Newbie Intro and Questions

[ChristyACB]

Hello All,

I have really enjoyed reading the posts and have developed a real admiration for some of the amazing things I've read about what some of you are doing.

I'm a career Military officer (scientist) that is coming close to choosing retirement. (They ride us hard and put us up wet!) My goal has always been to homestead however I have modified that some to accomodate aging in place so I would call my goal now to be a semi-urban/not-quite-rural sustainable living.

I have so many questions. Here is a short intro and some questions.

First off, land: I did an analysis of the nation for a couple of years (everything from temps to emergencies to nearest biohazards and dumps) and got the boundaries of what I considered acceptable and then looked for land. Hard to find but then I found a place called Cherokee Village, took a look and bought two lots. They are paid off with very low taxes and a good situation but I don't visit so I don't have that year round perspective yet. It is .83 acres and the community has been sparsely populated for almost 50 years at 5730-ish residents for 56,000 acres.

Does anyone know about this area or have any info on it for a prospective new person? It is NE Arkansas, just south of the MO state line and near Mammoth Springs.

My plan is to build a sustainable home using primarily concrete for the core (don't like the idea of a 30 year resale life), square foot garden, solar, water collection and chickens for eggs and such. Not completely sustainable but pretty darn good.

Anyone else doing something similar?

I'm trying to do some of the things now and learn some of the skills now, but there aren't people around here that do much on their own that I can find so much of it is very much trial and error.

Topics I'd Love to Learn and have questions on:
-Gardening
-Preserving harvests (canning especially, my first try was a disaster)
-Chicken raising
-Choices for the home building portion of it
and so much more.

Currently I'm:
-Square foot gardening (love it! Even an idiot like me can make things grow!)
-Minimizing consumerist behaviors
-R3
-Working on the house plan with great care
-Composting (and I have questions even on that.)
-Nature-scaping
-Purchasing the things I'll need while I have the larger income such as hand power equipment and learning how to use them
-Homemade items like cleaning products, etc
-Increasing skills necessary like carpentry, tiling, home repair...etc

I look very forward to receiving any information and reading all the posts and participating where I can here. It is virtually certain I will ask questions that put me into the blathering idiot category, so I apologize ahead of time.

Christy

[wy_white_wolf]

Welcome

Sorry, No info on that area though.

[Windy in Kansas]

I have no immediate information I can offer, but I would like to extend a warm welcome to you. Feel free to ask gardening question on the gardening forum.


Welcome! From Windy in Kansas

[hotzcatz]

Sounds like a good plan but the only plans I've ever seen that match the final product are "as builts". (Plans made after the building is done for some sort of paperwork requirement such as mortgage processing.) Figure a certain amount of flexibility in there as circumstances and things change.

Can't give you much advice about concrete houses since we live in an area of earthquakes and don't use much of it around here. It is good to have a house that blends in with the neighborhood, though. Gets targeted for whatever purpose a lot less.

Can you start raising one or two hens or a couple of rabbits now? They are great fun as well as edible. Chickens are a lot easier to eat than rabbits, though. Rabbits are soft and furry with big brown eyes and chickens are not as cute.

[themamahen]

Buy the book "Self Suffient Life and How to Live it " John Seymour. You can pick it up at amazon. Will give you much information from gardening to animals exc. there are TONS of books out there for homesteading. but start with this 1. I dont know the area there at all.
Welcome to HT!

I also plan on having a concrete basement house when I build I am having a hard time finding plans for it though.
Good luck

[themamahen]

I just read my post .... teehee IT'S LATE YALL DONT MAKE FUN OF ME!
lol
off to bed now

[MarleneS]

If my memory is correct, I think MtMan's mother lives at Cherokee village. You might PM him.

Marlene

[ChristyACB]

Thank you all so much for your kind welcomes and advice so far.

MarleneS - I did PM him and I hope he does know about CV..thanks!
TheMamaHen - I will look that book up ASAP.

Re Concrete houses - It is very hard to find plans, especially ones NOT geared to being overly decorative but rather, more sustainable in function inside as well as outside. Some are just plain weird. I am searching out an architect right now and have a good planner working on the basics right now. If I do get one done, I will happily share it with others.

Anyone have any thoughts on the upsides and downsides of poured concrete buildings vs stick built or cinder block?

Christy

[Freehaven Patt]

Hi! Christy! If you relocate to Cherokee Village, I'll be your new neighbor. I live in Mammoth Spring, about 20 miles from CV. CV is beautiful as it has several man made lakes, lots of hills and access to good shopping, including three health food stores. You might want to check with the CV city council on building regulations. Based on what you've said, I don't think you'll have any problems, but there's a "pecking order" down here and it's best not to get on the wrong side of city officials.

There's a center for new people which you might want to call for information: Cherokee Village Welcome Center, 870-257-2095. The Village Commissioners office is 870-257-2302. There's a good mix of people in CV as residents are from all over the US. There are two golf courses, several community clubs with activities going on all the time.

If you need any information about the area, or want me to check on anything for you, just let me know. I'll do what I can to help.

I wanted to add that the dogwood and redbud are in bloom with flowers everywhere. This is our prettiest season.

[Callieslamb]

Christy,
I think the only thing about concrete homes is that they are more expensive to build, which is why you dont' see very many. I would find out if anyone in the area even has a basement. If they don't and there are no local builders that have done them - correctly, I would not use them.

Sounds like you are going to have a lot of fun. We are doing almost what you are doing -only not the concrete home. Looking at alternative power sources now.

[ErinP]

I'm wondering why you're going the route of concrete...
It's not only more expensive, but not particularly eco-friendly, either. Is this just something you've settled upon because it's a good DIY option? Or do you have your heart set on concrete?

There are a bazillion and one ways to build your own home. My husband and I are currently drawing up a modified post and beam structure, wrapped with insulated panels.

[piglady]

That's a tourist area due to the lakes and rivers. Population will ballon in summer and most go home in the winter. Lots of retired people come there so they have lots of clubs etc. Close to Hardy AR which is also a big tourist area. If you are looking for beautiful rocks and hills you've come to the right place. Some friends of ours rent a large house every year (they have lots of homes to rent by the day) and her husband had a heart attack. No major hospitals near by and had to be flown out to one of the larger cities. Good luck and welcome to the Ozarks.

[Freehaven Patt]

The CV hospital was closed several years ago. Since that time fully equipped medical offices have been established. One of these has an evening/weekend emergency services clinic. Best large hospitals are Baxter Memorial in Mountain Home about an hour from CV and White River Medical in Batesville which is about an hour and a half. Fulton County in Salem about half an hour away is a satellite of Baxter Memorial and has some of the latest equipment. Lots of doctors to choose from in the area.

We don't have a Lowe's or Home Depot, but local hardware and feed stores can supply almost everything you need. The free papers have lots of ads for items.

Piglady mentioned "rocks" and you should know that while the big ones stay put, the small variety breed in your garden over the winter. j

[soulsurvivor]

My brother built a poured concrete home back in the late 70s. It's his daughter's home now. The house was made using some silo forms my dad built in the late 50s to pour a concrete silo on our farm. It's still standing too. Each corner of the house is rounded, yea like a silo, and there's a rectangle in the middle. No basement. My dad made one huge round metal form with lock/unlock braces that operated on a jack lift to raise the form after the concrete had set. He'd secure the form and then pour the next level of concrete. I'm fairly certain my brother sold the silo form a few years back.

[ChristyACB]

Freehaven Patt - Thank you! It is nice to know that there will be at least one like minded person nearby.

ErinP (and other concrete home interested folks) - Concrete is amazing. I first got onto the idea of concrete when I was a kid living in Europe and my travels lately in Italy have really...cemented...my thoughts on it. While Concrete and cement aren't are as eco-friendly as a fully recycled product, they have one huge advantage that offsets this and makes it the most eco-friendly building substance aside from stone in the world and that is permanence.

My view on building this one last home is that it is my last home. I'm 41 and hope for a long bit of life yet. I have a niece very like me who is likely to take a similar turn as me in her 40's. Hence, a home that won't be worn out in 40 years, that I can age in place at, that I can will to a person who can live there or sell, that can be sold and bought or held onto for 5 to 6 times as long as a stick built house that receives the same level of care is my ideal.

Permanence is what I find most attractive in it. Walking through houses made with cement more than 2000 years ago is a significant testimony to their ability. Flushing a toilet into pipes that have been carrying the same load for more than 2000 years is another. Gross but significant.

A modern example is when I was stationed in Hawaii. I lived in this cheesy townhome that had been built around WWII timeframe. It was made of cinder blocks and strong as the rock of gibralter. It was the lack of closets and bad windows that made it cheesy. That thing will probably stand until someone takes a great deal of effort knocking it down because it weathered Hurricanes and 2 Tsunami's with only a bit of mopping required to clean up.

Now, I don't expect my house to be lived in for 2000 years and I'm not dreaming of dynasty here, don't get me wrong. But after seeing the first house I bought, which was new built in a development that was considered "quality" 20 years later when I drove past, it really hit home what a huge waste that was. So much material and so much money on something that really only has a resale life of 30 years is not right. It is even less if there is just one person who doesn't do all that needs to be done to maintain a house there for a few years.

Even using all eco-materials, a stick built house in today's manner of building means that house will age out in terms of style and substance too quickly. Post and beam and other styles that I've read about people using on these boards have definite advantages over today's normal construction, so I'm definitely not knocking wood at all. I've seem some really great houses just recently that still have the door installed in medieval times right next to the busy street so I know it can last.

Concrete and cement are expensive to build with, but in the end, considering the timeline for occupancy possible, it is cheaper in the long run, just maybe not for me. I'm really trying to take longer views on building.

Wow! That was a long winded response I really wanted to get out what I was thinking about it though. Thanks all...thoughts? Am I on the wrong track in my thinking?

Christy

[ErinP]

Or do you have your heart set on concrete?

Well you definitely answered this question.

And while I'm honestly not trying to change your mind (when your heart is set on something, that's just all there is to it), I would like to point out that stick built doesn't have to mean cheap and flimsy.
I grew up in the three story Craftsman that my folks still live in. It turns 100 in six years. It is still a beautiful home.

[ChristyACB]

ErinP and all,

I was worried that my response would seem like I was against stick-built since the surely isn't the case. I too marvel at the beautiful craftsman style homes that have been standing firm since their initial build.

I did consider all forms of building when I first started. One thing I ran into was that there really aren't many plans for homes, whether wood or concrete, that don't follow the shoddy techniques of today or have un-neccessary add ons that will need to be taken out to be practical home.

When I went to an architect and started laying out what I wanted, he warned me of the initial cost of building with concrete or cement in any big amount. So I asked about wood but made it very clear I wanted the kind of strength and durability I saw in older homes (American and European) and showed him some pictures. He then made it clear that to get that kind of lumber I would be paying almost the same as concrete and that most of it would need to come from sources I had specifically said no too. (Nothing from Borneo or other unsustainably harvested sources.) If I wanted that kind of lumber sourced from U.S. only, I would be paying through the nose. He even said I would need to figure in costs for security at the building site because that sort of lumber is a target for thieves, just like copper. Amazing!

In the end, it wasn't so much about my heart being set on it for emotional reasons though security and safety does touch on that emotional side a bit, but rather than what I could do with the least impact gaining the longest period return.

It also went into the eco home concept in other ways. I really wanted to use solar mass for passive solar and a water tempered thermal chimney (which is essentially just a central courtyard that is covered at the second story with air vents and a fountain in the middle) in order to nearly eliminate significant heating and all cooling needs. I simply couldn't get that without using a lot of extra cost unless I used concrete.

However, that just means I'm terribly confused about using poured vs blocks...and it goes on! LOL. I have only about 1.5 years to have it decided and the full plans made and approved if I'm going to get it built in the time frame required.

Did anyone else have this much trouble deciding on their future home?

Christy

[Longin2LiveFree]

I used to do ceramic tile, so if theres anything you have a question on I hope I have an answer!