The business, and pleasures, of moving to Sonoma

First to business ....

Took the latest two floor plans up to the park today to see if they were acceptable.  Dick actually liked them both.  He's concerned about the length, but again, we won't know until the lot is cleared and we can stake out the measurements.  That's also when the state inspector comes in to see if the size of the home complies with state regulations for mobile home parks and Dick determines if the living space covers no more than 75% of the lot. Living space is not only the dwelling, but the awnings, eaves, any shed and the car port.

When I'm talking about both floor plans, I'm talking about the 24 x 50 that we know will fit and the mini-Awahnee that I don't know if I can afford.    Dick actually said that he thought the 24 x 50 plan might even be repositioned facing to the SW,  the way I want it.  Things not so dire.

Letters sent to the home builder to authorize removal of the old house (builder is going to give me $1,500 credit towards home purchase) to remove the old place.  He'll turn around and sell it to a refurbisher, who will sell it to someone for about $9,000, once he's fixed it up nicely.  I don't mind.  As long as I don't have to pay to remove it, I'm good.

The individual I bought the home from was disabled and had a lift that would get her into the home from outside.

Carport

Front

The park manager had asked me, a couple of weeks ago if I was interested in selling it; there is a park resident that needs one and the park's maintenance staff would take care of removing it to the new location.  New, the lifts run about $2,500, and this one is only about a year old.  I suggested selling it to the park resident for $2,000, and they countered with $1,500.  I said I would sell it on Craigslist because I had intended to use these funds to pay the park maintenance guys to clear the lot of all the shrubbery, and to remove the front concrete car port.

The resident offered an additional $250, which I accepted, and the quote to do all the above mentioned work came in at (I know you'll be shocked and surprised) $1,750.  Easy come, easy go.  But when two contractors are telling me that it will cost $30K to prep the lot, and remove the old home,  anything I can do to lower/mitigate that number, I'll do.  So far, I've got the old home off the lot,  the overgrown shrubbery, and unwanted carport gone, and I'm still in the black.  I'm sure there's some foundation work the builder needs to do that will cost, but at least the messy parts are taken care of and I haven't spent a dime.  It's all good.

SW view side

Back

So, the guys are going to start clearing the shrubs next week, at least from the front of the property so it will be easy for the contractor to remove the dwelling.

 Hopefully all that will be done next week, and if I'm really lucky, by Friday we can get a preliminary, and much more accurate, idea of what can fit on the site.


Now to the pleasures of Sonoma ...

Two books that I thoroughly enjoyed  in recent years were Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and Michael Pollan's, The Omnivore's Dilemma; wherein the delights of being a locovore and the joys of seasonal eating were told in an entertaining and educational way.  In Kingsolver's book, she has us panting with anticipation for spring's first strawberries and asparagus.  It's September 27 today, and across the main thoroughfares of Watmaugh Road and Arnold Drive from the park is a wonderful farm stand that sells daily fresh-picked strawberries...today....in the fall.  And they are sweet and ripe, and grown organically.  Besides the one basket of berries (pet peeve:  most large grocery stores have stopped selling the small baskets of strawberries, in preference for the larger "family-sized containers) I also got 2 lbs of small sized sweet potatoes.  Bill:  $4.50

About 3-4 miles away is Green String Farm, where their farm store is such an amazing testament to the joys of being a locovore/seasonal eater.  Here's what I picked up today, for $17.  A quarter pound of local cheese, and a quarter pound of local butter, 2 pounds of stone-ground (I ground it myself) wheat flour (the bread dough is rising as we speak), a couple of fuji apples, an heirloom tomato, a couple of bulbs of garlic, four pickling cucumbers to make some bread and butter refrigerator pickles and two gianormous carrots.

In the farm store they have, not only all the seasonal veggies, herbs and fruits that abound, but plants, seeds, grass fed beef, press your own olive oil, and other bottled olive oils.  Nary a bottle of wine in sight.

And then exactly two blocks from my house is an egg farm (I didn't see the chickens, but I wasn't looking that hard), where I picked up a dozen jumbo eggs for $4.25.  So, for a little over $25, I got real food, that I know where it came from.  Cost-wise, it's probably more than Safeway and probably a bit less than Whole Paycheck Foods.

Take that, Monsanto!