The 4th of July Chapter 2

I failed to mention that before we moved to our new home site my husband had purchased a small cedar cabin, 350 square feet to be exact.  It was just a shell, one big room....that was to be our new home while we developed plans for our new house.  He had the cabin moved to our new property.  The contents of our house in the city were put in storage in a nearby town about 20 miles from our acreage.

When we purchased the property there was only one house but a few other homes were soon to begin.  There was a ranch house already in the development which was empty at the time of our purchase.  As we entered the development on July 4 I saw a young man with long hair on a 3 wheeler.  Immediately I knew that the ranch house property had sold and the new owners had kids.  My heart sank at the site of this long haired kid.  I knew at that moment that my secret plans for my son to become a "kicker" were lost forever, because this long haired kid was clearly not a "kicker".  My son who sat beside me in the car was quiet, I know he was secretly elated to see "one of his kind".  As it turned out he had a brother who was also not a "kicker".  They would attend the same high school as my child would attend.  They all became close friends...and none of the three ever changed their image to "country boy"!  Oh well, I could deal with that.  I still had other plans for our new country life...like goats.  I could do that, surely nothing would interfere with my goat plans.

The Cabin Home

Now there was the question of a bathroom, showering, toileting, cooking and washing dishes.  Clothes could be washed at the local laundromat  in town.  First things first...we had a porta potty and a little one man tent.  It made a perfect bathroom for a while.  Later we would move it into a grove of cedars.  We had no running water until we could have a well dug.  We purchased 7 gallon containers and filled them with water from Walmart which was about 30 miles away in another town.  We used these for dishes, porta potty, and showering.  We put the water container in the sun to get warm and my husband built a platform between two oak trees to place the container on.  We then strung rope around the oaks and hung "shower curtains".  It was a very functional outdoor shower.  I set up a card table to be used as a kitchen under some oaks where I washed dishes.  We had a small gas grill  and a 2 burner propane camping cooker to cook our meals on.  I soon became an expert at cooking on these utensils.  I created some awesome dishes on this grill, cheesecakes, cookies, pies, bread, you name it, I baked it.  The two burner cooker and the side burner on the gas grill produced the next Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners and they were as good as I could have made in the city.  We smoked a turkey on our smoker and had all the usual side dishes, mashed potatoes, dressing, cranberry sauce, gravy, green beans and more.  By this time we had electricity to the cabin and a well and septic was dug.  We soon framed out a full bathroom, although tiny, with sink, toilet and shower. We then built the kitchenette. It was home for a year and a half.

I must mention here that we did not have to live the way in which we did.  We could have rented a house in town about 15 miles from our property but we loved the land and scenery so much and wanted to be there every day.  Besides, it was an incredible experience that I would not have wanted to miss.  It was a test of endurance for a family that had every convenience prior to this.  It was a wonderful life.  We installed bunk beds and a futon in the "bedroom/living room".  One of our adult sons came and stayed with us occasionally as his job allowed.  We had tv, internet and we played board games.  We celebrated a Christmas in the cabin with all four of our children present.  It was wall to wall beds, even though one bed was under the kitchen table.  We just had to be careful not to step on each other in the middle of the night.

The only mishap during this time was a scorpion stung one of my sons on the ear.  One had to be careful going in and out of the door at night.  A scorpion would often be lurking there and drop on someone as they were entering.   Poor guy, it stung his ear just as he laid down to sleep.  His scream brought us all to our feet, lights on, looking for the culprit.  With the unfortunate scorpion dead and the pain ebbing we all went back to bed, I must say, laughing at the reaction our son had to being stung.  He was so worried it might be a venomous spider.  As he was dancing around the room holding his ear screaming "please don't let it be a spider", we could not help but laugh!