Projects Abound with Two Around

South Dakota greeted me with an icy blast to the face. As fast as we could, Connor and I unloaded what I’d brought to live on for 8 months, built up a fire in the stove, pulled the couch close, and thawed.

The morning of the 16^th, Connor and I moved the raised bed he’d built in the garage to inside the cabin, placing it underneath a wide, south-facing window. After filling about ¾ of the bed with potting soil, we transplanted spinach, endive, red salad bowl lettuce, Amish deer tongue, and lemon balm seedlings into the fresh soil. A large pot with a foot tall pea seedling sits in the windowsill, as well as a lone survivor tomato seedling and a humidity tray of more tomato and pepper seedlings.

* As of today (the 19^th) the spinach has adapted extremely well to the up rooting, as well as most of the endive. Most of the red salad bowl lettuce and deer tongue drooped and withered, so we’ve re-planted the empty rows with more lemon balm and lettuce seeds.

We had decided that we could save energy and funds by turning off the heat in the garage, which prompted a full-fledged empty-and-clean-the-entire-aquaponics-system project. I took up the net of honor and went goldfish fishing. We scrubbed the aquarium’s glass walls clean of grime stains and fish poo and vacuumed loose grit and poo from the rocks. The worst of this murky water (with the best nutrients) we saved for watering the plants, and the rest we reused. washed all the aquaponics gadgets. The stand and tank we carried into the cabin and placed in a corner with south and east facing windows. All aquaponics essentials were replaced and we stepped back to allow the plants to enjoy their new view.

Introducing Tiny Home Challenges:

            Not on purpose did we find ourselves deep into our first “Tiny Home Challenge.” This one stemmed from a serious talk about managing our finances and our current financial position. Neither of us owns much and we tried our best to save during college (not the easiest task, as many know) so that when “now” came, we’d have enough to fund all of our desired projects. We wrote out a new budget based on recent realizations of unexpected costs and came dangerously close to depleting our entire bank accounts. What to do? Do we ditch a project? No chickens? No tiny home?

            Connor and I stared at the paper on the table between us with the scary number scratched and circled on it. We looked at each other, not wanting to say what the other might be fearing.

            We haven’t pulled the plug on anything yet, but we decided that night that our tiny home and garden are two projects we just won’t give up on. We are equally determined to make that tiny home structurally sound and appealing to live in. We’ll look for part-time positions in Clark. We’ll do jobs around the cabin. Maybe chickens will have to wait, but we’ve chosen to be optimistic. These next couple of months is when we’ll be dropping the most money on supplies, food, and gas, but after the weather warms enough for biking, our garden starts producing, and all of our supplies are bought, we’re betting that our wallets will stabilize too. We’ll make this work.

Most days are sunny and deceptively beautiful, but a quick jog to the outhouse proves another day of negative degrees and gusty. We’re nearly out of wood for heating the cabin, but we both agree that a couple hours of chopping wood in this chill, even within the pole shed, would be an option only in life-or-death circumstances (so… two days from now). But, we optimistically believe that it’ll warm up soon (the weather app on my phone believes this too). 

Our weekly town stop led us to buy our first large purchase!! 31 sheets of plywood for the entire tiny home, and a couple 2 x 4's for another sawhorse. The kind man in the lumberyard talked us through exactly what kind of plywood we needed for our purposes, and we ended up with a bill less than half as much as we'd predicted. The sun is shining extra bright for us today.