Tiny Free House

2011 has been a busy year for me with little opportunity to work on the tiny free house. Yesterday we were at the family farm for a few hours to enjoy Thanksgiving dinner and I snapped the photo below. The house appears to be no worse for wear. Putting the roof on it last fall was definitely the right thing to do.

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.

Katie and I made an impromptu trip to the farm yesterday. She got to spend five hours playing with her Grammy and Pop and I some plywood on the outside of the tiny house. Once this layer is down I’ll wrap the walls in housewrap and then screw on a layer of pallet boards on for the final exterior finish.

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 :-)

On a quick trip to the farm yesterday I threw a tarp on the house’s roof and lashed it down with a bunch of bungees. It looks like we’re going to be in for quite an extended rain storm so I figured I better get up there to try and protect what I’ve done do far. Ironically those old pallets seemed in great shape for being out in the rain for so long already. I hope to have some kind of roofing in hand on my next trip to the farm so I can get past this major milestone.

Katie also got to spend a few hours with her grandparents and walk out in the muddy field to pick a few early organic radishes. The farmer that works the land did something new this year and instead of planting a cover crop he planted carrots, radishes, bok choy , and Swiss chard for seed. I guess the market for organic seeds is doing well.