Well that was a wild 8 months...

That was the wildest 8 months of my life... and took longer than expected. A quick recap of the last 8 months:

-March 28th I quit my city job, and we pack up and prepare to move.

-April 26th everything is packed and shipped, and the Caravan rolls destined for Alberta.

-May 1 moved into our "new" 17' 1982 travel trailer on my wife's aunt's acreage while we finalize the property purchase. The possession and waiting for transfer of title took until the 24th! Oh well... at least the kids had fun playing with their cousins.

-May 24th The first night on our own in the travel trailer on our new acreage. Wow does the air smell fresh. No power. No water well. No plumbing. Oh boy. We had a gas generator lent to us for power tools, and we filled 5 gallon water jugs in town.

-May 26th I file with the County for our Development Permit. "That should be in your mail box in 1 to 2 weeks." If only I had known...

-Over the next couple of weeks I built 4 8X12X8 sheds to store our stuff, and then unloaded the cargo container into the sheds. I also built an outhouse at this point as well.

-July 11th The Development Permit has finally arrived! We are now a total of 7 weeks behind what I had (foolishly) expected.

-July 15th The screw-pile truck arrives and installs screwpiles.

-July 19th Screwpiles are cut to correct height and plates welded on.

-July 21st The wood for construction is delivered.

-August 7th Water well is drilled. 200' deep. Great water! Woohoo!

-September 1st after 6 weeks of 12-14 hours a day working full time on the construction of the house I start shingling the 12:12 roof.

-September 3rd Becomes a new annual family tradition called Power Day. The utility company finally turns the switch on.

-September 24th Septic tank installed.

-October 4th Wood stove installed.

-October 13th We moved in finally! Well maybe "moved in" is not the right wording. We camped out on the floor of the kitchen. But we had a fully functional bathroom!

-October 24th I drove into town looking for work. At 4:55, as I was still handing out resumes, I got a call from one of the companies I had dropped in to earlier in the day. I had a job interview 15 minutes later. By the end of the interview I basically had the job, as he let me know that he would call the next day to let me know how much they could offer me for salary. I started the following Wednesday in training to become the customer service manager in a communications company. Sweet!

Since then we have slowly picked away at one little project at a time. Below is a link called The Homestead to pictures of the process. Let me know if it does not work. Whew... life is finally coming to something near normal.

The Homestead

Little Travel Trailer on the Prairie.

I am now realizing that it is a bit tricky to update a blog when you are living in a travel trailer with no electricity, running water, or Internet.

Since May 24th we have been living on our acreage in our luxurious 21 foot long 1984 travel trailer. I have been busy building 4 large (8x12x8) sheds to store our household things in. We unloaded them from the moving truck on June 16th. Building 4 sheds does not seem like a lot of work, but with just a hammer, and a skill saw 4 sheds of that size is a LOT of work. I am working on an awesome "farmer's tan." A few spring storms have washed over us, but the weather has been OK most days. It is unbelievably quiet out here. The kids just love it, running around, making "bases" in the tall grass.

Yesterday we finally got our Development Permit from the County, so we can finally move forward with the building process. Now we need to get a Building Permit, which should take a few days. Once that happens we will have a screwpile foundation installed, and we can start building the next day. I will try to post a few photos once I am back on the Internet and construction has started.

Offer accepted!

The offer we put in for the acreage we were looking at was accepted about 6 hours ago! We should have possession of our little 4.79 acre slice of the country on May 16th. Hopefully the lawyer can speed this up a bit, but this is still progress. I forgot to bring the camera with me so there are no photos, but there is only grass anyways, so not too exciting. Pretty tired from a LOT of driving since last Saturday, will be sure to post an update as things move forward.

Step 1: Quit my job: Check.
Step 2: Buy an acreage: Check.
Step 3: Build a house: ...this could take a while.

Goodbye Suburbia, goodbye ...grass?

No, not the kind of grass that BC is famous for, but more on that in a moment. This past month has been a busy one. We are now packed, and our stuff is already in Alberta in storage waiting for us. Tonight we are sleeping on air matresses. Tomorrow morning the Caravan (1997 Dodge Caravan SE) will roll out and head East. We still are not sure exactly where in Alberta we will settle, but will be looking at many properties, and hopefully decide before the end of next week! We will be sure to post photos of the property as soon as the paperwork is started. The kids are very excited, and will probably wake up WAY too early tomorrow. This week we also have been very seriously considering going with solar power once we buy something, as the cost of getting new power polls installed is very high. This will need to wait and see what happens.

Now back to grass. This week I cut my lawn in Suburbia for the very last time. And no we're not bringing a lawnmower with us to the acreage. In the past couple of weeks I have learned that gas powered lawn mowers create 5% of the air pollution in the United States. 5%! I don't care what you think about Global Warming, that is an extra 5% to the total air pollution that you (and your kids? grand kids?) have to breath in. And for what? For a little patch of green. You can read more about this, and the massive amounts of fuel that are spilled every year filling up lawn mowers at this link: http://www.peoplepoweredmachines.com/faq-environment.htm#environment

So instead you can simply grow a clover lawn. Some clover is already probably in your lawn. It is green, blocks out weeds, and only grows a few inches high. No more mowing. No more pollution. No more spilled gasoline. An environmentally friendly solution that makes good sense: http://www.wikihow.com/Grow-a-Clover-Lawn

Step 1: Quit my job: Check.

Step 2: Buy an acreage: ... To be continued...

I just quit my job.

Well my first ever blog post is a very significant turning point in my life. As the subject says, I just handed in my resignation letter. My last day will be March 28th, at a software company where I will have worked a total of 7 years, 1 month, and 10 days. During that time I spent 3769 hours, which is 157 complete days, or 471 working days in my car driving to and from work.

I think that says enough. I'm tired, and I'm done.

I'm done with my yelling, pot-smoking neighbors. I'm done with 4 large dogs in back yards barking for no reason. I'm done with the traffic. I'm done with the smog. I'm done with sirens. I'm done with the commute. I'm done with a giant mortgage. I'm done with the noise.

In November my wife and I decided we were selling our slice of suburbia, and moving to the country. We can afford a small acreage outside of a small town, where we will build a small house debt free and mortgage free.

If you are interested (or care), keep an eye here for regular updates on how things are going. It will be an interesting ride for sure.

Step 1: Quit my job: Check.
Step 2: Buy an acreage: ... To be continued...