It's been a while

It's been a long time since I have contributed to this blog. One Little Farm died when we were in Alamosa and decided to sell the critters and move back to the city for real jobs. We just weren't making it in the rural towns and neither Alamosa County nor Taos County would let us live in our Amish built camping cabin (shed) as a tiny house. Restrictions.

We moved the cabin to our Taos land and sold the Alamosa land and used the profit to pay off the cabin, our car and move to Pueblo, Colorado.

We rented a house from a slum lord for a year and then bought an old Victorian in the artsy part of town. My husband and I both had assorted jobs, but nothing that paid well enough to continue our work on our Taos land. Our stay in the city was supposed to be an opportunity to get our finances under control and slowly work on the land in Taos as a sustainable destination.

Until this last week, nothing has happened in Taos. We have gone down there a few times and painted the cabin, sided the pallet shed and painted it, and cleaned up some garbage (or rotting, weathered building supplies). We have battled the resident pack rat and filled in coyote burrows under the cabin.

Recently we took all of our solar supplies to the local solar guys to have them build us a workable system that is up to code and legitimate. It is supposed to be done next week. We will then have a "power wall" which we can plug the windmill and batteries into and run electricity to our shed and camping cabin. We need to get our water catchment system set up too. When those things are in place, we can go and stay there for the two weeks the county will allow.

Taos land buildings 2018

Meanwhile, one of us is working in New Mexico and one of us is working on the house in Pueblo. We both got our Masters degrees...him in Sustainable Community Development and me in Cultural Resource Management (I will pretend it is more related to anthropology than it is).

Victorian house sitting room remodel 2018

Sometimes I do art, but not lately. I still homeschool my kids. Mostly I work on the house when I do anything productive.

Front garden 2018

I do have a nice garden and am trying to build a food forest on the 6000 square foot lot.


So far I have plum, apple and peach trees, raspberries and strawberries, onions and garlic, chives, lavender, rosemary, and echinacea. I planted catnip in a pot for my cats. We rebuilt the raised beds with the same boards we originally bought when we were living in the Earthship outside of Taos. I plant annual veggies in the raised beds every year. The beds take up most of our front yard which is the only place we get enough sun to grow anything. The back yard is shaded by the house and half of it is cement...the remainder of an old garage or carriage house. I long for more space and fewer neighbors, but it is what it is.

I miss my llamas.

I have been writing on Medium.com since January 2019, hoping to finally make one of my artistic pursuits a reality that makes me some money. I have yet to make any money, but I am enjoying the writing and reading other writers' work. Medium is a great venue for writing and publishing.

I am thinking about starting another blog about my journey with the old Victorian house, but for now, I write on Medium. You can check out my work here.