Moving - Part I

I was a city girl.  I'd always wanted to live in the country, but never done anything about it.  I chose a good partner, though.  Charles could use a chainsaw and axe, he'd hunted and butchered, he could keep a vehicle running during cold winter weather.  He had a pretty good idea of what we'd need to take with us.  Before we left the city, we bought as many things as we could to get started in our new life:

• a generator for running power tools.  We bought a Honda
• a gas-powered water pump, also a Honda
• power tools for building the house
• a good wheelbarrow
• a washtub
• a good pressure canner
• a wood cookstove ( we found an old one for $75!)

We already had lots of the things we'd need.  After all, we'd been living frugally and practising our new lifestyle for a year, and we'd been haunting second-hand stores collecting stuff like kerosene lamps, crocks, and hand-operated mills and grinders.

At the end of May, 1991, we loaded the pickup truck with our tent and camping gear and our new generator and power tools.  We had quit our jobs and were heading north to build a small cabin to live in while we built our house.

A week later, the job was done.  Our little skid-shack was ready.  We painted it green and it's been called ever since "the little green house".  My mother painted a picture on the side of it.  Believe it or not, at 8'x16' it was big enough to hold all our furniture except the cookstove.  We put up a shelter outside to use as a kitchen.  We were ready to move.