Stranded in Hunter NY

Well here I am on a very cold winter day, actually a day after Christmas, thinking about writing on my blog. I do not want to go outside nor think about what is out there. I am not a winter person. Why am I living here? We have lived here since 1985 when Anthony and I moved up here from Bayside, Queens. We had a dream to live on 5 acres and live our dream. Anthony introduced me to
Five Acres and Independence and we found our parcel of land in Prattsville NY. Wow! What a beautiful valley. However my first choice of location was Maui! Anthony had children on Long Island and we couldn't go too far so the northern Catskills became our home. With our backgrounds in design and carpentry we researched buildings and planned on building a cabin instead of buying a kit. For those of you not handy a Shelter Kit or a modular home can be an option. We built a one room cabin with a carport for $4,000. It was never finished. We considered installing a compost toilet and then met with the NYC DEP. We opted for the septic system and it was installed for $1,500.00. The reason we opted for the septic was that in the future if we wanted to sell a bank would not consider the property without a legal septic system. This was before NYC DEP had as much authority as they do today but I didn't want to deal with the resale issue. We ran out of money so we didn't drill a well or have electricity brought to the house till years later. More to come later....