Last weekend, Laura and I went to Earthaven Ecovillage near Asheville. While I’m fairly certain I don’t ever want to live in such an arrangement, it was inspiring to see some of the buildings and structures that they’ve made from earthen materials. We also got to help build a small pond and to mud plaster the exterior of a fancy outhouse. Getting ideas and learning learning learning…
Most recently, I have been trying to figure out a rough budget that we will need as the project progresses.
The first and most important thing to take care of is clearing the land. As much as I would love to live in a magnificent 50 year old forest, that reality doesn’t exist on our land anymore since my mom and other family members, in their infinite and forward-looking wisdom, decided to cut everything down 12 years ago for profit. As you can see here, most of it is nothing but brush, thorns, and very small trees.
In the name of growing our own food and putting up solar panels, some of the trees have to come down. I found a local land clearing company [Specialized Forestry Solutions] that will come in and take down 4 acres, in about 2 days time, for $4,000. The best part is that their clearing machine mulches as it goes, leaving a layer of organic matter covering the ground. This should be perfect in a few years when we finish the house and want to start a large garden and an orchard. Plus it’s less than 10% of the land, anyway.
After we get the land cleared, the second step is to get an 800 ft gravel driveway put in. I’m still working on getting an exact quote for that but it should be less than $8,000 for sure. Then we need small-ish concrete slabs installed for the shipping containers to sit on, and also for storage bays for other materials like the rocks and sand we will need for the rammed earth mixture. Oh yeah, did I mention that we’re going to live in 20′x8′x8′ shipping containers while we build the house? Yes, we’re that awesome.
Right now it’s looking like the land clearing will be done at the end of December. We’re aiming to have the road put in by the end of March, concrete slabs poured sometime in April, and shipping containers delivered by May. That way we can be set up to actually get stuff done next summer like building an outhouse, preparing the containers for livability, installing a few solar panels and a metal roof over everything, and hooking up a water catchment system (off the roof) so we have a source of potable water.
FUN!!!
