It's official!

It's official!!! Just got word back from the lawyer and closing and everything was finalized this morning at 9 - Matthew Kramer is now the official owner of 6.3 acres in the smokey mountains!

Now that all the fun paper work is done, we've been looking at yurt options for our bottom lot. There's a great yurt company down here in Ashville, NC - just over an hour away from our lot. We went in the other day to walk through the different size yurts and see what options and features we'd want to add.

It's a cute little family run business, kind of a hippy community haha when we got to their "business site" we looked around and counted about 10 different yurts scattered about their property! They live out of most of them and then use some of the larger ones for their kitchen, sewing room and others to build the yurts in! Another older couple in the retirement days came in to look at yurts too. Guess where from..!? Pennsylvania haha both graduated from Penn State. Small world..

They're a great group of people though and extremely eager to work with us and find the cheapest options for us to get what we want. They're even going to let us come in and do a lot of the work on our own to cut the costs in half!

We had a great time looking around and taking in their lifestyle - a lot of holistic health stuff, yoga, meditation, herbs and that sorta thing. Very free spirited, loving people haha by the time we were done looking around it was 3 hours later and we had talked to almost the whole family. Other friends and workers were pulling in with 5 or 6 kids running around - but what a fun atmosphere to be surrounded by! We're really excited to start working with them!

Right now we're just trying to figure out sizing for the yurt. Our community has restrictions and anything being built needs to be at least 600 sq feet. That means we would have to do the largest yurt, but we're trying to find other ways around to keep the costs cheaper and still meet the requirements.

We're also in contact with a builder down here that is familiar with the area who is trying to help us figure out a deck platform for the yurt to sit on. The deck platform essentially acts as the flooring for the yurt, and allows us to run utilities under the yurt and up through the floor - kinda giving us a small crawlspace to work with.

Besides that, we've just been working on the land a little. There's been a lot of underbrush, thorns, dead leaves and such that we've been trying to clear out so we're ready to build when all this gets finalized. I've been doing "controlled" burns to clear out everything - Allison says it's just an excuse to play with fire - I say it's just about working more efficiently =) Hopefully soon, we can get a mini garden started and start building paths around the property!

We've been sneaking into the in town library for internet and wifi. They also have a bunch of magazines for homesteading stuff, outdoors and wildlife, etc - so we've been making good use of those too while we're here!

Spring's definitely in full swing here now! Flowers on all the trees and in all the fields. We've been tracking the leave's progress on our lot and the big green ones just started popping out yesterday! Weather's been in the 70's during most of the day, but still little chilly at night and in the mornings - sometimes getting down to the 30's or 40's. Always a good time to dress in layers and sit around a fire! Abby doesn't seem to mind so much though haha

Alsooo, we got a PO Box down here until we get a permanent mailing address. It's at the post office so we can still get packages and such and interact with the locals. =) I posted the address below in case anyone wants to send anything!

Matt Kramer
PO BOX 37
Bryson City, NC 28713

That all for now folks! Keep yuh updated soon and love ya'll =)