Accidental Dead Hedge
Mortgage-Free Building Strategies
The Gardens
Our gardens have been a long, uneven journey. Living on a heavily wooded lot, every bed is a small negotiation with the trees for light. The beds also serve a quieter purpose — softening the ground around tree stumps and the odd angles that make mowing a real challenge. Each new one means a little less my husband has to fight with the riding mower. The garden keeps growing, sometimes faster than we can keep up, but the trade is worth it: more beauty, more harvest, less battle with the lawn.
Our Cordwood Masonry Home
Our cordwood masonry home — 1,200 square feet of walls laid up by hand over four summers — was the first real step toward self-reliant, mortgage-free living. From a distance, visitors mistake the walls for stone, until they touch them and feel the warm texture of wood. Beyond the beauty, cordwood pairs an R-20 wall with serious thermal mass, holding temperature steady through hard seasons, and can cut conventional build costs by roughly half if you’re willing to do the work yourself. This is where the homestead — and the whole story — began.