TnAndy
Veteran Member
- Joined
- Aug 9, 2013
- Messages
- 1,993
- Location
- East Tennessee
- Tractor
- Yanmar LX410...IHI 35J excavator Woodmizer LT40
Wife of 41 years and I live on a 75ac hunk of mtn land in east Tn, not too far from the NC line. Bought our place in 1982, and I'm about 30 years into a 50 year project. 
I'm a 'sorta' retired self employed carpenter ( with a 7 year stint as a high school shop teacher ), wife is a retired school teacher.
Nothing cleared, no roads, no utilities, here when we started....pretty much a hunk of raw mountain side. Cleared some of the property for pasture, used the timber to build our house. ( took logs to sawmill ).
Finally got to where I could buy a Woodmizer band mill in 1991, and have used it to turn our logs into numerous buildings, 35x75 shop, 3 rental homes, and lots of lumber/buildings for neighbors/etc. Just finished a 6,000bdft order for a neighbor's new horse barn, which I'll help him erect.
We garden extensively, ( about an acre ) raise chickens, Dexter cattle, pigs, and catfish in a couple small ponds I dug. Most of our food comes from within few hundred yards of the kitchen. We do our own processing of meat/etc in an auxiliary kitchen I added on the back of the garage, including a walk-in cooler run by a window AC.
Got into solar power few years back, and have expanded the system to the point we produce more than we use, so we have no electric bill + they currently owe us 400 bucks.
We heat with wood, water is gravity fed spring, sewer is septic tank, even our high speed internet is free ( less the cost I spent building a road to the mtn top and the 100' tower I put up there )....neighbor needed high speed internet for his work at home job, so he pays for a business cable connection/modem on the other side of the mtn, then we radio link it to my tower, and back down to our side of the mtn.
View from the tower top !
Yeah....that's me, up the tower, working on the antennae couple years ago......about 4 months after a triple bypass....ahahahaaa...wife like to had a cow.
Enough about me....forum looks really interesting....I love tractors (Currently: Yanmar LX410 owner ) construction equipment ( Mitsubishi BD2H ), building stuff, sawmilling, farming, and looks like there are quite a few like minded folks here !
I'm a 'sorta' retired self employed carpenter ( with a 7 year stint as a high school shop teacher ), wife is a retired school teacher.Nothing cleared, no roads, no utilities, here when we started....pretty much a hunk of raw mountain side. Cleared some of the property for pasture, used the timber to build our house. ( took logs to sawmill ).
Finally got to where I could buy a Woodmizer band mill in 1991, and have used it to turn our logs into numerous buildings, 35x75 shop, 3 rental homes, and lots of lumber/buildings for neighbors/etc. Just finished a 6,000bdft order for a neighbor's new horse barn, which I'll help him erect.
We garden extensively, ( about an acre ) raise chickens, Dexter cattle, pigs, and catfish in a couple small ponds I dug. Most of our food comes from within few hundred yards of the kitchen. We do our own processing of meat/etc in an auxiliary kitchen I added on the back of the garage, including a walk-in cooler run by a window AC.
Got into solar power few years back, and have expanded the system to the point we produce more than we use, so we have no electric bill + they currently owe us 400 bucks.
We heat with wood, water is gravity fed spring, sewer is septic tank, even our high speed internet is free ( less the cost I spent building a road to the mtn top and the 100' tower I put up there )....neighbor needed high speed internet for his work at home job, so he pays for a business cable connection/modem on the other side of the mtn, then we radio link it to my tower, and back down to our side of the mtn.
View from the tower top !
Yeah....that's me, up the tower, working on the antennae couple years ago......about 4 months after a triple bypass....ahahahaaa...wife like to had a cow.
Enough about me....forum looks really interesting....I love tractors (Currently: Yanmar LX410 owner ) construction equipment ( Mitsubishi BD2H ), building stuff, sawmilling, farming, and looks like there are quite a few like minded folks here !
