It shouldn't take more than a moment, dear grandchildren, to figure out exactly what building is under construction. It's the early spring of 1978 and the house that we've lived in these last forty or so years is rising out of the ground. It may be a little difficult, but if you scrutinize closely, you'll notice the space that has been left for the familiar sliding door (with its prominent header), and also the spaces for the front door and the kitchen windows. The workmen (is that Jimmy Perry up there?) are just starting on the second floor. There's also a large boulder which came out of the basement on the lower right, sitting where it remained for 30 years or so until it was replaced by a much more handsome piece of granite. (The boulder in the picture can now be found, part buried, at the entrance to the new waterfall garden.)
It's a very small house (the footprint is 20' x 28') not because we were in love with small houses, but because we were working with an extremely limited budget. Believe it or not, the house (including foundation, roof, well, electricity, and septic) cost just $33,000 --very little even in 1970s dollars. That's because we cut every corner that could conceivably be cut: unfinished lumber for framing, second-hand doors, used plumbing fixtures and appliances, plywood flooring in some rooms, etc. etc. (Almost all these elements have been replaced and upgraded over the years as the family has become more prosperous.)
Also important: the house site. It might seem natural and inevitable to you, grandchildren, that the house is where it is. But in fact, there was a long serious debate about where to put it. And here you must remind yourself that in 1977 the area that now contains a house and a garage/barn and three cabins and an orchard of sorts and three or four different gardens was a blank space, a tabula rasa -- just a meadow behind the old West Bradford cemetery.
Four sites were under consideration and three were rejected : the first where Cabin #3 is located, the second, where the barn sits, the third in the back field (but that would have involved a prohibitive investment in a road and the undergrounding of many feet of electrical wire). I made the decision to put the house up on the knoll, with a good view of pond, forest and field, accessible to the road, and with the hope and possibility of a dry basement. The right decision, I still think.
There was only one road in at the time -- the one to the south of the cemetery. The driveway we now use came the next year.
There were many adventures and many anxieties in the building of the house, most of them a consequence of the limited budget. It was not an enjoyable experience, but it didn't sour me on the land or the property. I learned a lot.
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