Title: Progress update on the move to Ozarks Date: 2021-09-24 10:20 Modified: 2021-09-24 19:30 Category: Farm Tags: homestead,move,update Authors: schroskat@gmail.com Summary: Interim update for broader audience on our move to Ozarks from Galveston

Prologue

In mid 2018, I was convicted to live closer to the land, which got me on a journey to work in the garden, in then available .2 acres on the Gulf Coast of Texas, where we resided. Leading upto that, my sons and bride were part of the local 4H club and had gotten to raising rabbits for show. Since we were in the city, the ordinances dictated that we can only have certain set of animals and counts of them. This lead us on a journey to explore how to have more animals and grow more of our own food on the small parcel God had blessed us with.

We embarked on the journey and started looking for land in the same county on gulf coast, we were in, and then in West Texas and then to East Texas and finally expanding the scope.

We traveled some part of Fall 2019 and Spring 2020 to choose and purchase land. We had set criteria on acreage, county types, proximity to large towns, type of land, surrounding land, price and distribution of woods/grassland, that narrowed our search and offers to make. We landed on a sizeable land in the Ozarks and made an offer and was accepted, closed and finalized within 2 weeks we looked at the property. Divine providence was at work. My bride knew that this was our land just by looking online, although not much details was there.

What ensues is the journey to move on the land. This is an interim update as we are still working thru several areas.

Journey so far

As we prepared to move on the land, we had to work in between my IBM breaks and life events at home. In all, I made several weekend long drives (over 12 hrs one way) to spend several days at a time near the land to get it progressed.

Our goal was to follow the wise saying in Proverbs: Complete your outdoor work and prepare your field; after that, you may build your house. We decided to start with our barn with RV to stay in the garage, while we worked to plant our vineyards, orchards, vegetable garden and then bring animals and start farming and then build the house. This meant we leave our 2600 sq ft home on gulf coast to a 30ft RV in the hills.

As we surveyed the land, we needed to get the gates in order. Hence we started with fixing the gates that was there.

Then I started clearing, with a local dozer guy, the site and worked on preparing that. We had in the meantime, figured out the floor plan of what we needed using steel building for the barn and garage. This lead to picking the area and clearing.

We got an entry way setup and cleared for electric and well guys.

We got a local guy to dig the well and have it wired, once we negotiated with the local electric company to get electricity brought in from up the highway.

Back on the gulf coast, I wanted to get the rabbits out of the shed and experiment with pallet based structure. This was to see how long they last in the stormy winds of the coast, thereby improving the design to create these make shift structures on the land in Ozarks.

While we were working all of this, winter hit both Ozarks and gulf coast hard. But it was felt more harder on gulf coast. We had several days of subzero weather

with various folks loosing power and water for almost a week, so we entertained about a dozen college students thru that week, enjoying the fellowship and the warmth.

We also welcomed new babies in early spring.

We had struggled to get timing from contractors as many of them were backed up in schedule, material availability and general weather delays. We had looked at end of Nov to start construction of the barn, but instead we now were looking at end of July, almost 9 months out. With grace of God, we got a call back from a local contractor from the plain people community of Hartville and got started on the project in early April, which lead me to work out the timing and give my notice to IBM. Since I was not looking to work in tech field, I decided to give my management 3 months for the transition. Eventually, this would prolong to 4 months of transition, since there were other organizational changes happening, but it gave me timeframes to work with given all the uncertainities.

Back on the land, I decided to go with ICF blocks for the main structure as the concrete pour was scheduled for the garage part where the RV was going to be. My bride and I designed several plans and the final one that stuck had to be designed over a weeked to start the ICF block placement and grading work. As some of my fellow architects can see its drawn using draw.io

I probably clocked over 50K miles traveling back and forth till we officially moved, so we tried to take some things from gulfcoast to Ozarks on each of the trip, as well try to get an outing with my son or wife if they accompanied me. This shows the back of the truck being packed on one of the early trips and an IMOs Pizza

New gate was put in as summer started, as we started the building we needed a wide gate for the construction vehicles to come in.

The site being prepared for the ICF blocks, as we formalized the structure

We also prepared to get a container so start moving items as we staged the move with our sons moving to a city to live and study, while we complete the barn and clear things from our Texas home.

Our first move into the container was our Kitchen queen, which is a wood cook stove and heater for the entire house, whenevr our house will be complete….

Cutting out for windows and doors as the windows were ordered.

Took a break to learn about sheep as that will be one of the animals I will be managing on our land.

Since it was taking longer to get our move completed, I started our orchard in my RV park with grow bags. The good folks at Stark Bros got us various berries and fruit trees, that I planted and got it started on a first day.

I also had to take care of the RV in preparation for living in it full time.

Levi our contractor was able to make good progress getting the framing done to raise the roof for the garage so we can get the RV pulled in before Fall sets in.

As I look back on the last several months, we have made progress in closing out our Texas home and making the transition to Ozarks, with a temporary staging in a small city where we get to keep our animals until moving them onto our barn on the land. My bride will have to miss the ocean and a huge home in the middle of the city, but a very small yard, to a wide open space with hilly terrain and a tenth of living space in an RV, but with a view.

From this -

To this-

Epilogue

We continue to stay diligent to our original calling, as the barn and garage is making progress. I am housing the animals in the city back yard, with constant maintenance which was unexpected, but is working out for the best as my bride is looking to get some procedures done before we settle on the land. We also get to spend more time with our sons, having atleast one meal a day together and having a good time seeing them grow up. I also get some more frequent connectivity to continue helping with IBM work.

God willing, my next writeup will be more showcase of the empty barn space and RV in our garage and the digging of the land for trees, as I plan to plant them as frost sets in and the shoot become dormant, while the roots work underground. I will also be planning and building out pasture management, with various fences and hotwiring and clearing an area for our fowls, space to be shared with our rabbitry.

We are thankful for Almighty’s blessings, as none of this would have happened the way it has without Him.

Until then….Godspeed