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[Homestead] Tvo post- 8-11-2000, Where to put the house

From: Rob <becida AT comcast.net>
To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [Homestead] Tvo post- 8-11-2000, Where to put the house
Date: Sat, 02 Jul 2005 18:50:09 -0700

Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2000 20:43:19 -0400
From: tvoivozhd <tvoivozd AT roanoke.infi.net>
Reply-To: "Homestead mailing list" <homestead AT listserv.unc.edu>
To: "Homestead mailing list" <homestead AT listserv.unc.edu>
Subject: Re: Where to put the house

Bob W wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> I'm mostly a lurker and learner, but I have a question and am looking
> for opinions which I'm sure I can get here.
>
> we are getting ready to buy property in East Tennessee. I am trying to
> decide whether to put the house high or low. The property has two good
> home sites. One is down in the lower part of the property, I can set the
> house back in the trees. Nice and secluded. The other site is up on top
> of the hill. Better view but not as secluded. I would like to know the
> pros and cons of the two locations from all of the experts out there
> that have made this decision before. .
>
> Bob W [FL] (Will be TN eventually)

Tvoivozhd---Which site is better for passive solar heating? In the not
distant
future, fuels other than wood are going to
eat up an increasing amount of your income and make you dependent upon people
over whom you have no control or even influence. And which site will provide
breeze for hot-weather cooling---protection from winter wind?

Which site is better for providing a pollution-free water source?

Assuming you are going to garden and have animals around, will it be more
convenient to have them above or below the house:

Is there a spring, stream or pondsite at the lower level?

Is the area heavily wooded adjacent to and beyond your property? (A potential
fire hazard in dry weather).

Which site will require the shortest and/or most level private road to the
highway? Short means less expense to install.
Level means less expense to maintain. A steep road subject to washing is a
perpetual nuisance and bank account hemorrhage.

You should buy Gene Gerue's book and perhaps others on his recommend list that
follows. He is temporarily incommunicado, having filled his beer moat and
forgotten his snorkel. I feel confidant he will soon drink it all and be
back
with us in sodden splendor, if the Moat Monsters don't get him first.

GeRue's Reviews

A Country
Bookstore

is being constructed here, with links to Amazon.com, a relationship that will
give me a few bucks to buy more books. I have been reading country books
for decades, I keep buying and reading new ones and will present here those I
feel are the best of the best in each country-living subject. If you have a
nomination, please e-mail me. Please be patient as I develop this
bookstore--my html expertise is about on a par with my fluency in Swahili

HOW TO FIND YOUR IDEAL COUNTRY HOME: A
COMPREHENSIVE GUIDE, by Gene GeRue
This is the third edition of my book. It is listed first not to say

it is best but because country life begins with finding your
place. There are 32 chapters, each a subject I feel is vital
knowledge to help you make your first purchase the right one,
so you don't have to uproot yourself and your loved ones a
second or third time. I also drew 93 maps to give you
essential information at a glance. Reviewers have said this is the best book on

the subject, but the testimonials that warm and humble me most are those
received from readers. "This is one of the best books I've ever read" (Carol
Post, Altamonte Springs, Florida). "Your book is superb" (Jerry & Clare
Perkins, Livonia, Michigan). "After reading your book, I feel like we are close

neighbors" (David & Sheila Knapp, Winnebago, Illinois). If after reading my
book you have any unanswered questions, please e-mail me at
genegerue AT ruralize.com. And, please--don't forget to enjoy the journey. Go
to Amazon's page HOW TO FIND YOUR IDEAL COUNTRY HOME
FINDING & BUYING YOUR PLACE IN THE
COUNTRY, by Les Scher & Carol Scher
Les Scher is a lawyer. The premise of this book is that you
want to act as your own real estate agent, so most of the
book presents the myriad aspects of real estate law,
appraising and negotiating price, finance, contracts,
escrow, title insurance, and of course, using a lawyer. If
you want to act as your own agent, buy this book. If you
want to use an experienced real estate agent to handle your purchase, buy my
book, which tells you how. A caveat: this book is rather light on finding your
right place, so if you buy this book, you need mine also. Here's Amazon's
page FINDING & BUYING YOUR PLACE IN THE COUNTRY

.
THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF COUNTRY LIVING, by
Carla Emery
Carla Emery is a national treasure. This is simply the most
informative book ever written on country living, the next
best thing to having a live-in grandmother who knows
everything there is to getting homegrown food from dreams
to dinner plates plus nearly anything else you need to
know. Begun as a 12-page table of contents for a recipe
book in 1969, the present ninth edition has 858 pages of far more than
recipes. Veggies, vines, trees, grains, poultry, goats, cows, bees, rabbits,
sheep, pigs. Planning, nurturing, harvesting, preserving, preparing. Flipping
pages at random finds starting transplants, breads leavened with eggs and
beating, speeding up tomato sauce-making, harvesting herbs, making cider,
managing an existing stand of trees, root cellar storage, soap making, brooding

chicks, secrets to safe cattle handling, cultured buttermilk, cooking on a wood

stove, jams and jellies, making a wool quilt. If your budget or bookshelf has
room for only one book, this is the book to buy. Go to Amazon's page for
THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF COUNTRY LIVING
BACK TO BASICS: HOW TO LEARN AND
ENJOY TRADITIONAL AMERICAN
SKILLS, by Readers Digest.
A primer on self-reliance and rural skills, this is a
large-format book of 456 pages lavishly illustrated
with photographs and drawings, about half in full
color. Here are 57 subjects, many with subsets, as in gardening, which
includes information on soil, cultivation methods, making and using a
greenhouse, and specific information on many veggies, herbs, fruits. Some
presentations are simplistic, like telling you how to find and evaluate a farm
or
can produce in only four pages. Building and using a smokehouse gets one
page. Using dairy products butters ten pages. Woodworking and furniture
making nail down thirty pages. Build and decorate a house and the chairs,
tables, beds to furnish it. Build a springhouse, a dam, a well, a water system.

Grow vegetables, fruits, grains. Raise bees, fish, chickens, ducks, geese,
rabbits, hogs, sheep, goats, cows, horses. Make cheese, maple syrup, beer,
wine, bread, soap, candles, baskets. Cook with wood. Spin yarn, use natural
dyes, make cloth, quilts, rugs, hammocks. Learn tanning and leather work,
tinsmithing, blacksmithing, toolmaking. Celebrate harvest and holidays with
traditional decorations, recipes, toys, games, dances. Learn camping, hiking,
fishing, canoeing, snowshoeing, skiing. Whew! This book will keep you
happily occupied for several decades. Go to Amazon's page for BACK TO
BASICS

RODALE'S ALL-NEW ENCYCLOPEDIA OF
ORGANIC GARDENING: THE INDISPENSABLE
RESOURCE FOR EVERY GARDENER, editors
Barbara W. Ellis and Fern M. Bradley.
Like cookbooks, there are hundreds of gardening books.
Where to begin? These 690 pages will answer 95 percent of
your questions. After gardening for decades I still find myself
taking a quick peek here before preparing soil for a specific plant. Four big
categories: gardening technique, organic garden management, food crops,
ornamental plants. Hundreds of specific entries quickly found. This is your
basic gardening reference book. Here's Amazon's page for THE
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ORGANIC GARDENING
THE SUSTAINABLE VEGETABLE GARDEN: A
BACKYARD GUIDE TO HEALTHY SOIL AND
HIGHER YIELDS, by John Jeavons.
This is an excellent book for new gardeners and for old
gardeners new to the biointensive method. Tells how to build
a garden the right way, from the bottom up. If growing one's
own food is the best way to stop the insanity of agribusiness,
then John Jeavons is a mild-mannered but effective revolutionary leader. He
enlightened hundreds of thousands of us with his 1974 groundbreaker How to
Grow More Vegetables (than you ever thought possible on less land than you
can imagine). Go to Amazon's page THE SUSTAINABLE VEGETABLE
GARDEN
THE NEW ORGANIC GROWER: A MASTER'S
MANUAL OF TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES FOR
THE HOME AND MARKET GARDENER, by Eliot
Coleman.
To feed yourself, feed the soil. Coleman has long been
gardening under challenging conditions, has learned how to
optimize soil fertility to produce health-giving harvests.
Here he presents top-notch advice so you can do it too.
Go to Amazon's page THE NEW ORGANIC GROWER
FOUR-SEASON HARVEST: ORGANIC
VEGETABLES FROM YOUR HOME GARDEN
ALL YEAR LONG, by Eliot Coleman.
Eat fresh, home-grown vegetables year round? Eliminate
canning and freezing? Do this all at low cost? Eliot
Coleman does, you can, too, and here is the how.
Coleman is a market gardener in Maine who may eat
better than Bill Gates. He shows that sunlight and wind
protection are more important than temperature--and, by the way, most of the
U.S. gets more winter sunlight than ColemanÆs place. Inexpensive, unheated
greenhouses that he calls tall tunnel houses--some say hoop houses--and cold
frames protect from wind and keep snow off the veggies. Greenhouse comfort
is more to benefit the gardener. The key is what and when to plant. Full info
given for planting dates, construction details, sources of seeds, tools,
greenhouses. Well illustrated. An essential guide for organic gourmands. Go to
Amazon.com for FOUR-SEASON HARVEST

SEED TO SEED, by Suzanne Ashworth
SEED TO SEED, by Suzanne Ashworth. Sixty million American
gardeners buy their seeds from mail
order seed companies. In the period 1984-1987, 54 of the 230 seed
companies in the U.S. and
Canada went out of business, resulting in 943 non-hybrid
varieties becoming unavailable. One answer
to the extinction of food crop varieties is Seed Savers Exchange,
the publisher of Seed to Seed.
Begun in 1975, SSE maintains more than 18,000 rare vegetable
varieties at Heritage Farm in
Decorah, Iowa. (Call 319-382-5990 for catalog and membership
information.) Another answer is for
individual gardeners to save their own seed from non-hybrid
varieties. Varieties that grow and taste
exceptionally well in specific areas can be planted year after year from
home-grown seed. A further advantage is
protection from seed price increases. Ashworth provides definitive information
on seed gathering, processing and
storage techniques. Twenty family entries include taxonomy, pollination
characteristics and techniques, general
production and processing techniques. Each of the 160 species entries includes
botanical classification; pollination,
crossing, and isolation; seed production, harvest and processing; seed
viability. Ample black-and-white photographs
complement the text. Hybrid seeds are in the control of large companies. You can
be in control of heirloom varieties that
do best in your garden. Happy eating. Go to Amazon's page SEED TO SEED

PERMACULTURE: A DESIGNERS MANUAL, by
Bill Mollison.
Bill Mollison is an ecologist of the first rank. In 1981 he
received the Right Livelihood Award--the Alternative Nobel
Prize--for his work in environmental design. He and David
Holmgren coined the word permaculture; Mollison has
devoted his life to teaching the concept. Permaculture is
humans working with, not against, nature. It's about causing land, water,
plants, and animals to synergistically cause multiple benefits and to improve
an
ecosystem simultaneously. It maximizes functional connections. The many
parts become a whole. To create permaculture design is to make the strongest
possible statement of our eco-values, a resounding vote against current
agribusiness practices. I have four of Mollison's books. This one has it all
plus
129 color photos and a gazillion drawings by Andrew Jeeves. It gives you
complete knowledge to create your own personal permaculture, a place to
work and live in harmony with nature, a place that will nuture your body and
your soul. Here is the Amazon's page for PERMACULTURE: A
DESIGNERS MANUAL
A PATTERN LANGUAGE: TOWNS, BUILDINGS,
CONSTRUCTION, by Christopher Alexander, Sara
Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein, with Max Jacobson, Ingrid
Fiksdahl-King, Shlomo Angel.
There are certain design principles that are self-evident truths,
commonsense but uncommonly applied to modern towns and
buildings, painfully evident in characterless and cheerless
houses. Most of us have these evolved truths deep within us
but we rarely think of them. Given here are 253 patterns, each consisting of a
design challenge, discussion, illustration, and solution. Your knowledge of
these patterns can help you to create a home that is a pleasure to live in, one

that is imaginative, inspiring, healthful, and psychologically satisfying as
well as
fully functional. I cannot imagine designing any building without refreshing my

memory of these wonderful patterns. First published in 1977, this book has
already attained the status of classic. Go to Amazon's page on A PATTERN
LANGUAGE

BUILDING A MULTI-USE BARN, by John D.
Wagner
This is an excellent primer to use if you are new to building.
The entire process from stake layout to finish trim is given
step-by-step with ample and clear illustrations so that
anyone who can use tools can build a building, not just a
barn, but a house, garage, workshop, or studio. The
project here is a 24 by 30-foot multi-use barn with a
monolithic concrete slab floor, wood-framing and gable roof. Included are
foundation, framing, plumbing, electrical, heating, insulation, roofing,
siding.
After you build this, or a smaller building using the same instructions, you
will
be able to build essentially anything--the principles remain the same. Go to
Amazon's page BUILDING A MULTI-USE BARN
PRACTICAL POLE BUILDING
CONSTRUCTION: WITH PLANS FOR BARNS,
CABINS & OUTBUILDINGS, by Leigh Seddon
Of all the pole building books I have seen, this is the best.
Seddon covers the logic of pole building and then gives
straightforward instruction on how to do it, with lots of
clear drawings and photographs. Included are design,
materials, calculating loads, foundations, framing and
joinery, roofing and siding, windows and doors, building plans, and an
appendix that shows how to calculate sun angles, snow loads, compares
insulations, gives recommended nailing schedules, and several other useful
items. Plans include a lake house, hillside house, cabin, garage, horse stable,

and lean-to animal shelter. If you have never built anything before, it is
likely
that you will be able to build any or all of these with no more instruction
than
this book, plus plumbing and electrical help. Go to Amazon's page
PRACTICAL POLE BUILDING

GAVIOTAS: A VILLAGE TO REINVENT THE WORLD, by Alan Weisman
In 1966, when he was 22, Paolo Lugari and his brother drove over barely passable roads to a desolate area 200 miles east of Bogota, Columbia. The llanos area is a poor-soil barren that grows only a few nutrient-deficient grasses, a vast expanse of sun-baked plains in spite of over 100 inches of rain per year. A place of deadly water and hungry mosquitos. Conditions were so daunting that the Columbian government abandoned an attempt to build a road through the area. Lugari saw an opportunity to create something very special. And he did it. Today Gaviotas is a thriving, sustainable community of hundreds of joyous people studying, inventing, producing, singing and dancing amidst a huge forest that they planted. Residents from all walks of life have designed and built,
planted and harvested, birthed,
nurtured, taught, and entertained. There are teeter-totters that operate
super-efficient pumps to bring water to the
school, solar heat to cook meals, solar kettles to sterilize drinking water,
ultra-light windmills to provide power. The
hospital has been designated one of the 40 most important buildings in the
world. Some have called Gaviotas a utopia.
Lugari insists that, "Utopia literally means no place. We call Gaviotas a
topia
because it's real." Gaviotas the village is
surprising, uplifting, extraordinary. Gaviotas the nonfiction book is as
compelling as a novel, as educational as a
textbook, as inspirational as the biography of a great person. If you need to
rise early, do not take this book to bed with
you. Go to Amazon's page GAVIOTAS
THE BUILDER'S SECRET: LEARNING THE ART
OF LIVING THROUGH THE CRAFT OF
BUILDING, by George Ehrenhaft.
George Ehrenhaft has opened a new door, one that leads into
the mystical, highly personal realm of why remodelers,
rehabilitators, and home builders create their personal
domains with their own hands. This is touchy territory--one
potential subject flatly told Ehrenhaft it was none of his damn
business. Others made excuses. I'm glad the author persisted. The result is a
balanced offering of widely diverse stories: teacher, housecleaner, teacher,
architect, graphic artist, symphony flutist, policeman, artist, builder-writer.

Most interviewees began their projects overenthused and underinformed.
Lacking knowledge, skills, and tools, they were impelled by financial
necessity, curiosity, fantasy, a hunger for a transcendent adventure. Men with
wives struggling to understand; women dealing with macho members of the
building trades. Personal relationships gone awry. Disaster and achievement.
Despair and elation. The author found sentiment, resilience, intuition, testing
of
limits, reverence for nature, "a conspiracy of forces," and "'being filled with
a
thrilling and joyous sense of Shelter--with a capital S.'" Like writers who
must
write, owner-builders must build. Pity those who never feel the natural high of

living in their own created shelter. Pity yourself? Or step into the lives of
these
nine and live the transcendent moments with them. Go to Amazon's page
THE BUILDER'S SECRET

I'm working on this. Stay tuned.
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry patiently keeps showing us how to regain the
sanity and goodness that life once held. Here are six essays:
Farming and the Global Economy; Conserving Community;
Conserving Forest Communities; Private Property and the
Common Wealth; The Conservation of Nature and the
Preservation of Humanity; Health is Membership. In
Conserving Community Berry lists 17 specific guidelines for
regaining our lives by rebuilding our communities. They alone
are worth far more than the price of the book--if we use them. Berry turns
the crank; we need to start the engine. Go here for ANOTHER TURN
OF THE CRANK.
Hugh Johnson
Gene Logsdon
Logsdon is a small Ohio farmer who writes about what he
knows, and he knows a lot. His early books were written
for Rodale, how-to titles that are all out-of-print. His
present publisher is Chelsea Green, which will be bringing
out a new edition of the book on getting food from water. I
have most of Logsdon's books and like them all. Of his
recent work, my favorite is THE CONTRARY
FARMER.
Helen and Scott Nearing
I discovered Helen and Scott's books in
the early 1970s and they inspired and
sustained me as I planned my escape from
urban California. Not long before she
died, Helen reviewed my book and gave it
a wonderful testimonial which I will always
cherish. No other two people have had a
greater influence on the back-to-the-land
movement. Helen and Scott were born to privilege and rejected it to live
lives that showed by example their commitment to right living. They were
vegetarians, they raised most of their food, and they were remarkable in their

physical and intellectual capacities. Their physical bodies are dead but their

spirits live on in the lives of those now living the good life because of
their
example. Schocken Books has compiled the two Nearing classics, Living
The Good Life, and Continuing The Good Life, into one volume: THE
GOOD LIFE: HELEN AND SCOTT NEARING'S SIXTY YEARS
OF SELF-SUFFICIENT LIVING.After Scott died at the age of 100 by
purposefully not eating, Helen wrote a candid book that gives insight into
their private lives and reveals their deep convictions: LOVING AND
LEAVING THE GOOD LIFE.
John Seymour

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[Homestead] Tvo post- 8-11-2000, Where to put the house, Rob, 07/02/2005