Our little Mennonite house

The same day that the trailer arrived, we heard from Allen Reimer that our little house was finally ready to be delivered. We had ordered it some months previously, but asked him to delay the actual delivery until we could be there. It's just a little 16' x 20' house with a 6' front porch.

We were in the same dilemma with the house as we had been with the trailer. The road was wet and the hill was too steep for the heavy load. For moment panic reigned and then I had Amelio (our future builder) jump in our old Trooper with me and we dashed down Paslow Falls Rd to the Mahogany sawmill. I don't speak Spanish, so Amelio relayed our problem to them. They had seen the house go by on the truck. The manager of the mill agreed to take a chance and drove a huge caterpillar loader up to our road and, wonder of all wonders, hooked on to the large truck that was hauling the house, and pulled the whole lot up the hill. Hallelujah! I was a nervous wreck.

We were frustrated that we had missed seeing them bring the house across the bridge in Bullet Tree. I had hoped to get photos of them cranking the house up in the air to get past the railings and then dropping it back down. Actually, watching our house going up that steep hill was excitement enough. I don't know how they do it, but it stayed put and made it up the hill just fine. These few photos don't really show how steep and precarious it all was, but they may give others who are contemplating getting one of these houses, the Spanish Lookout folks can put these houses almost anywhere.

One it was up, they jockeyed it into place, putting the posts underneath and then dropped it into place. Our course the site isn't level, but the house is generally about 3' off the ground. We've designated it as our "caretaker house" altho' who knows.

Down to business

It seems too anal to state our every tho't and action, so I prefer to just cut to the chase. We're finally going to prepare for our move to Dreamer Farm. It's hard to believe that it's finally going to come true. I don't know where we'd be if it wasn't for the Belize Forum. So many wonderful folks share their experiences and generously answer questions. It helps to find out what successes and failures others have had.

I posted a note about wanting a travel trailer and immediately got a response from a wonderful American couple Marge & Tom Gallagher of Moonracer Farm, who had a very old trailer that they had bro't down from New York. It's a 1973 (a clue is the orange stove) but fairly clean and functional. It would give us a place to camp while our building activities are going on. We traveled down in October to get things going. Our trip was delayed because of the torrential rains. The Mopan was covering the Paslow Falls Road making it impossible to get to our place. The really big delay was the Roaring Creek was over the bridge near Belmopan so that travel across the bridge was impossible. Buses were stopping at the bridge, folks were taken across by boat and another bus picked them up on the west side. Not for us.

We delayed our trip by a week and finally were able to make it to Bullet Tree. So much was lost, but these wonderful folks were picking up and salvaging what they could. Most of Bullet Tree was fine, just the low spots along the river. We heard of one person up the river who lost over 50 pigs.

Our dilema was getting up our hill. Much of the climb was rock based and fine,but the steep part half-way up was clay and slippery. We were pretty frantic because, besides the travel trailer coming up, we had ordered a small Mennonite house from Western Lumber (Reimer's) and it was to be delivered. We were staying at the Casa Blanca in San Ignacio and I phoned Tom Gallagher and told him of the problem with the hill. Bless his heart, he came anyway, and before we could object, he put the peddle to the metal and climbed up the hill, old trailer in tow. What a champ! He generously set the trailer up for us and got us functional. It certainly wasn't fancy, but beds and a kitchen were terrific. We won't mention the bathroom facilities.

The next entry will be getting the little house up the hill.