Our family blog has been dormant for some time. As you know, we have relocated to California and are building our home in the foothills below Yosemite. We are building a straw bale home with other unique features. We thought you might enjoy the journey with us, so we are going to use this blog as our way of sharing the experience.

So to catch you up on our progress: We have been working with the County of Madera for over six months to get our house plans approved. We couldn't find any straw bale plans we liked so Vicky and I, with input from Tom and Rosemary, created our house plans and had a draftsman draw them up. The county required further engineering, so we hired an engineer... We have been through about ten different inspection processes, from seismic and geotechnical tests, septic and well water tests, Native American site inspection, grading and plot plan approvals, fire risk assessments, road plan approvals, and so on. We have spent about $20k and haven't even got house plans approved or building permit signed.

This has been an interesting experience. There have been days when I hold higher hope for Middle East Peace than getting various departments in the County to talk to each other... We love the area and the people. Our ward is great, we have family close by--which is a new experience for us, and everyday is a postcard picture. Here are a few pictures of the area and our land--so far.

First a few pictures of California.
A visit to the beach at Monterey:






The land we are building on has some beautiful views:








The creek that will be just out our back door. We have been gold panning on it, but no big nuggets yet. Very therapeutic though...






This is the road leading to our acreage--off to the left.


Preparing the lot:








Here is the building lot in all its glory...

We won't overwhelm you with pictures--we have about twenty just of different animal tracks across the building lot--from raccoons and rabbits, to bobcats and deer. From now on we will try to post once or twice a month...