Courtesy Heather-Marie Bloom
Microhouses
Nicknamed “Blue Caddisfly,” Heather-Marie Bloom’s microhouse serves her just fine, especially during the hectic growing season at Rising Phoenix Community Farm near Duluth.
Heather-Marie Bloom discovered something amazing about her 250-square-foot microhouse. It’s given her additional space in her life.
“I have more room in my life for friends and the activities I enjoy. I am an artist and farmer.”
Cleaning and maintenance time is certainly reduced in a home that encompasses a smaller space than the average U.S. living room (330 square feet, according to the National Association of Home Builders).
Heather-Marie has joined an intriguing movement that celebrates condensed living and a basics-only lifestyle. Called microhouses or tiny homes, these structures range from 100 to 400 square feet and are often built up from a double-axle trailer base, which measures no larger than 8 feet wide, 28 feet long and 13 feet high to avoid need for a special tow permit.
“My microhouse is moveable,” says Heather-Marie. “It is named the Blue Caddisfly, after a moth-like insect that as a larva carries its self-built, sleeping-bag-style house with it. That seems like the perfect name. When I walk in the door I can say that it’s all mine, and since I am a traveling farmer, my home will go with me. I like that.”
Heather-Marie is the operating farmer of Rising Phoenix Community Farm of Saginaw, Minnesota. This is community supported agriculture, or CSA, where members purchase shares and, in this case, receive 16 weekly deliveries of fresh produce.
Heather-Marie doesn’t feel she’s given up any necessity or comfort to live tiny. She’s become prudent in acquiring possessions and relishes the amenities that her home does offer.
Kathy L.T. Kahlstorf
Microhouses
Heather-Marie harvests carrots. Her farm, a community supported agriculture (CSA) operation, begins delivering goods in June.
The cost of a tiny house ranges from custom extravagance upward of $67,000 to the few thousand dollars typical for most full-time owners. Many use nearly all leftover, donated, repurposed or scavenged materials. Heather-Marie designed and built her own home.
“I have probably 25 outlets in my tiny space because I’ve been in large homes where you can’t find one outlet. I also have many south-facing windows. One is 6 foot by 6 foot, which I refer to as my TV.”
Built-in shelves and storage provide creative solutions for pantry items and books. An old-fashioned library-style ladder attaches different places to access storage or her loft and stows in a niche in the wall when not needed. She taps electricity via a nearby garage.
“My current situation is a bit unusual, and my friends tease me that I am ‘fancy camping.’ I have no water hook-up, so I haul water and shower at the neighbor’s or at my sister’s house in town during the winter. That is probably the most difficult issue right now.”
She installed a sawdust composting toilet. Her heat and appliances run on propane, and she purchased her own bullet tank, so that can move when she does.
Currently, Heather-Marie and her Blue Caddisfly reside on rented farmland, but she wants to buy her own land and quotes from Wendell Berry’s poem, “A Standing Ground,” to describe her philosophy: “I am not bound for any public place, but for ground of my own.”
When she buys land, her moveable microhouse can be connected fairly easily to electricity, water, septic or whatever infrastructure is there. And if there is a traditional house on her future farm, will Heather-Marie switch houses?
“No, this is my home. There are many possibilities, though. Well, I might when I am older. I guess I don’t see myself climbing up and down the ladder to bed when I am 80.”
She sighs at that potential future, but then brightens with an idea. “A farming intern could certainly live in the microhouse then!”
Planting runs May through early July, with the first delivery of cabbage, broccoli or whatever is ready in the third week of June. Delivery continues into the first week of October.
“I will take a 16-hour day in the field anytime over four hours indoors. At the end of the day, I go for a swim and collapse in my loft. Again, like the poet, I ‘rise at dawn and pick dew-wet berries in a cup,’ ready for the farm.”
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Kathy L.T. Kahlstorf
Microhouses
In any microhouse, it’s all about maximum use of minimum space. In Heather-Marie Bloom’s 250 square feet of space, she’s packed in a sleeping loft...
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her custom-fitted kitchen cabinets...
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open kitchen shelving and track lighting...
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a sawdust toilet (with storage space above, naturally)...
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Microhouses
and a kitchen-dining-living space “great” room.
The tiny home movement is driven by a desire to build a small, extremely sturdy, efficient, moveable home that contains only life’s essentials, says Jon Lintula, a practicing architect and certified passive-house consultant who teaches at Lake Superior College. He offers a tiny-house course.
“Heather-Marie is a perfect example of a microhome owner,” Jon says. “She researched, had an understanding of what she wanted and didn’t need and has adjusted as she went along. Students have come to look at tiny-house design from a variety of perspectives: as second or seasonal employment, as retirement homes or vacation getaways, and like Heather-Marie, who has the traveling home.”
Students who choose Jon’s course vary in age from high schoolers to retiring couples. “Especially in the U.S., we make assumptions about space. For example, how many square feet a bedroom should be, or that a bathroom can’t be functional unless it measures 4 feet by 8 feet. We don’t look at moveable or multiuse space. Tiny-house design mentality is more like a cabinet than a house – everything is a detail.”
Eschewing the standard does present challenges, Heather-Marie found. “Smaller does not mean easier. Everything we put into the house had to be retrofitted for its specific space. We couldn’t walk into a store and purchase whatever we needed – much of the time we had to construct pieces for ourselves.”
Her cabinets were custom-made. “Manufactured cabinets were too deep, and I had an idea in mind. A friend made these of reclaimed shiplap board, and they are great!”
She loves to cook and bake, and alloted space accordingly. “I do have a full-size stove with oven, but my little kitchen is wonderful and everything I need is close, right here.”
A few “finds” matched her spaces, including a perfectly fitting stainless-steel double sink. A freestanding closet with interior drawers and hanging space fits nicely in her living room with its 13-foot ceiling, and her clothes-drying rack can be stowed and tethered to the ceiling.
For anyone interested in a condensed life, Heather-Marie advises reading about microhouses and attending a class like one offered by Jon at Lake Superior College. Such a class can help you define personal space needs, storage solutions and your own “minimums.” It also explains the local codes, ordinances and variances that can apply.
Before plunging in, Heather-Marie suggests that you try living for a while in an RV or on a sailboat. These spaces are the most similar to tiny homes and have comparable amenities and storage. They also give similar opportunity to use the outdoors as living space.
Heather-Marie plans in the next few years to find farmland of her own, 40 acres or more, where Rising Phoenix Community Farm can plant permanent roots and flourish.
When that time comes, she and her Blue Caddisfly, true to its namesake, can draw up their temporary foothold and fly down the road to new surroundings.
Kathy Kahlstorf is a writer, editor and blogger living in a regular-sized home in Duluth.