Building Range Line Road: August 2020

An interesting aspect of trying to build a house on vacant land is the introduction of modern conveniences gradually, over time. While the plan is to build a house, we also are enjoying using the property before the house exists. This means that since no house exists, no electricity exists on the site, nor running water, nor shelter. Over the past year we have spent much time in our new Michigan retreat, especially as a retreat and release from Corona Captivity. Until the house exists, we are living in nature (camping, cooking over a fire, and gradually introducing aspects of living that make things slightly easier. If rugged, uncompromised nature is one end of the spectrum (with no human presence), and complete human occupation (cities) is the other, we are currently closer to the former than the latter condition on our property.

The items so far that have been introduced by us to our nature: a gravel road to allow us to easier access the portion of the site that we want to inhabit; a water well (not yet useful as there is no electricity to pump the water out of the ground), a shipping container which we use to store tools and equipment, and the optimistic introduction of a vegetable garden. We’ll see how the vegetable garden works, as there are critters who will gladly eat anything that manages to grow, and I don’t yet have a reliable way to irrigate the crops, so I’m not yet convinced that anything will in fact grow. But, these things are steps on our way to domesticating a site enough to spend more comfortable time there. We have also located the spot for our future house, and have removed fallen trees from the area, and generally cleaned up the site where our house will grow.