The Half-Acre Homestead: Designing the House

Reader Contribution by Lloyd Kahn and Shelter Publications
Published on October 15, 2020
1 / 5
2 / 5
3 / 5
4 / 5
5 / 5


The following is an excerpt from Lloyd Kahn’s The Half-Acre Homestead: 46 Years of Building & Gardening, a record, with over 500 color photos, of Lloyd’s and his wife Lesley’s owner-built home and garden. They show you what the house and garden look like, how various functions operate, including solar panels, septic systems, skylights, and tools they use in the kitchen, garden, and shop. Buy the book from Shelter Publications and several of Lloyd’s other books in the MOTHER EARTH NEWS Store.

In the early 1970s, I had just come off a 5-year period of building geodesic domes (a friend of mine called it “circle madness”) and had concluded that they didn’t work — for a variety of reasons. Before that, I had built post-and-beam houses. Nothing as simple as stud-frame construction, which I discovered in 1971. Eureka! Rectangles!

Hand-built wooden door

Comments (0) Join others in the discussion!
    Online Store Logo
    Need Help? Call 1-800-234-3368