3 Years, 5 Acres, and Finally... a Roof

How a simple delivery turned into a backyard demolition derby (and why we’re still celebrating).

Through a Glass, Darkly is the fiction publication of based speculative fiction author Jean Marie Bauhaus (that’s me!), where I’m publishing my new fiction for you to read free for a limited time before it makes it into book form (paid subscribers can access all the fiction I post here all the time and read at their leisure). If you’re new here, first, HI! Second, check out the About page and the Roadmap to learn more.

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We have an RV port!!!

Why is this a big deal? Quick recap for the new folks:

Almost three years ago, faced with the need to find a new home after our landlords decided to sell our rental and unable to find a decent home in our price range, we bought 5 acres of raw, totally wooded land here in the Ozarks with the intention of parking our RV there while we built up a homestead. The family who sold us the land (and who lived on the adjacent property) graciously invited us to park our RV in their yard until we could get a spot cleared for it.

But as we cleared and cleared, we discovered major issues with standing water and poor drainage that made parking our RV there impossible. Getting all of that sorted required a lot of time and a lot of expense. And as we lived in the RV during all this time, we discovered that it’s prone to springing leaks and that if we’re going to be living in it long-term, we need it to be parked under a roof — another big expense that we had to save up for.

We also realized that the port couldn’t be built around the RV. And also that we’re also not going to be able to install a well, and so we’ll have to rely on rain catchment for water, and that we wouldn’t be able to set that up until we had a roof in place to catch water off of.

We were finally in a position to buy the RV port last fall, and we placed our order, which we were told would be fulfilled in about 5 weeks.

It turned out to be more like 3.5 months.

But at long last, on Monday morning, it arrived, in pieces. And by Monday evening, it was fully assembled in all its glory.

The building of this thing was fraught with mishaps. We were told the crew would arrive super early, and so we got up and got ready, only to spend hours twiddling our thumbs until they finally arrived around 10 AM.

And promptly destroyed our driveway and got their truck stuck off the side. Thankfully, our neighbor across the road, who has a giant John Deere tractor, had come over to see what we were up to, and volunteered to come and pull them out when they were ready.

But they left it there for the time being and went to work getting the frame assembled. Then they took a break for lunch, and asked us to call our neighbor for a tow. He was happy to — until somehow the tractor slipped out of park after he got out of it and rammed into the front of their truck!

Husband and I watching this happen

Thankfully, there didn’t appear to be much damage, and he got them pulled out of there — at the expense of the part of our gravel driveway that hadn’t yet been destroyed.

Anyway, they got all their stuff sorted, ate their lunch, and got back to work. And several hours later, we had a finished RV port!

By that point, we were both so tired and so relieved that we decided the driveway would be a tomorrow problem. The next day, we went over there to clean up the site and assess the damage, and to do what we could to smooth things out with gravel rakes. It wasn’t much. It looked like we were going to have to hire a pro to fix it — another big expense.

But then our neighbor rode to the rescue again. Not only does he own a giant tractor, he’s also a building contractor who’s building two houses in the area, at one of which he had one of his guys spreading gravel. So he sent that guy over on his skid steer to repair our driveway at no cost. Thank you, Lord.

All of that is a giant hurdle out of the way of us getting moved onto our own land. There are still a few more things to do, such as building that rain catchment system. And we may still have to spring for another layer of gravel to prevent the driveway from being destroyed again when we do tow the RV over there. Plus there’s the whole packing and actual moving part. And all of that while also trying to build garden beds and start our spring garden.

So I don’t know what the timeline is for us getting relocated, but we’re closer now than we’ve ever been.

What I do know is that it’s go time. I’m trying to get Sleep, Dearie, Sleep into book shape, and then I’ll probably have to put writing and publishing on the back burner until after it’s all done and we’re ensconced on our land. Kindred Spirits will continue to update during that time, but you might not hear much else from me for the next several weeks.

But I’m excited. I’m tired and stressed, too, but mostly excited.

Love and good wishes, y’all.

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