I thought that I should give some background about our property. Where we started, what we've done and what we're working to.
It all began in December of 2005 when we bought our house. We found a house with just under 1 1/2 acres of land. We picked this house for several reasons. The house was big enough for all of our children, the kitchen was large enough to be able comfortably cook in, the house had lots of space between the other houses and it was far enough outside of the city to get some quiet and see the stars.
When we first bought our house the majority of the land was covered in weeds topping out at about 8 feet tall. We didn't think it would be to difficult to cut down and clear the weeds, boy were we wrong. It turns out that in the time the house was empty the land had been used as a dumping site. Piles and piles of trash had been dumped all over the property and covered in dirt. The weeds grew over the top of them and hid the piles of trash. So when I started cutting down the weeds let me tell you about my shock.
So the first thing was to cut down all weeds and find out just how much trash there was. Once we realized that we had about an acre covered with 3-4 foot tall trash piles it was time to get a trash dumpster. It took us almost a year having the dumpster emptied twice a week to finally remove all of the trash.
Once all of the trash was removed we found disease and termite ridden mesquite trees and bushes all over the property and smashed remnants of a fence. We eventually removed all of the trees over the course of several years to finally get down to clean soil. We're still, 7 years later removing pieces of glass and metal we find buried in the dirt, but we're finally to a point of building things up.
We built a fence around the property. I built the fence using reclaimed steel fence posts for the upright posts and 1/2 rebar for the top rail. I did this because I was able to buy the reclaimed posts for $3.00 US a piece instead of $9.00 US a piece. Plus by using the rebar for the top rail I was able to buy 20 feet for $5.00 US instead of the top rail tubing for $13.00 US per 10 foot section. This all added up to a huge cost saving for us. I welded the top rails together and the rails to the top of the posts. By welding it all I did away with the extra cost for all the extra connectors. I also built all of the gates from scratch instead of buying prebuilt gates. By doing all of this ourselves it cost us about $1,500.00 US for the entire fence. This was a significant savings over the $12,000.00 quotes I got from the fence companies. If you check salvage yards you can get great deals.
We also dug ditches and laid out irrigation lines around the perimeter of the front half of the property. I used the irrigation to water the trees I planted. I planted 11 pine trees, 2 mulberry trees, 2 apricot trees, 2 peach trees, 3 apple trees, 2 plum trees, 1 grapefruit tree, 1 lemon tree and 3 orange trees. Here in the Arizona desert the underground irrigation works really well for the trees and saves lots of water. We still have the back length of the fence line to plant with trees and put in irrigation.
We've also begun working on digging an underground cistern. The plan for the cistern is to use it as a rainwater and gray water collection system. I plan on re-plumbing the sinks, tubes and showers so the gray water is diverted to the cistern. Then pressurize the water to use for the irrigation and toilet tanks. This would allow us to use the water that we pay for twice and use less water. Once the cistern is completed I'm going to build a green house and my garden oven the top of it.
We're in the process of building our outdoor earth kitchen. The entire kitchen design is based around wood fired cooking. Since wood fired cooking is carbon neutral and just tastes so good this is my preferred cooking method. This outdoor kitchen also allows us to cook in the summer heat without adding more heat into the house. I dedicated my blog Earth Kitchen Project to the chronicling of building the outdoor kitchen.
I plan on building a chicken coop and smoke house in the back of the property as well as a shed and root cellar. I also have plans to build a workshop to give me a place to setup my tools permanently and work on my blacksmithing.
My plans also include building and installing alternative energy systems. I want to have a solar water heater, solar and wind power generators. I want to build a solar heating system for the hot tub. Maybe even research a viable alternative cooling system for the house. We also might build an outdoor shower and maybe even a small guest house. Overall our plans are to be as self sufficient as possible. I will continue posting pictures and information on all of our projects so that we may help in answering peoples questions or maybe even inspire them to try some of this on their own.
