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.

Thus it wasn’t a delighted laughter that greeted a clueless John McCain when he told an audience of evangelical ‘base’ Christians the other day that people can be considered “rich” if they bring home $5 million a year. Which makes his rival Barack Obama’s measly $4 million income last year positively middle class. The laughter was more along the lines of “…he said WHAT!!!???”

Then he ‘forgot’ how many houses he owns. Told Politico that he’d have to have his staff get back to you on that. The answer, in case you’re wondering, is somewhere between 7 and 12. Maybe more, but they’re condos so who’s counting? I admit to being floored, and wonder how it is that this guy has managed to stay within the margin of error with Democrat Obama in this year’s Presidential campaign. Are Americans really that scared? Since the entire Republican game plan is to keep people so scared of terrorists that they don’t dare vote for anyone who might be able to address real life problems like housing, health care, deficit spending, downsizing, etc., etc., etc. What ever happened to the “Home of the Brave” part of our national identity?

I guess Homesteaders are just a different sort of breed of American. People who actually do desire being as responsible for themselves and their families as they possibly can be. People who will go ahead and plant a few rows of wheat this fall just because they can and people are going hungry. People who don’t mind milking the goats or playing “find the eggs” from their free-range hens. People who know how to fix the water heater and patch the roof and build a greenhouse even though they work to pay the bills and barter for what they need. We’re not proud. We’ll buy second-hand, we’ll recycle someone else’s discarded roofing, we’ll drive that beat-up pickup truck every day and thank our lucky stars it still runs. Just so we can continue to live this way, on our beloved homesteads.

Maybe we should be proud-er. I’d lay odds right now that every single one of us who wears the label “Homesteader” knows right off the top of our heads exactly how many houses we own. And where they are. And why we own (or are paying for) them.

The economic situation is bad, getting worse. Our nation needs to start celebrating people who will embrace the realities of our existence in the 21st century, after “peak oil” and the absolute looting of our nation’s wealth. By people just like John McCain, who can’t remember how many homes he owns. Wow. Just… wow.

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).

The logs from such harvests are fine for building. Bark infestations do not damage the inner wood at all, and the logs are often naturally dried and easy to de-bark, ready for work. Homes made from such logs, or farmed logs, or timber derived from such sources helps to manage forests, lessen fire dangers, and make good use of what would normally rot or be chipped for fake fireplace logs. No need to feel guilty!

Homes can be a hybrid of these styles of homebuilding, depending on the lay of your land, your design requirements, and your budget. A friend of mine has built a hybrid home on a semi-steep grade of lakefront property. The foundation is cinderblock faced with flat rock. On the ‘tall’ side facing the lake (and sporting a full-length screened deck) whole logs are used. They’ve been flattened on their meeting edges and pre-notched to fit without chinking. On the ‘short’ front facing the uphill driveway timber framing was used. These are very sturdy 10×10 rough timbers used to frame the front and its roof beams. This was faced with tongue and groove half-log siding to match the real logs, and it looks great.

Actually, this half-log and quarter-log siding could be used to refurbish an older cabin like mine, where the rustic chestnut boards have warped and hosted too many carpenter bees over the past century. We’re seriously considering that option, once we replace the roof!

Log homes are also energy efficient, naturally insulated from the cold, the heat, and all variations in between. If you’re careful to install only double-paned insulated glass in your windows, heating and cooling shouldn’t be very expensive at all. Wood furnaces and smokeless wood stove technologies are available these days as well, which puts the homesteader in charge of that aspect of life. One more thing to contribute to prideful independence!

My husband has always told me – every year this time, when we’re working hard to get the winter’s wood supply cut, split and stacked – that wood is the only fuel that “warms you twice.” It makes you sweat when you cut, split and stack it, and it warms you again when you burn it on a cold winter’s day. That’s a two-fer any homesteader should readily appreciate!

There are some great resources and helpful hints out there on the internet, including full instructions on how to build your own log home from timber harvested from your own property! Our ancestors used to do this as a matter of course, so a modern homesteader can do the same thing – even better with some rented equipment to do the heavy lifting! Definitely something to look into if you’re planning to build.

The links below are particularly good, so spend a little time with them and see if perhaps renovating that falling-down fixer-upper might be less satisfying than building something new. Or, you could do both if you’re planning on sharing your homestead with your grown children when the time comes!

Links:

Log Homes Journal

Natural Log Siding

An Environmentalist’s Guide to Responsible Wood Heating

Log Home Builders Association

Build Your Own Log Cabin!

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.

Buying

Some people have found some real bargains on acreage in various rural areas of the country. While the “housing bubble” in home prices in cities and extended populous areas of the country have swelled to absurd proportions in recent years – then ‘busted’ when the economy entered its most recent depressive phase on high energy prices and deficit spending in D.C. – some places still offer land at reasonable prices.

If you aren’t planning on large-scale farming or livestock production, the average family can have a wonderful life on 3-5 acres of land. Such plots can be found for $10,000 or less per acre in most states that aren’t California, Florida, New York or New Jersey. Sometimes a motivated seeker can find a 5-10 acre homestead that includes a basic, older model “fixer-upper” house or cabin, even an outbuilding or two, and spend less than $100,000 on the whole sheebang.

Building

Building your home on raw land offers many choices for the frugal homesteader, particularly for the new kit log homes and timber frame homes that the buyer can supply a lot of the labor for building. In my own area of southern Appalachian North Carolina, whole lending consortiums have sprung up to fill gaps in traditional financing for such homes, as there are some odd “city code” requirements that have been attached to home financing in recent years that simply don’t apply to people who don’t live in cities.

With Baby Boomers facing imminent retirement, many of them are buying land and building retirement homes – lots of them log or timber frame – and sustaining a mini-boom of gated mountain getaway communities that cost every bit as much to live in as it costs to live in cities. The ‘trickle down’ benefit is that there are mortgage sources for such construction and land.

Making Do

My family bought 13 acres of land 15 years ago for $5,000 per acre. It came with a 100-year old “fixer-upper” of a 28-foot square chestnut cabin that wasn’t worth anything at all. A freebie! A basement was dug from the foundational root cellar years ago and an indoor bathroom was added (along with septic tank and drain field), which we expanded when we replaced one whole side of the foundation because termites had turned the beams to paper.

That renovation included complete re-plumbing, which wasn’t too bad with just one bathroom and one kitchen sink upstairs. The roof had also been raised to add a loft room which we use as a spare bedroom, but it’s none too firmly attached and will have to be dealt with when we re-roof within the next year.

But for 15 years this little cabin has served our family very well in all seasons, all kinds of weather, and through all the comings and goings of family life. There’s still a lot that needs doing, and lots of cosmetic things that would make it ‘nicer’. But because we’ve had a little experience with how to add space without adding on (or rebuilding from scratch), this alternative is something a homesteader with a “fixer-upper” – or just a homespace that’s become too cramped – should consider.

The first sign that your home has become too cramped is that you’ve run out of storage space. Think of the cartoon character who opens the closet door to an avalanche of sports equipment, hats, ironing boards, bowling balls and assorted other stuff. You look around after a whirlwind cleaning of the entire living space and it still looks cluttered.

You could construct an addition to your home, but this can be a very expensive proposition. The high square-footage cost of construction, tying in to heating and cooling (plus additional cost), high interest on home improvement loans – if you can find one these days and that’s not easy. Redesigning an attic, basement, garage/carport or attached porches is more economical. The basic structural components are already there and the materials you’ll need to finish the space will cost substantially less per square foot than an addition would.

There are wonderful ideas out there for redesigning your already existing living space, some linked below. Before you decide, do take into consideration the construction mess you’ll have to work around on a daily basis during the project, how that may effect the family, and be aware of any zoning or building restrictions which may apply.

Eventually we’ll get into some fairly easy redesign projects that a homesteader should be able to do for him or herself, or with just a bit of strong-back help. Such improvements can add significant value to your home, but so long as it’s fairly invisible from the outside, it won’t add more to your tax bill than the ‘normal’ increases that come around every couple of years to reflect rising land prices.

In Part II of this sub-series, I’ll look at some of the deals that can still be had on new construction using those kit log and timber frame homes on raw or prepared land.

Links:

Homebuilding & Renovating: Top Tips

Ezine Links: Home Improvement/Remodeling

Real Estate Blogs: Interior Redesign

Realty One: Average Cost (hired labor)