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Learning to live in the middle of nowhere

By: Shannon Lee , Contributing Writer
In: Old House Musings

Moving to our new home last year presented quite a change in our lives. The house was much "younger" than any I had ever lived in before. My husband had the opposite view: His former home was very sleek and modern. We both moved from areas where the grocery store was just down the road and streetlights came on at dusk. This new location, a "first" in more ways than one, seemed just the right way to start out a fresh, new marriage.

It wasn't long before we realized that the house hadn't just brought changes in our location. It also brought changes in our attitudes.

A crash course in DIY

Something about this home in the woods brought out untapped potential in both of us. It began even before we moved in, when we realized things were not as easy and carefree as they had been in the past. For instance, simply getting a contractor to come to our out-of-the-way home necessitated careful searching, higher rates and even some pleading and begging. Upon hearing the name of our little town, most contractors groaned. "We don't work that far out," I heard over and over.

The result? Do-it-yourself became the name of the game. We learned to fix things that neither of us had ever worked with before, such as the sump pump and the furnace (the latter included actually reading the manual and then working in a very tight space without the right tools, complete with plenty of inventive cursing). But that crash course meant that soon we were pulling out the drill and hammer on a regular basis, building up a unique tool kit one piece at a time, and learning as we went. Turns out that fixing your own things is fun -- who knew?

Soon that attitude extended to other areas of day-to-day life. Since the grocery store is so far away, I had a very good excuse to turn to things I had let fall to the wayside -- like growing my own veggies, canning the summer produce and contemplating how to keep predators away from the chickens. When I needed a new shelving unit to hold all that produce, I didn't drive forty-five minutes to the department store. Instead, I looked at what I had, and that happened to be wooden crates. Several nails and a few coats of paint later, I had a sturdy storage unit that is now filled with shiny quart and pint jars of summer-fresh food.

But even more importantly, I was filled with a quiet sense of accomplishment that flares up every time I walk into the kitchen. It fires me with the desire to do even more.

Living the old house spirit

Always in the back of our minds is the specter of those who lived there before us -- those who lived off the land and took care of themselves. When you are that far back in the woods, there really isn't any other choice. That pioneer spirit has infused everything we do these days, from splitting wood for the fireplace instead of running the aforementioned furnace, to growing so much of our own food that we make one grocery store trip per month. The more we do for ourselves, the more empowered we feel.

This feeling of self-sufficiency is a fringe benefit of this "new" old house of ours, and we are eager to see where it takes us. We might never dig our own well or raise our own cattle, but we certainly have learned how to pour concrete, hook up a generator, and fell a tree. And every time I take a basket out to the thriving garden and fill it up, I can't help but think about a woman who came long before me and surely did the same thing. That touch of history just makes us love our "middle of nowhere" a little bit more.

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