Simple living

Emily Carr’s Tiny House, Elephant

Posted on February 5, 2012 by Laura

I believe that Emily Carr is the most famous female painter who has come out of Canada. I became interested in her work, during the winter break of 2011, about a month ago. When I started looking in at her, I found that she was a writer, which I had not known. When I discovered this, I went to the library, picked up her books and started to read. I have just finished reading This and That: The Lost Stories of Emily Carr and I am currently reading The Complete Writings of Emily Carr. Through this process it has become clear to me that she and I share more than a few commonalities beyond the obvious: artist/writer. As a matter of fact, we are weirdly similar. I find it particularly strange that we share so many parallels, because of the huge differences in the periods that we have lived.

With my interest fully piqued, I went to Hamilton Public Library a few days ago and I picked up Emily Carr a monolithic book about her and her works. I intend to read next this next, but had not really looked at it until a few minutes ago. I opened the book and I cannot begin to tell you how totally surprised I was! There, inside the jacket, I found a huge photo of her her sitting on the stoop of her Tiny House with her four dogs (and her monkey) all around her.

I have to say that while the hundred little idiosyncratic similarities are strange and interesting, finding that we are both Tiny Housers with a whole slew of dogs, is a huge parallel by anyone’s standard. Very few people ever have their own pack of dogs… and of those who do, I bet that I am the only tiny houser (outside of her) who does.

What about Emily’s Elephant, that Lawren Harris called “swell”? Of course, this is the name that she gave to her Tiny House on wheels.

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Added on Feb 21, 2012

Reading now, Hundreds and Thousands, Emily has just returned from a the summer in the Elephant (which she also calls “the van”). She says something which I certainly identify with as I am sure will all other Tiny Housers. “The roof seems low and heavy and the walls squeezing us. Yet the house is enormous after the van. But the van was so much nearer the big outside, just a canvas and a rib or two and then the world. And the earth was more yours than this little taxed scrap which is under your name.”

Categories: Art, Emily Carr, Simple living, Sustainable living, Tiny house, Tiny House Ontario, Writing | 2 Comments

Ancestors and Descendants

Posted on January 31, 2012 by Laura

The Embers and the Stars by Erazim Kohák is one of my all time favourite books. It is not light reading. It is dense and hard to get through, but beautiful, lyrical, life changing, and worth all the effort. This book certainly impacted me in ways that I never once expected.*

With this book in mind as it always is, in the morning, I woke up thinking about forest. Specifically about the hickory trees that I hope to keep safe on my land, then I thought about big Bonny tree, the giant oak that my grandmother would have walked under on her way to school.

My thoughts then brought me way back to the Irish family who first settled here pushing out my native ancestors and their long history by shaming it away and marrying in. It was not so much the natives that I was thinking about. Sadly and honestly, because I know little about the natives, the history for them is vague and sporadic like a dream of better and harder days. It is the settlers who I know, and understand.

I thought about my original Dixon (also spelled Dickson) family, because it was the settlers who brought land ownership with them. Specifically I thought back 162 years to the time when Robert Dixon, took up a land patent for this land in 1850*. I also thought about his descendants, too my ancestors, who walked this land working it and planning for it, just as I work and plan today.

A funny thing is that work is easy and planning is not at all. Planning is complicated. You see, I suspect that Robert Dixon had great plans in mind, when he divided his land at his death. It was left to his boys; girls out of the equation, including his wife Alice (who was inherited, like a cow to be managed by her sons). Great, great, great Grandpa Dixon would not have imagined that it would be a sixth generation granddaughter (GGG granddaughter) who would be the keeper of it. I don’t believe that he could have fathomed that my G uncle Lewellyn (G grandma Caroline’s brother) would lose his 50 acre share in 1943 because of a $2500 loan he took and could not pay during great depression. Old GGG Grandpa Dixon, could not have imagined that the wonderful neighbours, the Miller family would buy that land and continue calling it “The Dixon Farm” even to today. He could not possibly have known, when he set his plans, that the Miller descendant would be thrilled to see it in the “Dixon” hands once more. More over, I expect that the biggest thing that he could never have imagined is that a woman would be the one who is interested in planning for it now.

So what about my plans? I have one biological son James, as well as a son Conrad and daughter Kasha who are mine too, emotionally. Will any of them have interest in Tiny House Ontario and her beautiful forest home? I don’t see any signs of this. Will it be another long lost descendent of the Dixon line who will want her? This is not apparent to me either. Will it be in the hands of family? Who knows? I believe that I cannot know what is in store for these acres.

The only thing that I know for sure is if little chunk of land is protected from greed, it will outlast me. Perhaps another 162 years from now someone walking it will find the extra chain saw blade I lost out there, and wonder about the person who was connected to it. Time will tell. Time always gives us some version of the truth.

*I plan to read The Embers and the Stars again this summer at Tiny House Ontario. If any of my friends or locals wants to join me in this, I would love to do a Tiny House book club weekly meeting to discuss the chapters. Wednesdays at 6:30 pm?

*First a full 100 acres then the rest of the lot and concession of 100 acres was purchased from John Ilan (also spelled Island) in 1857 for ₤225.

Categories: Environmentalism, Erazim Kohák, Forest, Open your eyes, Simple living, Sustainable living, Time, Tiny House Ontario | Tags: Erazim Kohák | 2 Comments

The Trouble with Driveways

Posted on January 30, 2012 by Laura

The forest where Tiny House Ontario sits, has had very little human intervention. I had a few trees go missing on the South East ridge in 2010 (a former neighbour cut them down, to burn for fire wood; they were not his to take). This was all the damage done to the land when I considered my Tiny House build.

I would like to live there but I also do not want to harm the forest. I did not want to cut any trees at all, but reasonably, I needed to have a route in. An entry just makes life so much easier, not just for my own purposes of living, but for the cement delivery, lumber delivery and so on, I required a road.

I did not go about this all helter-skelter and without a good deal of forethought. In order to put in my driveway I chose the point of least damage through; I made a lot of effort to keep from taking any trees over 3 inches in diameter, and I also did not want to cut a single shag bark hickory. These hickory trees are rare and protected so it is not only illegal to cut them, it is unethical. I managed to keep every hickory, but there were a few maples that had to go, so I could have an entry point. My friends John and Leo cleared the lane all the way back to the ridge, but got four pick up trucks of firewood from a 600 foot long and 8 foot wide lane way, which is a very small and reasonable loss. They did not clear cut, certainly, but did cut a swath out of the woods. About half the wood they got came from a large dead maple which wanted for reuse, and thus put the driveway right over it’s old trunk. Aside from the large dead one, I believe that there were about 20 trees that were larger than 3 inches were cut, but only two were larger than 8 inches.

There were no trees cut down in order to make space for Tiny House Ontario. A spot was chosen where there was a natural clearing.

It was not just trees and that had to go. As I mentioned in an earlier post, a lot of what was removed to get through was a swipe through the “prickly pear” (which I think is a sort of a fruitless rubus cane). There were also a lot of small saplings and trees that were less than 3 inches in diameter, these were sacrificed. I also covered a lot of leeks, wild lilies, mayflowers, a few trilliums, and a small patch of wild ginseng too. What I mean is that you cannot buy land which has a low yielding potential for farming, to build on and expect that you will not damage any of the natural features in the process. It is a pity but it had to be done, if I am to actually enjoy the use of this land.

A nice side effect of the little bit of clearing, is that the new openings will allow two more benefits for me. Both are because now there is light coming in. I will be able to add a vegetable garden and solar panels.

While I did my best to be as conscientious as possible, I absolutely caused damage to the forest. Here is what I did to get it in step by step, with a small slide show for you to see the process.

I picked the route of least resistance.
I made a path with some bright yellow string.
Permit was applied for and attained.
John and Leo came in and cut everything within 10 feet of the line (except one hickory which is 8 feet in and makes a narrow spot in the driveway). The photo of me with my chainsaw is taken on a former property when I lost a half dozen huge cedars to a flood.
Myself, and my husband cleared the “prickly pear”.
Myself, and a few lads cleaned the sticks up with a chipper.
The planned driveway and tiny house location were clear to take some (minimal excavation and) gravel.
The gravel was brought in load, by load, and flattened by my cousin Kenny’s tractor and accessories.
Tiny House Ontario hole was dug and filled with stone, cement was brought in and laid and then it was built.
Several final loads of gravel were brought in right up to the Tiny House that I tamped down.
The culvert was installed by the road, but not accepted by the county (twice so far), so I do not have an entry permit as of yet.

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Categories: Building code, Environmentalism, Forest, Nature, Off Grid, Simple living, Tiny House Ontario | 2 Comments

Through The Thicket

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Laura

The first time I went to look at the land was before I purchased it. It was a cold fall day, and was pissing rain. Not to be dissuaded, I went through the brush and found that about half way in there was a wall of thicket, of what the locals call prickly pear. The great barrier of it went on as far as I could see to the left and right of me; I wanted to get through to see what was on the other side. Tenaciously, I pulled my coat sleeves over my hands, and began to push my way in through the canes and their sharp little thorns.

They tied themselves to me, through my clothes and into my skin. I was the soft side of velcro and still I pushed my way though. What was about 200 foot wide band of the stuff felt more like a mile. My cousin Ernie says that this Great Wall has been there forever, that he would hunt rabbits there as a kid, and with great success. Truthfully, there are still grouse, partridge and rabbits by the plenty in these thickets; since then, I have cleared a small path through, so that I can walk back to the ridge without the pain of being caught in bramble.

When I finally arrived to the other side, I was thrilled that I persevered. It was just as I thought. The woods opened up and I found it just the way I expected to. The back 7 acres is all Carolinian forest, hardwood trees as high as the ridge itself. It opens up and is as beautiful as can be back there.

I can’t help but reflect on that adventure and how it strangely mirrors life. It is not just in nature that you have to push through a lot of difficulty, sometimes getting poked by the ugliness of life until you bleed. The fact is that a lot of life is similar to being caught in a giant rose bush, you just have to escape it to get to the great stuff. Generally, I think that those who go through the biggest prickly patches, are very often the people who have the most to offer; they are the hardest workers the ones who know how to live.

I bought the land, and then not long after I built Tiny House Ontario. I located it right before the thicket at the place where I stood wondering if I could get through a few months before. I did this not just because I want to preserve the sanctity of that wonderful deep woods, but because I wanted to face the obstacle in that land. There are great rewards in this location, mostly the constant movement of animals around me, who I hear much more often than I see. I am surrounded by life, by those who are amazingly well sustained by the difficult landscape.

On my most recent winter visit, I was out walking with Liisa. We were nearly at Tiny House Ontario, perhaps 50 feet away. She noticed this, not me and stopped to take this image. It captures the density of the prickly pear. You know, when the leaves come in and you stand right here in my little woman made clearing, you cannot see the Tiny House at all.

Mostly though, I chose this spot, because all year around the prickly pear stands, and reminds me that I can get through the rough patches. I know that I can survive even the deepest injury and I can live with the scars too. Survival is often tough but the great openings at the end of the rough patches, make the trip worth while.

Categories: Nature, Off Grid, Ontario, Open your eyes, Simple living, Tiny house, Tiny House Ontario, Winter, World | 2 Comments

Warm bed, in Canada’s cold

Posted on December 11, 2011 by Laura

It was minus 3 at Tiny House Ontario for the two days that I was there. A small propane heater brought the temperature up to the place where you could not see your breath, not exactly winter camping but mighty close. Still, I had known this before I went and packed a lot of bedding. Up in the loft I used 2 blankets, 2 comforters, and a fun fur covered (non-animal) duvet. I also slept in fleece with long underwear. Sexy eh?

This was cozy and though I could see my breath in the morning again when I woke up, I slept well and the bedroom is really cozy. Here is what it looks like there.