Chapter 8: Details Schmetails

Hello, again old friend! It’s been a while, I know. The blog has taken a backseat lately to the holidays, having company, yadda yadda, but I am doing my best to try to get it back to it. Things have sorta slowed down around here as the weather has been making it hard to get anything done! For example, below is a photo of the aftermath of today’s ice storm. Thanks for checking in! I hope you enjoy the post. Let me know in the comments below.

So, you wanna sell your house and move to the country to start a farm?  Why not?  These days, who doesn’t want to trade the chaos of city life for the bucolic, romantic beauty of the country?  No one, that’s who. But first, Chapter 8: Details Schmetails.

I mentioned in chapter 1 the biggest factor in deciding to sell our house when we did was the local property boom.  People from crowded city centers were fleeing to the suburbs and suburban folks to made a break for the countryside.  While looking at rural properties online I noticed listings with a house began disappearing the day they showed up. Those without houses also vanished from the market much more quickly than typical. It seemed as though an exodus was underway.  

The Guardian’s take on the British version:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/26/escape-country-covid-exodus-britain-cities-pandemic-urban-green-space

BYOB (Bring your own builder!)

Builder after builder described the tsunami of home buyers flocking to have homes built on rural properties. We struggled to find one who could build a home on our lot in a timely manner. Now four months into our second builder, we have yet to break ground. This is despite this builder insisting that they are so well equipped that the rush was no match for them.  SMH (shaking my head).

The simple life

It is easy to understand why so many people want to return to a simpler way of living.  Things are just out of balance these days.  We can all feel it.  I can attest to the fact that life does moves at a slower, calmer pace out here.  People are friendlier and more considerate of each other (usually).  The things that consume our time and money attempting to out-do our neighbors either don’t matter or don’t exist “on the farm”.  Priorities are typically more realistic and down to earth. 

In an effort to avoid the madness of the grocery store people are beginning to grow their own food again.  I believe we not only prefer to avoid the crowds and shortages, but we also want to know where our food comes from and what goes into and on it.  Not to mention, it’s just satisfying to dig in the dirt and see the fruits and veggies of our labor.  Buying meat from the farmer down the road feels better than buying the stuff on the shelf at the store.  You feel good about what you’re eating and about where your money is going, or not going for that matter. 

Buyer Beware

Before you run out and plant that for sale sign in your front yard, here are a few things to think about.  In addition to all of the little lessons described in previous posts, there are still some things I haven’t mentioned:

When looking at properties watch for ones that already have a well and septic on them.  Sometimes people buy a property with the intention to build or develop it. However, after getting a ways into the process, they decide that they want to go another direction. Perhaps for one of the reasons I have previously described. These properties are few and far between and don’t last long, but they do exist. 

But how will the Prize Patrol find us?

Obtaining a mailing address quickly skyrocketed to the top of the list of things I’d previously not considered but now became an obstacle to pretty much every part of life.  Many things revolve around having an address, least of all the mail.  It is extremely difficult to have building materials, fencing, etc. delivered to a place with no address. Registering to vote is nearly impossible, and Jackson can’t attend school as an in-state student if he cannot provide a physical address.  The list goes on and on.

While it’s tempting to assume this to be a fairly simple process, we must not make assumptions.  One morning shortly after arriving, I received a call from the friendly and helpful ladies at the county registrar’s office.  I remember it well. I was shocked that a government office was contacting me to sort out my address ensuring my voter registration status would not be compromised.  Most likely they were notified when I updated my address to “Future Farm, Windy Country Rd, Rural County, VA”  with the DMV, but still impressive.  They explained the issue and the importance of getting the physical address on file and started me off on the phone quest for the address man.

The great and powerful…

After several calls with folks at one county agency after another, I finally reached the man behind the curtain.  The man with the power to conjure up numbers for the mailbox at the end of the driveway.  This man is elusive and mysterious but, like the leprechaun at the end of the rainbow, if you are lucky enough to catch up with him, he doesn’t disappoint.  Initially, he hesitated to grant our wish because we did not (and still don’t) have a house built. He acquiesced after I convinced him that we actually reside on the property and thus require an address for the 911 system.  He said in the warm, drawl of the local people, “Well, I don’t have much goin’ on this afternoon.  I reckon I could swing by and drop a pin and get you set up.”

Later that day as we were heading to town, he pulled his truck up alongside our car. We chatted for a good little while about the local area, hunting, internet options or lack thereof, and such. Before we went our separate ways, he ensured us we’d have an address in a day or so.  When I received his call, bestowing upon us those four digits, it felt like I’d won a fantastic prize.  A pot of gold if you will.

Breaking: Addresses and Electricity are not God Given Rights. Wait. What?!

The advice of a friend can be a really great thing.  Or, it can bite you in the ass.  My advice?  Take advice and take it with a grain of salt, i.e. DO YOUR HOMEWORK. 

We knew we’d be on generator/solar power for some time after showing up here. However, we were not prepared for the biblically epic 40 days plus one score that lay ahead.  For one thing, the cost to power a generator 8-10 hours a day ends up being about $10 per day. At 7 days a week, combined with the time and vehicle fuel required to fill up those gas cans every couple of days, it’s a tidy sum, not to mention the noise will drive you mad. 

Trying to save money and sanity, we didn’t run the generator at night. Although, it wasn’t an impressively effective air-conditioner, living without it during the nights was rough, to put it mildly.  It was a new sort of discomfort; one we hadn’t experienced growing up in Colorado where even the hottest summer days are extinguished by refreshingly cool nights. Here in Virginia, the steamy days and sauna-like nights form a seemingly infinite chain.

Hi, I’d like to place an order…for electricity…

That friendly advice I mentioned, from a reliable source, suggested that all you needed was a building contract and the electric company would be happy to oblige your electricity request.  Building contract in hand, I confidently called up the local electric coop to request to have my service set up.  Though they didn’t actually laugh out loud, there was palpable silent giggling happening on the other end of the line.

“No ma’am. We need your deed, well, septic, and building permits before we can extend electric service to your property”.

Knowing I could produce only one of those items, my heart quickly sank.  Just to be sure, I asked again, and again, in as many ways as I could think of if she was sure, and then I reluctantly hung up the phone. 

A few weeks later, our well and septic permits came through. I thought maybe I could sneak in the back door of the electric company. After some digging, I managed to get in contact directly with the survey engineer.  I told him the situation and that we were living on the site in an RV. My thinking was that I might tug on his heartstrings, gaining us a measure of sympathy and win him over.  As so often seems to be the case, I was wrong.  Not only did he not budge on the fact that we still didn’t have a building permit, he added that we had to have the foundation built in addition to all of the documents previously mentioned. 

Nice try sweetheart

It seemed the county has been hardened to such sob stories. Likely, they’ve been burned a time or two by folks claiming to be building homes, only to remain living in their RV indefinitely once the electricity is installed.  Permanent RV living is apparently frowned upon by ours and probably most other counties.  While pointing out that we live on-site in an RV may have helped us get an address, it most certainly sunk us with the electricity wizard.  Doh! 

A long way from having a foundation, we faced several more months before we could look forward to the comforts of electricity.  After a few days of wallowing in anger and self-pity, we came up with a brilliant compromise. We would pay them to extend the service across the road, just far enough to get it on the property.  When the foundation is built, they will return to extend the line to the house for free.  This plan worked out beautifully.  All it cost us was several hundred dollars and our perfect little spot behind the bramble hedge.  We now basically live in the road. We hear (and feel) the hunters race past in their trucks all day long, spewing dust and rocks at us while their floppy-eared hound dogs bark and bay excitedly from the truck bed. Never the less, we have on-demand electricity!!  Life is good.

Next up…well and septic.  Seriously, do your homework!

We thought we had done a great job on this one.  Before we had even closed on the property, we had all of the soils testing done. We hoped to have our well and septic systems designed as quickly as possible.  Again, going off the advice of a reliable friend (same friend come to think of it) we chose a design company for the well and septic.  Byron sent them a map of the property he’d drawn with the building sites we had selected clearly marked. We would not be on-site the day they did their testing and surveying so we also went out ahead of time to mark the chosen building sites with bright orange flags. 

Everything seemed to go as planned and we had our design packet and permit impressively quickly.  We innocently commented on how nice it was to have had something go so smoothly for a change as we pulled the plans out of the envelope to have a look. 

“Huh, that’s interesting”, Byron remarked.  “Interesting” is apparently how Byron describes having your designer completely ignore your designated building sites and instead chooses his own.  After more than a month of trying to resolve the issue, it became very clear the guy wasn’t interested in what we wanted, and we were back to square 1.  Turns out all county residents and contractors unanimously recommend any designer other than the guy we had just hired/fired.  We have since disowned the “reliable friend” with all of the advice as well.

“Well” on our way (see what I did there?)

After paying yet another surveying and design company, we now have a fantastic septic design. One that will cost less than the original and works with our home site. We were even able to have the well drilled where we wanted it. That’s right! We now have water on our property!  I do believe that the day we were able to fill up our water jugs by turning on our own pump was one of the greatest days of our lives. 

Although it seems things are finally moving right along, as might be expected, when an enginerd with significant building science education and experience decides to have a home built by a built-to-code builder, we have experienced a few…hiccups throughout the home design process also. Our final pre-construction meeting with our builder took place just two weeks ago, and we almost got out of there without any issues.  Much to my dismay, Byron learned that the pitch on our back porch roof, which was promised to be 4/12, was actually going to be built as 3/12.  No big deal right??  Wrong.  This is apparently a huge deal and just like that, the feeling, that living in a house again was within reach, squirted right out the window like an untied balloon.  Byron wasn’t budging and we walked out of the “final” meeting with a yet unsigned set of plans.

What’s a few more months in an RV though?  Hahaha.  Please help me! 

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