our spot

Posted on Sep 20, 2011 in Along the way, California | 2 comments

Thought i’d take a little time to introduce you to our new spot. It always amazes me when the universe puts these great opportunities in front of us despite ourselves.

When we first got to santa cruz and landed on our death defying spot in the hills (found on craig’s list), we were pleasantly surprised. It had a lot going for it, but somehow, can’t even put my finger on it… it just wasn’t “it”.

After a few weeks, when it was more obvious… and it wasn’t growing on us more..  i put a note out on an email group i had subscribed to, in order to see if any of the woman on the list had something we’d like better.

Two people responded, one who didn’t have a spot to offer, but wanted to connect being an airstream lover and future traveler … and the other who has some land and an idea that we should come out to see what could be done. They both turned into fast friends, but as for the land it just seemed too far from where we wanted to be to even entertain the idea.

Fast forward a few more months of living somewhere we were not feeling connected to… i go for a lovely afternoon’s visit to the land…. well it was love at first sight! Deb wasn’t there that day, so after raving about it for a day or two, we took a drive out, and well now we are here.

Our landlady is amazing, a free spirit to be sure… spent most of her adult life as a traveling dyke.. mostly living hand to mouth, traveling here and there in a lovely fluid life. She came to santa cruz a few years ago and managed to buy this place, her first place with roots in years. She has a vision about this place, her life, which includes sustainability, connection, working together to achieve all that… an amazing opportunity to us to have that and freedom at the same time.

We aren’t here long before we head back to canada, but i look forward to next summer and the adventures it’s sure to bring.

So here’s the quick tour:

Our beauty is tucked in beside an even larger silver bullet (a more stationary kind!), not a lot of room beside for more than just getting in and out, but in behind the big silver bullet is a cement pad which we’ve taken over as our supper/lunch and general sitting area.  We have a great view over countryside, houses, and to the west so when it’s not foggy we get sunset.

You can see some vines up the hill from us, it’s my future wine supply… ha

We are being even greener here than ever, compost everything. Since we have to bring out garbage/recycle out with us and dump it where we can, it’s even more incentive to conserve!

So far we’ve not rigged up sewer… we simply hoof it up the hill to the house for now.

We’ve worked with our land-mistress a  permanent and long term solution… and even went as far as going to the plumbing store to get all needed supplies… But after looking at it in detail, it’s a bit of a job, and  we all made an executive decision to put it off till next year.

It’s a pretty handy dandy system, it will push mountains of shit uphill… but i won’t spoil the surprise, more details to come when we get there so you’ll just have to be patient for THAT blog post!

Meanwhile, we dump all our grey out into a big old garbage can and i trudge around every morning watering the fruit orchard… just like a pioneer woman!

I wanted to point out the patio tiled pathway deb deb created.

Some how my deb deb doesn’t appreciate my barefoot ways, expecially when it comes to me trudging around buckets of grey water around hill and dale.

It’s her little way of keeping me clean. Not sure how well it works, once you step over those 4 tiles you are pretty much on open dirt.. but i humor her and carefully trod on them each time i head out.

(my sis wrote a lovely post about barefoot and where it comes from for our family. In fact i’d say that having a set of craggy/callused feet is a badge of honor in the try Hadley spirit)