Six photos of our kitchen, panning from left to right. Last one shows dish rack / dish storage where dishes are stacked to dry, then stored. Kitchen implements hang from hooks or finish nails. Window sill has misc. objects to look upon.
There are 500 color photos of the house, kitchen, and garden in our latest book, The Half-Acre Homestead.
We are a carpenter/gardener couple who have been restoring our 1860s Greek Revival farmhouse for the last 30+ years. One of our goals has been to live self-sufficiently and conscientiously, and we believe our home and gardens uniquely reflect this.
The house includes three bedrooms, a large beautiful kitchen, dining room, living room, library/office, studio, pantry, mudroom, two full bathrooms, and an airy, screened and glassed-in sunporch. Connected to the house by a long porch, is a 25′×36′ two-story shop/studio, and a woodshed and storage area.
Behind the house are established organic vegetable, and perennial flower gardens, fruit trees, and blueberry and raspberry bushes. A Nearing style 10′×20′ stone, glass and wood greenhouse extends the gardening season at both ends, and provides a lovely refuge on sunny, cold winter days.
Hard as it is for us to leave this, our children are grown and we no longer need this much space and the large gardens. We hope a younger family looking for a similar lifestyle will get as much joy from it as we have.
–Joe Stanley
House and 12.5 acres – $325,000: richmondmainefarmhouse.com/house | woodtools@yahoo.com
April 6, 2020
Dear Lloyd,
A photo of our daughter’s house
I have been reading your books for years (and have given them to my kids) and, more recently, your blog. I studied architecture in college (in the 70’s) and when your Shelter book came out I wore it out reading it. It has influenced the last forty years of my life as a builder/carpenter.
Ours is a relatively sustainable and self sufficient lifestyle, and one our kids have adopted as well. Our daughter has been living for the last 5 years in a 7′×10′ house she built, with no electricity or running water, and is building a traditional Washington County peapod (a double-ended wooden rowboat). Our son is currently living in a 42″ wide × 10′ long shelter he built to live in, while building a tiny house for a college acquaintance. before that he was living on a 36′ sailboat he fixed up and sailed solo across the Atlantic to the Azores.
We are preparing to sell the house in which our two kids were born and grew up, and on which we have worked for the last forty years. My wife created a website so we can sell the house ourselves and I thought, perhaps, you might like to see the photos of the house.
Here’s a link to the website richmondmainefarmhouse.com
Thanks for all the inspiration — just wanted you to know that you’ve had quite an impact on our lives.
Best wishes to you,
Joe Stanley
From Lew Lewandowski
From my brother Bob
Check the gracefulness of his arms in balancing. I think skateboarders are some of the best (and pretty much unacknowledged) athletes on the planet. It’s like ballet in a way. Very similar to surfing except when you fall, it’s not in water — the stakes are a lot higher.
Chris Ryan is not only a highly respected podcaster (Tangentially Speaking), but the author of two great books: Sex at Dawn (NYTimes best-seller) and Civilized to Death, which is one of the most relevant-to-the-times (and to-my-life) books I’ve ever read. He just sent out this email:
Hey you –
So here we are. I won’t say I predicted this, but I was kind of nervous about getting Civilized to Death published before the end of the world as we know it. Looks like I just made it!
Seriously though, we’re living through increasingly interesting days. I often wonder whether my rapidly shifting sense of things is due to my getting older (rapidly) or if it’s an accurate assessment of an accelerating reality. I’m gonna say 25% the former and 75% the latter. I mean, I remember watching the mess unfolding over the deadlocked election in 2000, thinking, “The United States is falling apart.” Then I watched the U.S. stumble into inane wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I thought, “This is how a dying empire behaves.” Then I woke up one day a few years ago to the realization that Donald Trump — a shithead who’s been on my radar since I lived in Manhattan in the mid-’80s — was president. President! Of the country!
And now this.
I don’t need to review the bad news for you. I’m sure you’re getting plenty of that. But here’s some good news: Things can change dramatically and quickly. Who could have predicted two months ago that the entire world economy would be shut down, passenger air traffic basically frozen, air quality vastly improved, and the price of oil cut in half?
In a world where these things are possible, what else is possible? UBI (Universal Basic Income)? Respect (and much higher pay) for nurses, grocery store workers, home health workers, and other people who are essential to our lives, but taken for granted? Universal health care for Americans?
There will always be great resistance to anything that pulls money and power away from the rich and powerful, but they’re off balance right now and common people are feeling desperate and afraid. There’s power in that desperation. It can be harnessed for bad (blame it on foreigners, Democrats, hippies, blacks, etc.), or for good. Let’s pull toward the good. Maybe, together, we can make something better than what we had a few weeks ago.
Now go wash your hands.
–Christopher Ryan
