Here's the Idea

Hi!

A year and a half ago, I closed on a property back at home in Ashe County, North Carolina. It was under contract for eighteen months before that, and the process was trying. Like many rural areas, it’s become increasingly difficult for locals to navigate purchasing homes or property here, let alone afford them. Through some incredible luck, the benefit of some past hard work, and an active and supportive community, I was barely able to make it happen. My mother and brother were taking first looks at places for me, and Mom said this one “smelled the best.” Fate was sealed.

The plan was simple. Who can afford a house? Family history, experience, and passion dictated I should build one.

It’s been an enormously rewarding, frustrating, testing, and expansive experience. Old and new friends helped me mix concrete for footers, and a couple months later those friends (now old friends) came back to help set roof rafters. I’ve grown closer to people while talking about it. Sometimes someone would have a better idea, and those will always be my favorite parts of the home. For four seasons, almost all of my free time was spent witnessing the place and process.

Unfortunately, this is a volatile day and age to take that on. I suppose it always is, for some set of reasons or another. My reasons are unpredictable material costs, code requirements that give little leeway for producing your own materials (not entirely a complaint), and likely a heavy dose of poor project management. There’s an “almost-home” there, waiting to be insulated and finished, but I’m tapped out.

The property next door was bought at auction recently by a Christmas tree grower, and I had started to think that my best/only option was to separate and sell acreage in my second valley to be able to finish and move in. Today, I walked back there with the dog, passing the hills clearcut for the tree farm. Then, back in my valley, there’s an enormous sugar maple, kinked over a creek flush with recent heavy rainfall. Walking up that intermittent creek, there are ephemerals everywhere, everything smells clean and petrichor, big quartz scatters in a cone from the ridgetop, and halfway up a spring founts from under a boulder. Emmy was cutting across the ridge chasing deer, and creaking trees and crushing leaves were the only sounds. This is a place to stretch out in every form, broaden yourself, and feel history and opportunity.

Being from here, I can’t hate Christmas tree growers and don’t want to. To twist Mary Oliver, who wrote about fishing as an industry around her:

“Whether one is part of the action or not, fishing tree farming is always one of the apparent vitalities here. The sea tree fields surround us… surrounds idle conversation; it surrounds the mind diving down into what it hopes is original thought.”

I have less against the tree growers than most would expect, and I’m happy to defend them as one of the less harmful monocrops for here, and most definitely one of the more secure ways for our county to avoid development. Nuanced thoughts on that later. But I’ve got to keep that valley. I can’t sell it.

Which brings me to my point. You might be able to help me. I’m not looking for gifts, this is not a GoFundMe - my needs are not that dire. I’m looking for support in being able to do this without compromise.

I make things, and I reflect on that process. If you need something made, from furniture to a wooden cup to cabinet pulls, let’s talk. If you have a special idea for a project that needs special attention, I’d love to tackle it with you, build some community, and put the proceeds towards my home. I’ll also continue to make things I find value in, and they’ll be available. You can contact me through this site, and watch for availability and examples.

Another way to support is via membership to this page and newsletter, where I’ll post reflections on craft, home-building, rural living, food, and history in the southern Appalachians. If you’ve enjoyed my writing in the past, now’s your moment! Hold me to it!

I’d like to drive a point home: I hope that if you support me, it’s not an exception. It would be wonderful for all of us to find people who need a hand and give that hand. This region has a fierce pride in our craft, hard work, and pastoral elegance, and I guarantee you know some people still living that life. Find them! Help them! It’s awesome, and it isn’t charity, it’s community!

So, thanks for the read, can’t wait to dive into it!

Ezra