Our Temporary Home

The week leading up to demolition is now a blur. We were blessed with very nice weather for moving out of our house. We made countless trips ... with the golf cart (that has a bed on the back) and the John Deere 990 tractor with a pallet on the front ... of boxes and furniture out to the new and old barns for storage.

We built a pole barn structure in 2006 (pictured above) and the lower-roofed section of it is my office, the kitchenette, and 1/2 bath. We set up our new living quarters in this area, supplemented by our 27' - 5th wheel camper. The finished barn space is roughly 900 sf (the section with the shorter roof) and is finished like a house ... carpet, drywall, windows, pellet stove for heat. We have an alcove for our bedroom, a space still for my office, another space for a couch and TV and another for the dining room table. It's rather cozy! And Colton gets his own private sleeping quarters in the camper.

I am cooking in the camper, but we do have the full size frig in the kitchenette along with lots of shelves for kitchen appliances, cookbooks and stuff. There is a small shower in the camper, but a very small hot water heater, so Preston and his cousins tore out the 30" fiberglass shower from the house, along with ample 2x4's, the beadboard / pegs from the laundry room and built a shower house on a large pallet. They plumbed it to the water from the milk house and now we have a great outdoor shower. I was the first to try it and it was wonderful. I'm hoping for warmer days, as right now it's like taking the Polar Bear Plunge!

The guys also set up my washer and dryer in the milk house. The property was a dairy barn years ago and the milk house is a 10'x14' block building where they stored the milk after milking the cows. I used it as my sheep operation, but the sheep are gone now, so we cleaned it up and it has a new use for the time being.


...yes, this it clean ... everything in my life it relative now. The shower above was the 'yucky, tiny' shower in the house, now it is the lap of luxury. The washer and dryer were planned for a very small 3-sided hay shed until 'T' (cousin Terry, Jr.) came up with a better idea, now I have 'indoor plumbing.' My house is demolished and we are 'homeless,' but I have a very warm, dry, comfortable living space, so I am forever grateful. The puppies are thrilled they get to sleep with their people now instead of downstairs in the house all alone. And all of the sacrifices are a means to a very exciting end.