Home, Home On The Range…

The picture at left is from Architectural Digest, which did a photo layout of one of John and Cindy McCain’s Arizona homes in 2005. Here is the full slide show. Nice place.

Not exactly like our homesteads, which more often look sort of spliced together from this and that as we attempt to grow our personal independence and self-sufficiency in an increasingly hostile economy. Heck, many of us dedicated homesteaders have had to invent some creative ways just to pay the mortgage, which does tend to bite into time for completing the goat barn or installing the solar panels or building the sluice for the water turbine or… well, suffice it to say that for most of us, our homesteads are a forever work-in-progress. We wouldn’t be doing it if “Home” were not the most important asset we have in the world, on which we lavish our time, toil and love unconditionally.

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Building It: Log Home Advantages

In my last post I started talking about building your home, and introduced the subject of log and timber frame housing. These homes are becoming more and more popular all over the country, and offer some rather large advantages for homesteaders in a number of ways.

First and foremost, log and timber frame homes are environmentally friendly. There are companies producing “kit” homes in various parts of the country from farmed pine logs, and there are even a few specializing in ’salvage’ timber. Those are standing dead or down trees, usually from large forest tracts (publicly or privately owned), harvested at little or no cost to the harvester because harvesting is part of the forest management strategy.

In my southern Appalachians, for instance, we have large stands of southern pine and hemlocks that have succumbed to pine bark beetles and wooly adelgid infestations. These insects get underneath the outer bark and kill the trees by destroying that thin layer of inner bark that the tree depends upon to transport water and nutrients from the roots to the limbs and needles. While treatments have been developed and are now available to landholders like us, it will only save the young trees. The older trees have already succumbed, and local environmental regulations even demand that landholders take down dead stands (or burn them).

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Housing: Buying, Building or Making Do

Part 1: The Pros and Cons

Wise Living Journal blog is oriented toward people who have chosen to live closer to the land than most do these days, and who are willing to take responsibility for as much of their lives and life choices as is possible in this modern world. This generally means those living off the edges of crowded cities or suburbs, or those lucky enough to have found a bit of countryside to call their own.

I’ve covered the basic homestead tool kit, started talking about some basic home repairs and maintenance jobs the homesteader can do for him or herself much cheaper than they can hire someone else to do. I’ve talked a bit about planning yard and garden space to make the most of your surroundings. And these subjects will come up again and again, as there is plenty to cover. But this sub-series is about housing itself.

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