Thanks for a Great Open House!

A Not-So-Tiny Storm

Remember Molly and Zack's ski lodge on wheels? They're still going strong, winter weather and all: no storm will stop these snow-lovers. Bundle up before you read this inspiring story Molly sent us...brrr! 

It was December 21, 2012. The world (or just the calendar) was supposed to end. Ironically as skiers, our world was about to start.  It was early winter and there was 10 feet of snow on the way. But it wasn’t just that winter had arrived. The elevation of our experience was reaching Everest proportions because of a little winter cabin on wheels. A mere 112-square feet was going to have grand implications. Our tiny house was going to get us stranded in the storm, with no other skiers allowed into our powder land.

Snowed In 

Stranded. The word beckons thoughts of despair, desperation, and misery. It’s not something you want to be, see, or deal with. Until the world is about to end, 10 feet of snow is predicted to fall at Mt. Baker, and you’ve got your tiny house parked at the ski area with food and wood stocked and the fire stoked. It is only then that “stranded” starts to sing vibrant, melodious notes of luck, opportunity, and blessing. Then being stranded turns into some sort of victory.

On the day the world was supposed to end, we started out by digging a walking path from the front door of the tiny house through the four feet of snow that had fallen overnight. It was not a tiny task, but one isn’t given an option, when the front door is blocked by a snow bank. We shoveled and heaved, moving mounds of the fresh snow that we would soon be skiing. The ski area parking lot was empty, other than the plow, disappearing behind waves of snow.

When we moved into our tiny house last year, there was the promise of downsizing our possessions and up-scaling our experiences. We wanted to be mobile, with the ability to sleep in ski area parking lots and find all the deepest storms. In terms of richness, our wealth came from a bank of powder turns, not dollar bills. As skiers, being stranded at Mt. Baker was the best we could do in the realm of experience. It was our pot of gold. In fact, we were living out many other skier and snowboarder’s dreams. Without our little portable home, we would’ve never been in that spot at that time. The tiny house had put us into position to get stranded. I guess what you’re seeking is also seeking you.

In the end, we had three private days of skiing in the forest near the Mt. Baker ski area. The Department of Transportation eventually removed all of the one hundred plus trees that had fallen over the highway during the apocalyptic storm. Floods of skiers came to the ski area to discover just exactly what they had missed. We knew what they had missed. And we reminisced as we planned to excavate the tiny house from what had become a tiny mountain of snow in the parking lot.

Heading to warmer land 

We got by with a little help from our friends. A satiating six-pack of beer for a hard-working plow driver helped us remove some of the snow that had piled up outside the house. By the time most skiers arrived, we’d removed the tiny house from its’ tiny, temporary homestead and had headed to drier, warmer elevations to celebrate the holiday with family. And to find out that the world had not ended after all.

Here’s to another year of big experiences in our tiny house! 

Meals on Wheels: "Camping Spaghetti Sauce"

Therese Ambrosi Smith is a writer- check out her work here. She spent four months constructing a modified Tumbleweed for use as a mobile writer’s studio. She loves cooking and eating as much as she loves writing and building things. One example of a recipe she's cooked in her tiny kitchen - that her guests have loved - is wild rice and mushroom soup. Her regular contribution to this blog, “Meals on Wheels," addresses the challenges and rewards of working in a tiny kitchen. 

I love to invite people to dinner -- I like cooking and eating -- but I also enjoy sharing our tiny house.  Folks with thousands of square feet marvel at the comfort possible in our  286 sq ft home, carved from a single car garage. With leaves in the table, we handily host gourmet meals for eight.

Recently we downsized our office, building a new space based on a Tumbleweed design.  We work efficiently in the 84 sq ft trailer. As an author, I’m trilled to have my workspace double as a mobile retreat and guest cottage.  An inflatable bed and RV toilet are employed when we need to house visitors.

We made the decision to rent the “main” house for income when I decided to live more creatively.  The journey began with shedding a mind-numbing job and the trappings it provided. Designing a functional living space was task one.

Everyone who decides to downsize -  and designs his own house - goes through the very healthy exercise of defining what’s important. We determined that our most used room was the kitchen - and we used it for non-eating activity too -- from conversation to crafts.  The table was central to our plan. 

We spent as much time planning the space as building it.  Everything we thought we’d need was measured and plotted on graph paper before the first board was cut.  The garage conversion took four months of weekend work and now, after four and a half years --  and a novel and a half  -- I think it was the smartest thing we’ve ever done.

Living small became fodder for fiction.  My first novel “Wax” was about young women coming of age in the shipyards during WWII.  If you’re familiar with the history, housing was in very short supply in war industry towns.  Parking Lot C, in the Kaiser shipyards, became a village of Airstream trailers for the duration.

When “Wax” was nearly ready to print, I was asked to provide two pages of filler. The printer’s final page “signature” is produced in multiples of eight, so my 334 page book was a little short. What would be worth printing?  (Clue: the women are eating spaghetti in two important scenes.)  Sylvia’s Famous Spaghetti Sauce Recipe (As adapted for the two-burner propane stove in Airstream No. 28).

Back home in Kansas City, Sylvia would spend all day on a rich meat sauce starting with garlic and olive oil and cubes of pork and beef shoulder, seared at 475 degrees for half an hour. She’d transfer the meat to a big stock pot with two quarts of broth, veal bones and vegetables. A long, slow simmer in the broth would tenderize the tough but flavorful cuts of meat, and to the whole she would add tomatoes and the remaining seasonings. The sauce would then simmer for another six hours until the meat fell apart. Everyone she treated to a serving of her Famous Spaghetti Sauce said it was the best ever.

She refined her technique — using ground beef — so she could make “Camping Spaghetti Sauce”. In her tiny Airstream trailer, with few cooking utensils, Sylvia did her best to recreate a favorite meal for her friends.

Ingredients:

3 Tbsp unsalted butter

2 Tbsp minced garlic

2 Tbsp minced onion

¼ cup minced carrots

¼ cup minced celery

¾ lb ground meat – can be pork and beef mixed

3 cloves

1 C whole milk

2 C dry white wine

1 28 oz can whole tomatoes packed in juice

1 Tbsp oregano – fresh, minced

one more tablespoon minced garlic

salt to taste

Melt the butter in a sauce pan over a very low flame and add two tablespoons garlic. Simmer the garlic very slowly until tender. The more slowly it cooks, the sweeter it will be.

Add the carrots, onion and celery and sauté until the onions are soft. Do not brown. Add the cloves.

Add the ground meat and stir to heat evenly for about three minutes, until the meat is gray but not browned.

Add the milk and allow it to simmer until evaporated, about twelve minutes; follow with the wine. When the wine has evaporated, add the tomatoes with liquid and the oregano. Allow the sauce to simmer on the lowest possible flame, for three more hours. Thirty minutes before it’s finished, add the final tablespoon of minced garlic. Add salt if desired.

4 Servings  Enjoy!

“The time went by so quickly; we never had a chance to make plans,” Doris said. “When the ships on the line are launched we’ll be sent home too.”

“Now come on girls,” Sylvia said. “This is our last night together in The Land of C. Let’s have a little more optimism. We’ll be at peace soon.” She adjusted the seasonings and gave the sauce a final stir. Her red hair color was starting to fade. “All those love-starved men will be returning to wine and dine you marriage-age treasures. Life will be good,” Sylvia said. She looked at Tilly.

Tilly winced.

My Tiny Semester: Meet Nara

Hi! I'm Nara, Tumbleweed's staff writer.

You might have seen my name on the bottom of recent blog posts, or perhaps you noticed my face looming over a questionable gingerbread house. Now it's time for a formal introduction!

In addition to managing the blog and talking with you lovely people about your tiny house dreams, I'm in the process of finishing college in the glorious liberal woods of Western Massachusetts. For my what you might call my senior project, I have been attempting to dissect a small but crucial slice of the American Dream: The American House. 

Playing tiny- I had to fend off some small children for this shot 

Beginning later this month, I'll be living in a Fencl on my campus for 120 days. I want to share the benefits and realities of living small, so I'll be writing about my "Tiny Semester" on this blog. I'll also be holding several open houses and informal workshops in the Western Massachusetts area- contact me if you're interested! 

I'm so excited to be a part of Tumbleweed, and to pursue these tiny dreams of my own. One of the things that drew me to Tumbleweed was flexibility. Instead of prescribing one set way to create a structure, Tumbleweed allows for houses and builders of all shapes, colors and sizes. Everyone is encouraged to create their own unique take on a tiny house. 

To me, creating my own tiny house set-up is the ideal way to wrap up my year of studies. I want to create an interactive, influential space on my campus that represents alternative possibilities for housing. This also presents the opportunity to live off-grid, which is an important step for me. With help from my college and fellow students, I've been working hard to develop sustainable, low-impact ways of residing in my tiny house. Hello composting toilet, goodbye refrigerator! 

And as I near my final semester of school, I want to try something different: I want to really, truly have to live with myself. To forgo plastic bins and cardboard boxes of hidden pasts, to be conscious of the line between useful and excessive. I want to address myself piece by piece, taking it apart, discarding the excess, and reassembling in an appropriate, Tumbleweed-sized venue.

I will graduate college all too soon, and I don't want to walk straight into a mortgage. I don't want to be told to buy a house on unrealistic credit and that it's my fault if I can't pay it. I want to joining hands with the young people all over the world that are saying "NO!" to an outdated American dream. 

Watch out for upcoming blog posts. Heads up: I'm packing up my life this week, so it's about to get interesting! 

Ryan Mitchell from The Tiny Life Talks With Tumbleweed!

Recently, I got the chance to talk with Ryan Mitchell of The Tiny Life website about his exciting plans for a modified Fencl. Ryan has been blogging about sustainability for a long time, sharing information on simple living, tiny houses, and environmentally responsible lifestyles.  And we think he's awesome. 

Ready for some holiday building

Now, he's working on a tiny house of his own in Charlotte, North Carolina. He's starting to get well into the building process, and has been begun blogging about his experiences. 

He admits that finding time is no easy task- in addition to working on his house managing the very informative blog, Ryan works two other day jobs! He sets a pretty good example for all those professionals that fear they'd never have the time to build a house, huh? 

Ryan has worked out an ideal situation for himself through yet another job of sorts- he house sits for friends, and they're letting him build the house on their property- as long as he looks after the land and mows the lawn every so often, he can be there for free. This is a great arrangement- if you have anyone in your life with a large piece of property that likes to travel, I'd highly recommend working out something similar!

A solid start 

Ryan will be checking in with us throughout the process, and will share informative photos and videos of his build on our blog. He's excited to have a winter break from his day jobs coming up soon for a solid couple weeks of building!

In the meantime, check out Ryan's Tiny House Checklist for a great introduction to everything that goes into tiny house building.