Practical Sustainability

Something practical and sustainable.

That’s what we are working on.

Something that is tailored to meet our needs.

It’s not been an overnight project. To the contrary. It’s taken years … years … years after finally growing weary of the gnawing in our interior fibers … that yearning for a simpler way … that yearning for less harriedness … that yearning for freedom from the status quo that enslaves people within a taxing debt-system that is never satisfied … that yearning to be able to live life more fully within our means according to our terms rather than according to the terms imposed on us by said system with its Powerful Potentates and Passive Followers.

I said us.

This is about us.

We are not promoting or pushing an agenda of any sort. We aren’t trying to set ourselves up as gurus with a toga clad following. We aren’t trying to convince anyone of anything. No. Not at all. We are simply looking our reality in the face, being true to ourselves, and doing what we have to do to be who we are ... peacefully enjoying life as we interpret it.

Folks can decide for themselves. Folks that want to decide for themselves will decide for themselves. Folks that decide for themselves will find a way to do what they have decided.

What we are doing really isn’t such a contrary thing. There is quite an encouraging small movement going on where the tiny houses and alternative housing thing is concerned.

Practical Sustainability, in our minds, is the bottom line of the deal. Just how practical and sustainable is something where the long haul is concerned? How much will it cost to get into it? How much will it cost to maintain it? How much of ourselves are we willing to forfeit to sustain a residential box of one sort or another? These are all parts of the garden of questions that we’ve had to hoe our way through. The results of the hoeing is the establishment of something that is practical and sustainable and doing it in a way that allows a generous margin of space for spontaneity and creativity while we yet have quantities of quality of life left to live.

Sure.

Practical sustainability involves a lot of pioneering and homesteading skills … building and repairing stuff, growing and processing food, knowing when and how to tend to seasonal things, and having the tools to do these things among other things … common skills that aren’t so common anymore. This business of spontaneity and creativity figures in equally as well. Spontaneity and creativity are the elements that give life an art form. A life devoid of spontaneity and creativity is a life replete with the drudgery of running pillar to post doing chore after chore ad infinitum.

There has to be a better way to live than the ad infinitum that we’ve known all these years!

There is. For us there is.

And we simply refuse to live a life of ad infinitum any longer regardless of what or who generates the ad infinitum. There’s no time left for it. There’s no will left to struggle with it or its sources.

The cabin?

It’s kind of interesting how it came about. Interesting in a fortuitous sort of way. Some may even say Providential.

Our original plan was to build a small cabin that first involved doing some axe and chainsaw work and site preparation. I’m not the best axe and saw man in the country but I am a pretty fair hand with the tools. I can, unless a tree has a bad contrary lean, put one on the ground where I want it to hit. We got the axe and saw work done early last summer.  I drove some stakes and pulled a string where the back of the cabin would be. Then the sure enough summer heat and humidity set it. Tending to the ad infinitum at this end of the county ran some serious interference where working on building a cabin at the other end of the county was concerned.

We gave some thought to an option that was sitting here in the yard.

Why not haul the Dutchmen up and live in it while we build the cabin?

Not a bad idea. It was just sitting here in the yard. A little additional site work. It would be an easy set up and hook up.

We also looked at buying a readymade portable building that could be hauled into the original cabin site and finished inside to suit our needs. You can find some pretty good deals on these buildings, especially on slightly used repossessed ones. We looked at buying a new one and dismissed that idea pretty quick. The thing we wanted to avoid at all cost was financing anything. No more payment schedules! No more indentured servitude!

Slightly used. Slightly lived in. Mostly finished on the inside. The seller needed to sell it. We needed it and bought it. Seller and buyers happily smiling.

An ideal deal … one that came about in the perfect window of opportunity where our necessity time frame was concerned … one requiring a minimal amount of T.L.C. and personalization to turn it into a comfortable little cabin with all the necessary amenities.