 6, and 2) safely landed in the arms of family after a short (1 month) stay in the official foster system. The other two have been adopted by their grandparents.

It’s situations like this that scream for the right kind of help from the community (a.k.a. the system). For example if safe and low cost housing were available to people who fall on tough times, bad luck, drug dependencies, whatever… maybe they would get the leg-up needed to pull things together themselves. Our society seems  to reward those who have good luck with the money game and punish those that don’t. To top it all off all the rules/laws seem to be written to amplify this effect instead of helping everyone achieve their goals.

I don’t have the answers for these bigger questions but I’m sure something useful will be learned by my effort.  Check back in 2012 – if my current time constraints reduce I’ll be back at it and highly motivated to finish my tiny free house.

Oh by the way. Just to the right of the house is another natural gas well going in nearby. The area is now littered with fracked gas wells.

I should get back to my pallet house project later this summer. At the moment I’m busy with my growing family, new position at my day job, and gearing up to build a tiny home office.

The book incorrectly says:

“Equipped with a bathroom and kitchen, it accomodates his entire family. Janzen, his wife, and young daughter all live, eat, and sleep in one room.”

The house is designed to accomodate my family but we do not live in a tiny house full-time, nor intend to. This tiny house is an experiment in extremely low-cost housing that we’ll use as a home away from home. It could also serve as a Plan B in the event of major economic trouble.

Form more information on this project read:

• An article in The New York Times
• Answers to some frequently asked questions

Besides this error in Mimi’s book I’d say it’s a good value for someone looking to see more examples of tiny houses. Another good book on the topic is The Small House Book by Jay Shafer.

You can learn more about tiny house at TinyHouseDesign.com and TinyHouseBlog.com.

You can buy a copy of Micro Green: Tiny Houses in Nature on Amazon.

I also want to thank my father-in-law for all his help on the roof. He not only scored the material but had the necessary agility, at 20 years my senior, to fling himself on top of the roof and finish the ridge. He came off with a double back-flip.

Here are some photos of the house with it’s tin roof. First photo by Sherry Johnson.

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 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.

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.

I’m still hunting for roofing material and currently thinking I may just focus on searching for some scrap corrugated roofing. After experiencing extreme winds and rain this past winter it just seems like the smartest solution for roofing is to use some kind of real metal roofing.

Below: Here’s what it looked like when I left. We’re expecting another storm this week so I resecured the tarp before I left.

Above: A mid-day shot with the tractor working the field in the background. This year the farmer that works the 40-acres has planted four separate crops for organic seeds, bok choy, swiss chart, carrots, and radishes. The carrots are right behind the tiny house.

Below: A close-up of a date stamp on one of the recycled pieces of plywood I’m using.

…and lastly Katie posing for a photo with the tractor :-)