September update: settling in, construction plans, sheep
Introducing our home construction plans and our new flock of sheep.
Hello again! I hope you’re enjoying the beginning of Autumn and staying cozy out there.
It’s been busy over here. The days are getting shorter and colder, and I’m settling in to life in the new spot.
Life in a tiny house
Seth and I have lived in our tiny house for about 2 months — enough time to nail down all our basic household management systems. The space is proving to be really functional. It has exactly what we need and nothing more. There are no corners to leave laundry baskets for an extra day or two, and no large sink or dishwasher to pile up dirty dishes, so it forces us to stay on top of things with small, frequent tasks.
This has its pros and cons.
It feels amazing to deep clean our entire house within a couple hours, but it needs much more frequent cleaning — it doesn’t take much clutter or dirt to dominate the space. For example, it’s starting to get wet and muddy outside, so with the dog coming in and out, we need to clean the floors daily. And coming home from traveling can be rough. There’s not much of a buffer zone where you can leave your unpacked suitcase for a day or two while you recover.
For me, at least right now, the pros outweigh the cons.
I love living here. Some nice aspects of my routines in this place:
cooking and baking in the small kitchen, with the blinds open and the sun pouring in
walking around the back pasture in the mornings with a cup of coffee, watching the dog zoom around, noticing small changes: bright green fall grass poking up, new blooms on the silver lupine, bits of foxes’ stolen eggshells left overnight, the sunrise coming a little later every day
sitting in the tiny nook loft on rainy days, watching water bead on the windows and clouds roll in, reading a book, sipping tea
closing the blinds, burning candles, and watching movies on the couch after dark
Living in a tiny house is made much easier by having a storage shed where we keep stuff like pet food, cat litter, extra food storage, household tools, cleaning supplies.
Introducing our construction plans
As much as I love our tiny house, the goal is to build a permanent home here.
We’re planning a “barndominium” style house, with:
steel + wood hybrid exterior framing
steel siding and roofing
a wrap-around back porch
a slab foundation with radiant floor heating, polished concrete floors
the interior finished out with typical residential framing and finishes
It’ll have three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and an open kitchen and living room. We plan to use lots of natural wood and stone in the interior (and some exterior elements) to balance the utilitarian steel and concrete.
It starts with a 40’x60’ building shell, which we’re hoping to put up in 2023.
We decided on a barn/shop house primarily because it’s a flexible and incremental way to build. Also, steel buildings are strong and safe, and steel siding and roofing is durable and low-maintenance. We believe we can finish it at a relatively low cost per square foot, and that it’ll fit well aesthetically with our land and our area.
There are downsides, of course. Some articles online that present “barndos” as a silver bullet idea for a cheap huge house, but that’s not the whole picture. After thinking through all the pros and cons for months, we decided it was the right choice for us.
We’ve settled on the floorplan, placed an order for most of the exterior building supplies, had engineering drawings created for the exterior and foundation, and are getting bids from concrete contractors to have the slab foundation constructed. (The slab is one thing we know we don’t want to DIY.) We’ve also gotten really excited about radiant floor heating over the past several months and are working on planning out our system.
I’m excited to see this start to come together over time (and both eager and terrified to learn exactly how much we don’t know).
Sheep!
We are the proud new owners of a starter flock of Soay sheep.
Ever since we bought the land, I’ve wanted to have sheep here. I’ve learned from books and experienced homesteaders and ranchers about how sheep are great for managing grass and invasive weeds without mowing or using herbicides. Their grazing and pooping fertilizer everywhere creates healthier grass with deeper roots, improving soil health and reducing erosion. You can also use their wool, raise them for meat, or just breed and sell the lambs.
For now, we’re focusing on the pasture management aspect of owning sheep, and also just experimenting and learning hands-on livestock skills for the first time. Our pasture is 50% or more invasive weeds at this point (mostly spotted knapweed), and I don’t want to spray herbicide everywhere.
Honestly, we weren’t picturing it this soon, but the perfect opportunity came up to bring home a starter flock of Soays (the breed I was most interested in), and we decided to go for it.
Soay sheep are a primitive breed, quite wild and skittish, originating from a feral population of sheep on a tiny island near Scotland. They’re small and shed their wool naturally, so you don’t need to shear them. They eat weeds and grass and are commonly raised for wool and meat. They’re also supposedly hardy and self-sufficient when it comes to giving birth and raising their lambs.
I’ve been reading about getting started with sheep for over a year. But I learned more in the first hour of handling them than I did from every book and article I’d read. There are things that just didn’t click until I was standing face-to-face with a stubborn 70-pound ewe trying to get her from my Honda to the pasture. (Yep, I transported them in my trusty old Element. It’s not a bad farm vehicle.)
I’m having a lot of fun learning something new this way. I can’t believe they let you just buy sheep and bring them home. Child me would be thrilled.
Now that they’re happily in their fenced paddock, it’s easy to care for them. They just need grass/weeds (or hay) to eat, clean water, and some supplemental minerals. There’s still enough green stuff growing that they don't need much hay yet, but I bought a stockpile to last through the winter from a farm across the road. They have a shed for shelter, but I’m told they won’t use it unless it’s pouring outside. They don’t mind cold, but they don’t like getting wet.
Next spring, when the grass (and weeds) start growing, we’re planning to practice rotational grazing all over the back two-thirds of the land.
I love having the sheep here. Even if they weren’t helping with weed control and soil health, they’re fun to watch, clever, beautiful, graceful. They seem to really like eating weeds and handfuls of oats (as treats, so they can get more comfortable with me).
What else do you want to know?
I try not to get too deep in the weeds in these updates, so there’s lots of missing detail. If you have any questions at all about what we’re doing (nothing is too stupid!), do leave them in a comment here or, of course, text/email me.
Thank you for reading!
— Leah
We love it here. We're still moving around our 36 years from our HB house, and even with major downsizing we still have a full storage unit that we vow to empty in a year. We find that we don't miss the stuff in the storage unit at all. We've set up a few Ikea wardrobe cabinets in the garage, but making sure that we can still fit two cars in the garage. When we get through the first layer of putting stuff away I'm going to devote a day to cutting my wardrobe by 50%. I love that you get to raise sheep in such a beautiful setting. It's fun to see you putting all your smarts into your amazing adventure.
I love reading your adventures because in a small way, Mike and I are doing something similar. We moved from our HB home to a little A-frame across the street from the beach in the central coast area. It is 900 square feet + a roomy garage. No sheep or much yard to speak of. Not much closet space here either, but probably more than you have. What’s your clothing system like?