I'm selling my house and moving to the mountains

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

I’m in Florida, and our housing market is completely in the tank. When we bought our house in 2000, you couldn’t find a house in this neighborhood, even the house I’m in had a contract on it when we made our offer. Now? There are at least 5 houses for sale on my street. Two of them are across the street from me and one is two houses down. This is a very well established neighborhood with A schools, easy commutes, shopping close by. THAT is how bad the market is.

I was planning on getting a goat on the way up the mountain, then my husband reminded me that there are bears. Bears that have had unfettered access to the property for 4 years. I think the goat can wait. :slight_smile:

My heart has always been in the Smoky Mountains. I lived there as a child and nothing brings me peace like looking out across the foggy range. When we made the decision to sell our house 2 years ago, I had convinced my husband we could move to the country that was reasonably close to civilization, but cheap enough we could get some land. He has always been the one against moving to the mountain house. Meanwhile, my inbred, barefooted southern self has been pushing it for years. We were discussing it the other night and about the only thing he said was “You’ll be so happy there.”

I will. I can’t describe the elation I have. I want a slower life. I don’t like rush hour, I don’t like looking out my kitchen window and seeing the added on room and the neighbors through the door. Every window of my current house look on to someone. I stood at my sink last night and thought about what it would be like, to look out that window and see trees and mountains. Only trees and mountains. Only one house can be seen from the property and then, only the roof of it.

I laughed when I saw the link to Lehmans, I was on their site yesterday. And that free heat in the living room? Is awesome. There is also a propane heater downstairs and we have already decided to switch out the stove and probably the water heater too.

I’m not sure if anyone has ever heard of them, but I’d love to have an Earthship. They are self contained houses that can exist off grid. There is plenty of room on the property for me to build an earthship if I want to. Also, the climate there is also more able to support alternative building methods like hay bale housing. I’m not a tree hugging freak, I just think that stuff is the right thing to do. I live in Florida and the only thing people use solar for is to heat their swimming pools. It’s an insane way that we live. We can do better.

I want to do square foot gardening. I want to learn to can. I want to go to u-picks and farmers markets that are filled with you know, farmers. I want real, honest to god, smoked ham. Maybe even some real fried okra and fried green tomatoes. I want my daughter to know what a real sausage and gravy biscuit tastes like.

I want to breathe.

22

Have you considered putting your house up for auction? I expect it’s different in the US, but here I should have done it 15 months ago.

23

If you need a butler and a maid, my Darling Marcie and I will certainly make ourselves available. You’re going to be living the hippie dream; your place will be better than a commune. Thanks for the pictures and good luck with the move. I am so jealous but so happy for you.

24

Luck. You have my prayers and envy.

25

Don’t forget the Hammered Dulcimer you have to take and learn to play.

26

I haven’t really considered an auction, I’ll ask my girl.

The hilarious part of the hippie dream is that I am so not a hippie. I religiously wear makeup to work, I adore elegant vintage clothing, I tend towards the more conservative in dress. My husband is a bleeding edge technology network administrator.

However, as much as I love, love, love pretty pointy shoes, I prefer to be barefoot. Oh, and I despise the smell of patchouli, it gives me a raging migraine. I have always loved the Foxfire books (btw, the museum is down the mountain from me) I love having all sorts of animals and pine away for a nice little flock of chickens and a couple goats.

I promise, one morning, when I’m sipping my coffee on the second floor deck, I’ll have a camera with me and take a picture of the deer or bunnies in the field.

I’d be just fine with a commune. As long as people bathed and patchouli was banned. I’m actually kind of wondering if I could make some cash baking bread. I make damned fine bread.

My chocolate pound cake is pretty darn tasty too.

27

If you’re going to get a gasoline-powered generator (and I couldn’t imagine living w/o power - you are going to get on the web, how?), you may want to put some anti-fouling compound in the gas - it is used on airplanes (many of which fly 1-2 time/year). For all things aircraft, see Aircraft Spruce.
Serious back-up generators are gas (natrual or propane) powered.

If there is a fireplace, there are inserts which connect to central heating-type ducts and blowers - having a warm bathroom takes the edge off the winter-on-the-snow-capped-mountain experience.

Do you expect to have passable roads year-round?

Bears. You know firearms, right?

28

Congratulations on the pending move, Auntbeast! It sounds like you’re well on the way to casting off the rinds of a life that no longer serves you and moving on to a new level.

You rang? :slight_smile: The link goes to a website that describes my friends’ Earthship-style house near Algonquin Park in Ontario, Canada. I was one of the volunteers who helped build it. It passes through -35C winters without the need for a furnace. It has large interior gardens and they pick jasmine in February. When the big blackout hit in '03, they didn’t know about it until I phoned them, because they have solar electricity and a woodstove for cooking and water-heating.

And now you know where my username comes from.

29

Dude! I’ve been to that site! I’ve been to the website of every earthship that exists, I’ve even seen the documentary Garbage Warrior. I love how bright and open they are and how connected they are.

I guess that is where the hippie side of me kicks in, I see us as a part of this world and like living with most things, we should strive for harmony.

Did I mention that as far as I’m concerned, WhyNot can move in any time? There is a creek that runs along the property, it’s kinda small, you may not be able to lay in it quite the way the picture of you was, but there is a waterfall a short hike away.

Oh, and Rabun Bald, the second highest peak in Georgia is over your right shoulder when you are on the porch.

30

Don’t worry about bears. The bears in that part of the country are black, and they’re more than happy to mind their own business if you mind yours. Worst case scenario, they’ll raid your trash cans, but if you stand in the doorway and yell at them, they’ll back off. And make sure you make noise when you go hiking, so you don’t accidentally sneak up on them.

31

Well, that site was the resurgence of old dreams for me; I was into this stuff since discovering CoEvolution Quarterly (which would become the Whole Earth Review) back in high school. But the sixties were out of fashion and California might as well have been on the moon for me and it was 1981 and I discovered computers and took a long, long detour into electronics. But then in 1995 I met the Potters and saw that people were, indeed, doing this. Little did I realize how timely it would become.

And I saw Garbage Warrior at its world premiere at Hot Docs in Toronto. :smiley:

I think that revolutions happen in the mind first, long before anyone takes to the streets.

I’m not going to go so far as to say that there was a deliberate organized effort to discredit the cultural alternatives presented by the sixties, but, looking back at the late seventies and eighties, I think that neo-conservative ideas made their victory then, with things like Bloom County (which was brilliant, I admit, and remains one of my favourite cartoons) and that TV show that featured Michael J Fox (Family Ties–looked it up) and so on. It was around then that hippies and ecology and the sixties idealism began to be discredited.

32

Good luck!

Once you’re settled, we may have to schedule a Chattanooga Dopefest. :slight_smile:

Seriously, I’m envious…I only get to vacation in the mountains, but you get to live there.

33

Oh wow. Color me jealous. That upper porch view is so beautiful!

34

You flatter me, but I was a huge fan of Bloom County, we even had a cat we named Bill. My Grandma has a collection of stuffed Opus’.

When I realized that bread should be flour, yeast, water, salt, I realized that I couldn’t pronounce 98% of the items on a store bought loaf of bread. It occurred to me if something as pervasive as bread can be made so complicated, what else is complicated that doesn’t have to be? I’m no where near a composting toilet, but damn, really? Is this the smartest we can live?

Now, we are killing ourselves to rid ourselves of 15 years of accumulated shit. I plan on loading up a small to medium sized moving van, pack the kid and dogs in the minivan, and driving north. We’ll find out what we face when we get there. Hopefully, we will meet our target date of “before Christmas” and will probably have to bundle up, build a fire and tough it out for a few days until we realize what needs to be done. But, we will have cash in our pockets and a mortgage free house.

The garage is emptied out, so we can start craigslisting/yard saleing the hell out of this place. I’m hoping after the election people can being to hope and feel more certain about their future. There is too much in the air for people. We have as lame duck President and our two main choices are so different, I think just knowing which one it will be will bring calm. Hell, preparing for hurricanes every year is not that frantic, once you know whats coming.

To see my daughter running across the meadow, with her golden red hair flying.

35

Aunbeast, if I’m ever in the States again, can I come visit? I’ll cook!

36

It’s looking good, we’ve had two calls in 3 days, that is a record. Both want to see it on Saturday. The amount of crap we’ve gotten rid of (or will if the garbage men are brave enough to come back) is amazing. Between craigslist and the trash can, there won’t be much left for a garage sale.

If I win the contest at work (which I will) I’ll be able to come home 2 hours early and get a head start on actually cleaning rather than purging.

I think I’ll celebrate Super Tuesday With An OhBama! Win by dropping my price $20k.
Nava: Only if you want to. I’m becoming quite the good cook and can’t WAIT to have that kitchen! We may have to arm wrestle. Seriously, we are setting aside two bedrooms for guests. We aren’t allowed to put so much as a penny in those rooms. I’m thinking that come the changing of the leaves next year, we may have to have a reservation book.
Oh, btw, we tried for years to get a realtor to rent the house for us in any way they could. No one would take it.

37

My Darling Marcie and I are now officially retired; if we had known we would have taken it in a heartbeat. Neither one of us can stand patchouli but I guess you would have kicked us out when you decided to live there. I’m still jealous as jealous gets; I’d love to have a place like that.