Firsthand Reports: Rockin Retirement

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A woodstove is our main heat source, but last year we put in a central heating unit, too. We don’t need air conditioning, though. With so many trees around the place, the house stays cool in the summer. We just open the windows and doors and let the breeze blow through.

I later built a breakfast room, with six windows and a little table. This is where we eat all our meals, looking out on the pond and the garden. Our completed house is about 1,700 square feet, and it is our pride and joy. Often, people will drive by and ask if the cabin is for sale, but we love our home, so we won’t even give them a price.

Apples and other Necessities

When we bought the property, Doris was a nurse, and I taught high school wood shop, but several years ago we both retired. We had worried about our retirement for years because we had very little savings, but I’m happy to report that it’s going great!

We’re spending our days not traveling or golfing, but just enjoying our home. We do go into town twice a week for church, and occasionally we go to the store to buy staples, such as cleaning supplies, but we don’t do much grocery shopping because we raise just about everything we eat. Our half-acre garden produces a variety of fresh vegetables from early spring through late fall, and then we can, freeze and dry for winter. We also raise strawberries, black raspberries, blackberries and grapes, which we freeze or make into jams and jellies.

For meat, Mother Nature provides a bounty of deer, rabbit and squirrel, and we have a small pond for fish. Our trees keep us well supplied with nuts and fruit — we have black walnuts, hazelnuts and pecans, as well as apples, peaches, pears, plums and cherries.

Most of our household water comes from a deep well on the property, but a spring also is available if we need it. We use a log springhouse to store our apples, potatoes and other items for off-season use. We also freeze and dry the apples from the dozen apple trees in our orchard, and we use them to make cider.

A friend gave me an old cider press that he said had been in his barn for 40 years. Well, I repaired the press, and now I’ve used it for another 30. We pull it out every year when the apples are ripe.

Most of the cider you get at the market has been watered down, but real apple cider is delicious. When you make your own, the trick is to use a mix of apples. If you use a sweet apple, it’s too sweet, and if you use a sour apple, it’s too sour, so you need a combination of both.

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