Building in rural Colorado

My Life in a Snow Globe!

/ Laura Lee Carter / 9 Comments

snow globeI’ve only been in a few blizzards, but last night was fantastic! Snow was blowing every which way, circling around the house… When I looked outside I found my precipitation gauge was almost buried in snow!

IMGP4439Here’s what it looked like this morning! Do you see that little bump in the snow out there? That’s it! We got around a foot of snow!

It’s never easy to measure precipitation under these conditions, so I measured all around my gauge and came up with close to a foot.

IMGP4435And the best part? The sun came out this morning to let us know we have not been totally abandoned out here.

IMGP4445This is my idea of a GREAT holiday gift!  We’re doing WHITE FRIDAY at our house today, with nothing to do but decorate for the holidays!

Our passions choose us. We do not choose our passions.

How did I end up here, feeling so fortunate?

It’s a long story, one I can now share with you in my new memoir!

Passive Solar Heat & the First SNOW!

/ Laura Lee Carter / 2 Comments

IMGP4415Monday night was exciting up here! We saw first sleet and then snow falling, and it snowed all night.

As some of you may know, I’ve been recording precipitation data for the CoCoRAHS project since 1998, at the seven addresses I have lived at in that time. Yesterday’s reading was particularly difficult because of high winds and drifted snow, although I did record almost an inch of precip!

Let me put it this way, it was difficult getting out of the house on Tuesday morning. Some places there was almost no snow and it was a foot deep elsewhere. We live on a county road so they took care of the road plowing.

And our solar heating has been working great! For example, outside we got down to around 20 degrees last night and inside we were around 60 this morning, but as soon as the sun started coming in, we jumped up to 66 quickly. We do have supplemental electric heat, which we use sparingly, and I also have hot flashes, which help a lot!

IMGP4413The sunset was beautiful here last night, a constant reminder of why we choose to live up here!

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Rebellion at age 60

/ Laura Lee Carter / 5 Comments

Rebellion is difficult, freedom priceless!

Laura at Cordova Pass Overlook October 2015It only occurred to me recently that I am going through at age 60, what most went through in their teenage years. I would say I have always been a good girl, to some extent, doing what was expected of me. Two husbands and three graduate degrees later, it seems I have changed.

When Mike and I hatched the plan in late 2013, of selling our lovely home in Fort Collins (suburbia), to build a passive solar home in rural Huerfano county, I had no idea how much my family didn’t want us to do this. I guess I figured it was our business, but apparently not.

Come to find out, I have somehow betrayed my family by making my own decision. This has brought up a lot of other types of rebellion for me, rebellion I never felt at age 18 or 19. I feel angry that I have always done what was expected of me instead of what I wanted to do.

I know, better late than never…

tell negative committee to shut upI now recognize so many old tapes in my head, telling me what to do and how to act. These go against my own needs and desires, and yet it seems strange to be finally telling them to shut up.

This is where my own inner wisdom comes in. I now have six decades of wisdom stored up from just living my life day-to-day. I know myself very well.

I finally believe in my own wisdom. I know how I wish to live. I only wish my family had more faith in my judgment.

Want to learn more about my mammoth move from suburbia to rural southern Colorado? Go see here!

 

Life in a passive solar home

/ Laura Lee Carter / 7 Comments

This post is for those who are curious what it is like to live in a direct gain passive solar home. That included me until a few months ago!

IMGP4278For example, today the sun is out, but we had a high of 46 degrees outside. Inside we are toasty warm in the low 70s with no forms of heat needed.

To build a direct gain solar home you must first properly position it with almost all your windows and sliding doors facing directly south. And the windows and doors must be made of the proper kind of glass.

In addition, your roof needs just the right amount of overhang on the south side to keep the sun overhead and not shining into the house until around September 1st.

IMGP3052You must also start out with the right kind of insulated slab to hold the heat in the floor, instead of it leaking out into the ground. This is essential!

IMGP3515The walls must be well insulated, and then we chose dark gray tile throughout the house to absorb the heat as it enters the house from our south-facing doors and windows. Right now the sun is shining about 10 feet into our home!

You also need ceiling fans if you want to keep the heat down off the ceiling in winter.

At the time of building this house, I understood why we made these specific choices, but only now do I see the great advantages to living in a home that holds its temperature so well.

Yes, our home does cool down at night, but very slowly. The low temperature outside last night was around 20 degrees. With no inside heat on, the outdoors got down to 64 degrees. Then as the sun starts coming in to the house the morning, our home warms up very quickly.

Sometimes before I leave the house I think, “Should I turn down the thermostat?” But we have none…old ways die hard.

IMGP4364Fortunately we were able to find the perfect passive solar perch for our new home, one that faces south and also offers us a 180 degree view of the Spanish Peaks and the Sangre de Cristo mountain range.

Now that I understand all of this, I am mystified why everyone doesn’t use the free solar heat of winter! Of course I never would have understood all of this without Mike’s expertise and education.

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Sights and Sightings in Trinidad Colorado

/ Laura Lee Carter / 6 Comments

Just to let you know how life is different when you move to a rural county, we had to take our puppy to Trinidad, about an hour away yesterday, to get some eye surgery done. We had tried this same surgery last year at the only vet in our county and he screwed it up, allowing the tumor to return. So we went to see Dr. Felduto in Trinidad. He guaranteed if Rasta’s eye tumor ever came back again, he would fix it for free.

What this meant logistically for us was that we had to find things to do in Trinidad for four hours while Rasta’s anesthesia wore off. First we hit Walmart, since we don’t have one in Walsenburg, and we needed a few things not available in our area.

cowboys at sunsetOutside of Walmart we saw something neither one of us have ever witnessed. There, near the front door, was an old cowboy with his horse, a mule for cargo, and three dogs. He had ridden into Walmart to buy supplies. As he took off, it looked just like a scene from the 1880s.

Next we had a great lunch at the Mexican restaurant called Tequilas just across I-25 from Walmart. It had been recommended to us, and they were right. Wonderful food, great service and nice atmosphere!

Then we took a random drive around downtown Trinidad, ending up at the Masonic Cemetery.

MasonicCemetery Trinidad COThe Trinidad area was first visited by Spanish and Mexican traders, because of its proximity to the Santa Fe Trail. After coal was discovered in the region in 1862, the town experienced an influx of immigrants eager for jobs. In 1878 the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway reached Trinidad, making it easier for goods to be shipped from distant locations. By 1900, the population of Trinidad had grown to 7,500, home to two English and one Spanish language newspaper.

Mike and I both enjoy old gravestones to gain a better sense of western history, so we took a walk in the cemetery. What struck us both was how rare it was for people in Trindad’s past to live past age 40, one hundred years ago. We kept seeing the graves of those who were born in the late 1800s, who only lived into the 1910s or 20s.

Find Your Reason Cover tiny for HPI knew from my research for my book about Boomers, how rare it was for those born in the early 1900s to make it past age 60, but there were so many gravestones for those who never made it to age five or ten or twenty in this cemetery!

gravestone trinidadThe saddest were the graves of children. There were even a few double graves of siblings who only lived to age 3 or 4. These are all parts of history we know, but to see the actual gravestones is somehow more powerful.  We also saw stones written in other languages like Greek and German. These were immigrants who risked everything to come out to Colorado to start a new life. Yes, we feel vulnerable today, but imagine how vulnerable those who went before us really were…

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