In 1995 my wife had surgery on her shoulder, while she was in surgery I went down to the bookstore to pick up a book to read. There was a book on building log houses and my wife and I always loved log homes so I picked it up. I read the whole thing while she was in surgery and recovery. The last chapter of the book was a chapter on alternative log styles, and there was a couple of paragraphs on something called cordwood.

I loved it. The book mentioned a man by the name of Rob Roy, who was a big proponent of the style. I called information and got his phone number and called him. I asked him if he had any sources of information on cordwood building and he said he did, in fact he had a book on the subject and he could send it to me if I wanted. I said I would be very interested in it. Before we ended our conversation he said he also had a book on underground home building and wondered if I would be interested in that as well. I told him yes I would and ordered both of them

Those two books are currently out of print and Rob Roy has updated them to a newer version

With the birth of our daughter and life in general, the dream was put on the shelf, but it was always there in my mind, always there looking at me. Finally in 2007 seeing what was going on in the world, fiscally and politically, we decided it was time to bring our dream to reality. We proceeded to search for land. Our requirements were simple, minimum of 5 acres of land, with a majority of it wooded for firewood harvest, a water source, solar exposure, some fruit trees, and room for a garden. It seems like we looked at well over 100 properties, but couldn't find what we wanted, it was either so expensive there was no way we could pay for it and build our house out of pocket, or it was on the side of steep hill that gardening would have been difficult. If any of the properties had water it was totally out of our realm of possibility. So we closed out 2007 without finding what we thought was our ideal spot.

In 2008 we purchased a 9 acre lot adjoining our business to expand it and was left over witth a 7 acre field. We decided we would make the flat piece of property into what we wanted it to be. We had a ledge pad made with a boulder retaining wall, had the water and sewer hooked up, planted a orchard and it installed a pond.

We also ordered a tractor trailer load of 12 inch cement block to start building in the spring of 2009, I spent most of the summer in that chair just staring and planning

So we started planning ground breaking, our goals were to take a year and complete the house, unfortunately that little thing called life raised its head. My father went in for a check-up for a mass on his stomach, 2 hours later he was in ICU for a aortic aneurysm. 48 hours later he had surgery and ended up having the same surgery 2 hours later due to clotting of his graft. That night his bp was 52 over 40. He pulled through, but he had complications all week and we thought we lost him several times, but in the end he pulled through and came and lived with us for 4 weeks while he was recovering. You always hear life is short, my fathers illness really drove the point home for me, and I realized I had been putting off my dream for 15 years, and now was the time to shit or get off the pot. My father was discharged 6/12, 6/13 we started.