This is the first day of 2016 and everyone is looking back on their lives during 2015 in retrospect and looking forward to their lives in 2016 with hope. I must include myself in this journey. 2015 was a life changing year for my husband, Thom, and I. We gave up our jobs with the non-profit we had worked with for several years in 2014, just six weeks shy of the beginning of 2015. By January 5, 2015, we had taken most of our belongings to a storage unit and packed a few items that we felt we would need immediately when we got to Florida. We have owned our property in the Blackwater State Forest for many years and had always said this was the place to which we would retire. So, we did. We had previously lived here in a tent and began clearing it by hand so that the natural beauty of this property would not be destroyed. We thought we would build a house here and then Hurricane Ivan hit. This changed our plans for many reasons, which I won’t go into now. (I am sure this will come up later when the time is right and as this blog progresses.) This property had no electricity, no septic system, and no house in which to live. It did, however, have an artesian well that did not require power for us to have water. It also had a couple of outbuildings that we felt we could utilize until we could get everything up and running.
Having a good sense of humor is what helped keep us going for the first few months because if something could go wrong with our master plan, it went wrong.
The day we left Tennessee, the sun was shining, however the temps were in the teens and it wasn’t going to get much better in Florida. It is hard to believe, but the first night we spent on our property in a tent, the low was 12 degrees and the high was 17 degrees. We erected our small backpacking tent inside on of the outbuildings and called it our “tent in a shed”. This was where we would live until we could get the power and septic out to the property. During this time, our plan was to find an RV to live in. After about a week, the temperature had gotten into the 40’s, so we were feeling much warmer in the day time. I will say this, though, the outside “shower” was not the easiest time on the planet! Our shower consisted of a turkey fryer with a large pot that we could heat water in and pour over our heads. Of course, since there was no electricity this meant that every bit of water that we used had to be hand carried up the driveway and to the “shower area”. We had brought a mattress so that we could sleep on something besides our backpacking pads, so in a few weeks we eventually constructed a sleeping area. We called this our “bed in a shed”.
I really anticipated that we would be able to find an RV within a month. This search went on for 9 months before we found something that was in decent shape and that would fit into our budget. During that time, the temperatures ranged from 17 degrees to over 100! Sometimes I felt like I was going to turn into an ice cube and other times, I felt like I was trying to sleep in Hell!
There were plenty of challenges in getting everything done on the property. First, we needed a physical address. So, in order to get an address, we had to have electricity. Of course, we couldn’t get electricity until we had an address, and around and around it went. Thom waded into the permit process and began to ask all of the questions and make all the phone calls. My part in this process was to continue to look for an RV and to write the checks when we were told to pay money for the (seemed like) billion things we had to purchase.
Lots of things happened along the way. We were given the wrong address, the cost of the septic tank doubled when the ground wouldn’t perk to the county’s satisfaction, and the engineer for the electric company retired in the middle of our project, to name just a few.
In the end, we lived through the challenges, we found our RV, we got our electricity, we relocated our small business from Tennessee to Florida, we have a septic system, we made new friends and reunited with old friends. So as they say, all’s well that ends well!
And we look forward to 2016 with hope…..
Having a good sense of humor is what helped keep us going for the first few months because if something could go wrong with our master plan, it went wrong.
The day we left Tennessee, the sun was shining, however the temps were in the teens and it wasn’t going to get much better in Florida. It is hard to believe, but the first night we spent on our property in a tent, the low was 12 degrees and the high was 17 degrees. We erected our small backpacking tent inside on of the outbuildings and called it our “tent in a shed”. This was where we would live until we could get the power and septic out to the property. During this time, our plan was to find an RV to live in. After about a week, the temperature had gotten into the 40’s, so we were feeling much warmer in the day time. I will say this, though, the outside “shower” was not the easiest time on the planet! Our shower consisted of a turkey fryer with a large pot that we could heat water in and pour over our heads. Of course, since there was no electricity this meant that every bit of water that we used had to be hand carried up the driveway and to the “shower area”. We had brought a mattress so that we could sleep on something besides our backpacking pads, so in a few weeks we eventually constructed a sleeping area. We called this our “bed in a shed”.
I really anticipated that we would be able to find an RV within a month. This search went on for 9 months before we found something that was in decent shape and that would fit into our budget. During that time, the temperatures ranged from 17 degrees to over 100! Sometimes I felt like I was going to turn into an ice cube and other times, I felt like I was trying to sleep in Hell!
There were plenty of challenges in getting everything done on the property. First, we needed a physical address. So, in order to get an address, we had to have electricity. Of course, we couldn’t get electricity until we had an address, and around and around it went. Thom waded into the permit process and began to ask all of the questions and make all the phone calls. My part in this process was to continue to look for an RV and to write the checks when we were told to pay money for the (seemed like) billion things we had to purchase.
Lots of things happened along the way. We were given the wrong address, the cost of the septic tank doubled when the ground wouldn’t perk to the county’s satisfaction, and the engineer for the electric company retired in the middle of our project, to name just a few.
In the end, we lived through the challenges, we found our RV, we got our electricity, we relocated our small business from Tennessee to Florida, we have a septic system, we made new friends and reunited with old friends. So as they say, all’s well that ends well!
And we look forward to 2016 with hope…..
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