Cabin interior and view southeast overlooking goat barn

Just posting a few pics showing the inside and outside of our little cabin and the view from cabin towards goat barn (made of pallets, peeled poles, and slab wood) and of Mt. Lamborn across the North Fork Valley.

Goat barn almost finished.

Decided to put the solar freezer outside (should run less, free up space inside cabin)

Once goat barn is done, milk stand can move down there, freeing up space for firewood & storage.

We use the fridge-freezer for an icebox (top) and bulk food storage (bottom).  Should be able to run it with excess solar electricity during the hotter summer months.  For now, we just make ice in solar freezer outside, and swap gallon ice jugs in and out twice a day.

Half a dining room table downstairs...

Looking towards front door.  Solar batteries are under bench by door.  Wood cook stove doesn't use much wood to cook all of our meals, heat water and keep the place very warm.  In summer, we plan to use a rusty old wood cook stove outside, plus a solar cooker.

Rickety ladder will be replaced with a sturdier one that folds up out of the way.  Currently planning new (homemade) cabinets.  Wood door on wall beyond cabin accesses a woodbox built into the wall of woodshed.  Box holds enough wood for 2 to 3 days of cooking.  Faucet (which you can't see in photo) is just a 25' long RV water hose that comes through a hole at rear of  kitchen counter and has an adjustable garden spray on the end.  Makes it easy to fill water pots on stove or buckets of water on floor for goats and chickens.  Water comes underground, by gravity, from a half-buried insulated 1100 gallon tank that's located about 30 feet higher than cabin.  Right now, we truck water to fill that cistern, but by end of next year should have the rainwater catchment, filtration and UV sterilization system (like used in Pagosa Springs place) set up again and hopefully won't have to truck in any more water.

Full loft, about 5'5" high.  Half of it is the bedroom...

The other half of loft is office and (to far right) onion/pumpkin/squash/garlic storage.  The office desk is the other half of the dining room table that we picked up cheap in the local want ad.  We have high speed wireless internet that uses a dish antenna focused at a transmitter located on a hill 11 miles down and across the valley.

North and east walls of cabin with rudimentary rainwater catchment system.  Earthen plaster is just base coat, and hopefully will eventually get a final coat, but no real rush.  It seems to be holding up fine.

New Homestead in Paonia, CO

Last winter, we moved to Paonia, Colorado, in search of land in the North Fork Valley, said to be home of the highest density of organic farms in the country.  Serendipitously, a caretaking position opened up on 48 acres of south sloping land overlooking the town, and we were accepted as the new land stewards.  We have been working with the owner to buy into the property as tenants in common, and felt optimistically confident enough to have a garden there, and beginning in July, to build a small (15' x 10') cabin with a half - height second floor for sleeping and office. 

The cabin was constructed using light straw-clay infill walls, earthen plastered floor, earthen plastered walls inside and out, and will have an attached greenhouse on the south side (hopefully by February in time to start seedlings in).  It is a passive solar design with heat provided by a large, old wood cookstove and electricity from a 600 watt solar electric array now mounted on the roof.  We also have two dairy goats here, one in milk and one a youngster, and raised 38 meat chickens, 2 guinea fowl, and kept another three chickens (two hens and a rooster) for eggs, all in homemade moveable shelters in the pasture over the summer.

With the cabin finally livable in late October, just in time as the weather turned cold, we turned our attention to constructing a small barn for the goats to winter over in.  As of this entry, we're still working on the barn, but it's coming out nicely, and the goats seem to like it.

Life is funny.  We thought we were done moving when we settled in Pagosa Springs, but Paonia really pulled, and here we are.  This past year we were both able to find enough work to pay the bills, Linc doing some engineering in Grand Junction, and Jeanne part time PT work in Delta as well as work in the spring and early summer at a local goat dairy, caring for around 100 newborn goat kids, one of whom (Eggplant!) now lives here with us.  Our hope is to eventually be able to make a living here in Paonia, preferably from the land we are living on, and to gradually make this place, currently a somewhat barren old hayfield, into a place of perennial abundance and diversity for ourselves, our neighbors and community, the creatures that we share this place with, and for those that will live here in the future.  There is a lot on our plate these days and that feels good.