First there was the text from my sister, then from my son. “Dolly died.” No last name needed.

Tributes are pouring in, full of stories about her generosity and humility. But I keep coming back to her legacy in another way: she offered hope to people who had none, stayed true to her roots, and honored people as they were. It wasn’t her job to change anyone’s opinions. It was her job to live authentically, as only Dolly could.

Years ago, my parents were visiting my sister and brother-in-law near Nashville and wandered into a matinee showing a movie featuring Dolly. Incredibly, in walked Dolly and friends. After the movie, my father handed her his ticket stub and asked for an autograph. Dolly graciously obliged. He carried that stub in his wallet for years — until a water ride at Busch Gardens in Williamsburg soaked it beyond saving. Dolly’s appeal cut across every generation.

Think Globally, Act Locally

When I was a graduate student at Syracuse University, I belonged to a group called People for Peace and Justice. We were young idealists pushing for structural reform, advocating for the poor and disenfranchised. Decades later, corruption, hatred, and divisiveness are on steroids. The America I see today is one I wouldn’t have recognized in my twenties.

But Syracuse left me with a bumper sticker that still runs my life: think globally, act locally. I feel powerless against the machine more often than I’d like to admit. Maybe it’s exactly that powerlessness — the destructiveness and insanity of the moment — that’s pushed me to focus on what I can actually do, on a local scale. Maybe I can help build a community where the earth and the people living on it are nourished, supported, and given purpose. Think globally, act locally.

Like most of you, I’m shaken by the attacks on our democracy, the war in Iran, the cruelty aimed at non-white immigrants and citizens. I could go on. But this was the world Dolly lived in too. She had a strict no-politics rule — and her actions showed us how to respect one another anyway.

The Great Sociological Experiment

I’m a sociologist. That means I study institutions, cultures, laws, and policies, and use scientific methods to trace how structural change affects people and the planet. I spent decades in a career centered on justice system reform, with a focus on elder abuse, neglect, and exploitation. I’ve seen the worst in people.

In 2020, I left traditional life behind — traded the house for an RV and spent almost six years traveling the country. My jaded outlook changed. I met strangers on the trail and in campgrounds living simpler lives, closer to the earth, taking in its beauty without taking from it. Dozens of conversations with smiling hikers taught me something I didn’t expect: I learned to trust people more than I ever had. Most people, it turns out, have good intentions.

That experience is probably where the idea for Blue Ridge Cottage Court came from. Sure, I love my independence, but I love community too. I didn’t want the suburbs, where everything requires a drive and neighbors disappear behind garage doors. I didn’t want the noise and concrete of a large city. And if the place I wanted didn’t exist, why not build it? Why not run a grand sociological experiment — twelve households on two acres, tending the land and looking out for one another?

Problems Need Champions

I don’t know how the experiment ends. That’s the fun of it. Every entrepreneur calculates risk before diving in — Dolly included. Would anyone actually visit an amusement park in the mountains of Tennessee? Could you really give away millions of free books to children every month? The real question is always: when you see a problem, can you find a solution? Dolly tackled poverty and unemployment in the place she grew up. She tackled illiteracy through the Imagination Library. Problems have solutions. They just need champions.

Maybe it’s up to the rest of us now to be those champions. I see isolation as a major epidemic — connections reduced to social media, weak by design. I see the science and the toll of climate change, the loss of habitat and of places we can’t get back. But what if I could build my own corner of the good life: two acres in downtown Abingdon (Virginia) that become a working model of how to live with one another while being self-sustaining and respectful of the land? What if?

I drafted a mission and vision for the cottage court a while back. Here it is. What do you think — would you like to join us?

Blue Ridge Cottage Court

A neighborhood designed for the long game.

Vision: A right-sized, walkable neighborhood in downtown Abingdon where neighbors of all ages genuinely know and support one another, and where the land itself is a partner in both cost and care through permaculture and shared stewardship.

Mission: Blue Ridge Cottage Court is a small, energy-efficient neighborhood built for the long game — built on the belief that we live longer, healthier, happier lives when we're rooted to land and to people.

Interested in Joining us at Blue Ridge Cottage Court?

If this project has been stirring something in you as you've read along, now's the moment to lean in. We're looking for founding members who can help shape our vision and provide the capital that qualifies us for a construction loan. Fill out the interest form below and tell us how you'd like to contribute — your skills, your interests, your ability to help get Blue Ridge Cottage Court financed — or email me directly at docbku [at] gmail [dot] com.

Fill out the BRCC Interest Form

(If you’re new here and wondering about cottage courts, start here).

🏘️ Cottage Court Chronicles is free and accessible to all. If you’d like to support this journey, I gladly accept trail snacks (contribute here).

I still can’t believe it. Our parcel in Abingdon sits just half a block from the Urban Pathway — a 1.6-mile walking and biking path that connects the Virginia Creeper Trail to the Abingdon Muster Grounds, passing the Farmer’s Market along the way. That’s a big deal.

On Saturday, I brought my e-bike out to the lot and rode the route toward the Creeper Trail to see it for myself (video above). Honestly, the path needs some work — it’s well marked overall, but there’s one stretch that turns sandy and a little treacherous. It might be exactly the kind of project our future Blue Ridge Cottage Court community could take on together: volunteer to help maintain the pathway that connects us to the rest of town.

One Direction: The Muster Grounds

Walk the pathway one way from our lot, and you land at the Abingdon Muster Grounds — a picturesque 9-acre park certified by the National Park Service as the northern trailhead of the Overmountain Victory National Historic Trail.

The site marks real history. When British Major Patrick Ferguson threatened to march his army over the mountains and destroy the region by force, militia from across the area answered the call. Under Colonel William Campbell, roughly 400 Virginians set out from this spot to join patriot forces from present-day Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Two weeks later, the combined militia — the Overmountain Men — won a decisive victory at the Battle of Kings Mountain, a turning point Thomas Jefferson later credited as instrumental in securing American independence.

The Other Direction: The Virginia Creeper Trail

Head the other way, and it’s an easy bike ride to the Virginia Creeper Trail — one of the most celebrated multi-use trails in the region. The rail trail runs 35 miles from Abingdon to Whitetop, near Mount Rogers National Recreation Area and the North Carolina line, and welcomes hikers, cyclists, and equestrians as it winds through national forest, over restored trestles, and across the Appalachian Trail.

The trail took heavy damage from Hurricane Helene in September 2024 — eighteen trestles destroyed and roughly seventeen miles of trail washed out. The federal government has since directed millions of dollars toward the Forest Service’s repair effort. The good news: the section between Abingdon and Damascus remains open and active. The upper section is on track to reopen March 31, 2027. It’s going to be a great day for the Town of Damascus and bikers from around the world.

For now, though, the part that matters most to us is already open — and it starts practically at our doorstep. What a treat!

If this project has been stirring something in you as you’ve read along — now is the moment to lean in. If you’re interested in becoming a founding member, fill out the interest form and tell me how you can contribute — your skills, your interests, your ability to help get Blue Ridge Cottage Court financed.

Fill out the BRCC Interest Form

(If you’re new here and wondering about cottage courts, start here).

🏘️ Cottage Court Chronicles is free and accessible to all. If you’d like to support this journey, I gladly accept trail snacks (contribute here).

At the end of each month, I provide an overview of happenings and expenses that go along with the development of Blue Ridge Cottage Court.

What began as an idea in a distant country in November 2025 is now a reality. I carved out the dream, did the research, made the moves, and found the luck. On August 17, I closed on a 2.06-acre lot in downtown Abingdon, Virginia — flat, walkable and bikable to all the local attractions, with public water and sewer already at the street. A lovely small town to call home.

My full-time job for the last two weeks has been furnishing my apartment in Meadowview, eight miles north of Abingdon. After almost six years living in an RV and traveling the country, my possessions are few, and I rather like it that way. But I also like having a table to eat at and a bed to lie down in, so I’ve spent a lot of time — and money — getting this place in shape, mixing Facebook Marketplace finds with new furnishings. I splurged on a new sofa and recliner, due before Halloween. The hard part is behind me now.

Why Transparency Wins

Before the highlights and numbers, a word on transparency. Most of us are in the dark when it comes to finances and the cost of labor. Maybe you’d like to build a cottage court for family and friends but don’t know where to start or whether it’s feasible. From day one, I decided I’d be upfront about the decisions and costs behind Blue Ridge Cottage Court.

This week gave me a fresh dose of frustration with the lack of disclosure that’s common in this space. I’ve taken several live and recorded courses from the National Cohousing Alliance, and last week I attended a Zoom session on marketing your community, led by professional marketers. In my work as a financial coach, I’ve sunk thousands of dollars into marketing and know firsthand the high cost and low return of paid advertising. There’s also organic marketing — a newsletter like this one, conversations with locals, networking with local businesses — that almost anyone can do without a big budget.

So when the course centered on paid advertising (Meta ads, Google ads) without ever disclosing a budget, the rest of the information became close to meaningless. I’ve had a long-running feud with ad-focused marketers, and honestly, I’ve built better marketing strategies with Claude’s help than I ever did working with a professional marketer. But if a course’s whole purpose is telling you which ad strategies work best for filling an intentional community, it owes you the budget — because ads are not cheap, and they rarely bring in the kind of people who actually buy.

Just another reminder of why I’m committed to giving you the numbers.

August Highlights

What an August — hot, humid, and full of transitions and milestones.

• August 8: Deadline for due diligence studies. The survey ran a little behind, but with no red flags, we didn’t ask for an extension. A preliminary survey arrived August 11; the final survey was submitted just before closing. The one surprise: the survey put the lot at 2.06 acres, not the 2.15 previously listed.

• August 15: Moved from Afton Mountain in the Shenandoah Valley to southwest Virginia (Meadowview).

• August 17: Settlement — a week earlier than planned. The land is ours.

As a landowner, I’m now responsible for insurance and maintenance — a responsibility I’m glad to take on.

The Numbers: August Expenses

Each month, I log my expenses and time. My goal has been to get the land purchased and ready for construction for under $300,000, split across 12 homes, including mine.

Starting this month, I’m breaking costs into phases. Here’s where things stand:

Phase 0 — Pre-Development: $3,391, covering the move to Virginia, educational courses and books, and mileage visiting potential sites.

Phase 1 — Land Acquisition: $231,941 total, including due diligence, the land contract, and settlement charges. (A full breakout of settlement charges is available here).

We’ve now entered Phase 2 — Pre-Development/Entitlement, with two goals: securing a special use permit from the Town, and bringing on a civil engineer to get the land construction-ready. Finances and marketing continue alongside that work.

Total spent to date: $236,228 — well within reach of the $300,000 limit. Funding so far has come from my own capital plus a personal loan from a friend/future homeowner to the LLC.

On the labor side: I put in about 48 hours on the project in August, bringing my total to 506 hours since the idea took shape on November 27, 2025. Time and money well spent.

Here Comes September!

• September 10: A permaculture expert visits the site.

• September 11: A pre-application meeting with town staff. Our preliminary site plan is already in their hands, and this meeting is my (and my architect’s) chance to ask questions and refine the plan based on their feedback.

I’ve also started clearing the long-neglected woods in the corner of the lot — my friend and I cut back the vines and carved a path to the corner stake. I’ve met neighbors and shared our plans, and I’m requesting that a right-of-way (”alley”) dating to a 1925 deed, and no longer used as a thoroughfare, be vacated.

September will be about networking: following up with contacts to explore their roles and potential for collaboration, and developing and implementing a marketing strategy focused on the local and neighboring communities.

I’m thrilled to be at this point. There’s a long road ahead, but acquiring the land is the linchpin that makes the dream real.

If you’re interested in becoming a founding member, fill out the interest form and tell me how you can contribute — your skills, your interests, your ability to help get Blue Ridge Cottage Court financed. I could especially use help in environmental sustainability and permaculture, plus advice on legal structures and financing. Comments, suggestions, and resources always welcome.

Fill out the BRCC Interest Form

(If you’re new here and wondering about cottage courts, start here).

🏘️ Cottage Court Chronicles is free and accessible to all. If you’d like to support this journey, I gladly accept trail snacks (contribute here).

We're moving ahead of schedule, and I'm delighted to share the preliminary site plan with you. It's now in the hands of Town of Abingdon officials, ahead of our pre-application meeting in September. This is the sixth iteration of the plan, and it feels like a winner. The full plan, with key and Special Use Permit (SUP) notes, is further down in this post.

The Plan, and the Ordinance Behind It

Our 12-house plan incorporates the required elements of Abingdon’s cottage housing ordinance, which requires a special use permit. The design standards exist “to create a small community of cottages oriented around open space that is pedestrian-oriented and minimizes the visibility of off-street parking.”

One of the first things I did when searching for land was narrow the search to zones where cottage housing is permitted: Limited Business (B-1), General Business (B-2), High-Density Residential (R-3), Mixed Residential (R-4), and Mixed High-Density Residential (R-5). We landed in R-3. From there, it’s a matter of meeting the ordinance’s requirements. Minimum lot size is 2 acres — we’re squeaking in at 2.06. Maximum density is 8 cottages per acre — we’re at 12 houses total, 6 per acre. Then there are setback requirements, common and private open space standards, and off-street parking, which mandates a minimum of two spaces per house.

The ordinance is also specific about house size — these are small houses, not tiny ones:

• Minimum 800 square feet, maximum 1,500 square feet

• Ground floor gross area can’t exceed 1,000 square feet — so single-story homes run 800 to 1,000 sf

• Single and 1.5-story houses are permitted, with a maximum building height of 25 feet

The Goal: Special Use Permit

Our pre-application meeting will flag any changes we should make to the preliminary plan before we officially apply. Here’s the process from here:

• Assemble and submit the SUP application

• Staff review

• Planning Commission review

• Public notice

• Town Council public hearing and decision

• SUP issued (it expires 18 months after approval if construction hasn’t visibly commenced by then)

As we move toward a final site plan, I’ll be bringing on a civil engineer to handle grading, drainage, utility layout, and entrance design — but the detailed work comes after the SUP is granted, not before.

Timing depends largely on how fast the Town moves. If all goes well, we’re hoping to have the SUP in hand by the end of the year.

Interested in Joining us at Blue Ridge Cottage Court?

If this project has been stirring something in you as you've read along, now's the moment to lean in. We're looking for founding members who can help shape our vision and provide the capital that qualifies us for a construction loan. Fill out the interest form below and tell us how you'd like to contribute — your skills, your interests, your ability to help get Blue Ridge Cottage Court financed — or email me directly at docbku [at] gmail [dot] com.

Fill out the BRCC Interest Form

(If you’re new here and wondering about cottage courts, start here).

🏘️ Cottage Court Chronicles is free and accessible to all. If you’d like to support this journey, I gladly accept trail snacks (contribute here).

A week ago, I closed on the 2.06-acre lot in the Town of Abingdon (Virginia) that will become the home of Blue Ridge Cottage Court. After months of researching and searching, the closing itself was almost anticlimactic: cashier’s check in hand, ten minutes of signing papers and chatting, no transfer of keys — and just like that, we had our land.

I celebrated with ice cream, but mostly what I felt was relief, and exhaustion. It was as if I’d spent months slowly blowing up a balloon, and now it was time to let all that air out at once. I’d also moved into my new apartment just two days before the signing, so I was starting from scratch on two fronts at once — every day consumed by shopping, building furniture, organizing, cleaning, and drawing up a to-do list for my landlord. A week later, the apartment is finally starting to feel like mine. But I can’t wait to build and live in my new house at Blue Ridge Cottage Court. That will be my real celebration day.

This Land is Almost Perfect

I couldn’t be more pleased with our land. It’s not perfect, though. Some of the woods need clearing, and more notably, there’s an old right-of-way — an “alley” — dating back to 1925. It was originally laid out as a 12-foot right-of-way, split down the middle: six feet on my property, six feet on the neighboring lots. Over 101 years, that boundary has drifted. The woods have grown over parts of it. Neighbors have used it for personal storage. In recent history, it hasn’t functioned as an actual thoroughfare. And in at least one case, a fence and driveway now sit on our side of the line.

I spoke with the neighbor using the alley to store vehicles, tires, and other equipment, and we had a good conversation about where the boundary actually falls. I want to be a good neighbor here, and the cleanest solution is to ask the Town of Abingdon to vacate the right-of-way altogether. I’ll be setting up that conversation with the Town this week.

Vacating the right-of-way is simple in effect: six feet reverts to me, and six feet goes to the neighbors along that side. It’s a win for everyone — a clear, unambiguous boundary, and a small lot expansion for the neighbors.

The Final Cost of Land

I started Cottage Court Chronicles not just to document the creation of Blue Ridge Cottage Court, but to be transparent about what it actually costs. So here's the breakdown of what it took to acquire the land.

Settlement charges of $9,195.10 are itemized below.

My goal is to keep total pre-construction costs under $300,000, and between the civil engineer and the Special Use Permit process ahead of us, I’m confident we’ll land inside that number. These costs get divided across all 12 future homeowners — so the land purchase alone adds roughly $19,328 to the cost of each home. Grading and utility connections will be the next major expense layered on top.

Our Site Plan

I’m genuinely excited about the site plan. My architect has refined it over several rounds, and I love how the layout of the houses has come together. But before I share it publicly, I want the Town’s planning and development staff to see it first. I’m meeting with them on September 11 and will be sending them the site plan ahead of that. Stay tuned — I’ll share it here soon after.

Become a Founder

Now that we have land, it’s time to build the group of founders who’ll help shape this vision and provide the capital that qualifies us for a construction loan. The financial details are still coming together, but this is a real opportunity to help build a community from the ground up, in a great location.

If you’re interested, start by filling out the interest form below, or email me directly at docbku [at] gmail [dot] com.

Here’s to a bright future.

If this project has been stirring something in you as you’ve read along — now is the moment to lean in. If you’re interested in becoming a founding member, fill out the interest form and tell me how you can contribute — your skills, your interests, your ability to help get Blue Ridge Cottage Court financed.

Fill out the BRCC Interest Form

(If you’re new here and wondering about cottage courts, start here).

🏘️ Cottage Court Chronicles is free and accessible to all. If you’d like to support this journey, I gladly accept trail snacks (contribute here).

On March 2, I jumped in my Jeep Cherokee, cats in the back seat, rooftop cargo bag bulging, and left my RV resort in southern California. After a wonderful stop at my sister’s home in Tennessee, I arrived in Waynesboro, Virginia, on March 15.

I’d come here with a plan: find a couple of acres in Waynesboro or Staunton, somewhere near the Blue Ridge Mountains, and build Blue Ridge Cottage Court. But a couple of months of searching made the facts hard to ignore. Waynesboro is developed from one boundary to the other, and what land remains lacks real roads and easy access to public water and sewer. Staunton hasn’t passed a cottage court ordinance yet, and its steep slopes limit what’s buildable. There simply wasn’t land for a cottage court in either town.

Two months after arriving, I moved to a short-term rental on Afton Mountain, just east of Waynesboro. Since living in this region, I made some good friends — and faced another big decision. Stay in this area and give up the cottage court idea? Or search elsewhere? The answer shouted up from somewhere deep inside me: build Blue Ridge Cottage Court in Virginia, wherever that has to be. Which meant finding a town with the land, the ordinance, and a downtown that could accommodate one.

In June, I visited Abingdon for the first time — a lovely town in southwestern Virginia, population 8,300. In July, I signed a contract to purchase 2.16 acres in town. Somebody pinch me. I couldn’t be more thrilled with the location or the land. Yesterday was the deadline for our due diligence studies, and while the survey has been delayed slightly, the environmental phase I report came back clean, and the geotechnical report held no surprises. We’re moving forward on the purchase — and hoping to move up the closing date.

In six days, I’ll make my third move in five months: to a walk-out apartment on a mini-farm in Meadowview, a town about eight miles north of Abingdon. I’ve signed a six-month lease, and I’m hoping this is the last apartment I’ll need before I move into my own house in the cottage court.

Why This Time Is Different

I’m not fond of moving. Truthfully, I still have boxes and bags in the closet that haven’t been opened since I left California in March. But now I can finally unearth them and start making a home. I don’t need a lot of things, but everything I’ve lived through has made one thing obvious: I need to connect to the Earth. It’s what I learned walking the woods to check on the heifers as a child, hiking up Mount Washington in New Hampshire, sitting by a campfire along the Oregon coast.

I grew up on the family farm in central Wisconsin. Since I left at eighteen, home has meant: Eau Claire, WI; Syracuse, NY; Berkeley, CA; Oakland, CA; Flagstaff, AZ; Green Bay, WI; Atlanta, GA; Alexandria, VA; Williamsburg, VA — and then nearly six years with no fixed address at all, RVing coast to coast, border to border.

These last two weeks, I’ve visited a couple of state park campgrounds in West Virginia and Virginia. Walking around the campground, I had one of those moments where my former RV life felt like a dream — like something someone else did, not me. It’s a strange sensation, and not a new one. When I left the family farm for graduate school at Syracuse and started building a career in big cities, I couldn’t always reconcile that quiet farm upbringing with the city life I’d carved out. The farm felt disconnected from my life then, the same way the RV years feel disconnected from my life now.

But this time is different, because this time the moving has a destination. Blue Ridge Cottage Court was never just about houses — it’s about building community, family, connection. Lifelong bonds. And it’s about taking care of the Earth: giving and receiving the bounty of the land, trusting that if we nourish and honor it, it reciprocates and grounds our daily lives. Spring blooms and autumn colors, summer sunshine and winter snowflakes — all of it will be my playground again.

For that, I am forever grateful.

Interested in Joining us at Blue Ridge Cottage Court?

If this project has been stirring something in you as you've read along — now is the moment to lean in. If you’re interested in becoming a founding member, fill out the interest form and tell me how you can contribute — your skills, your interests, your ability to help get Blue Ridge Cottage Court financed.

Fill out the BRCC Interest Form

(If you’re new here and wondering about cottage courts, start here).

🏘️ Cottage Court Chronicles is free and accessible to all. If you’d like to support this journey, I gladly accept trail snacks (contribute here).

At the end of each month, I provide an overview of happenings and expenses that go along with the development of Blue Ridge Cottage Court.

The idea for a cottage court community in Virginia was born in late November 2025, in a small hotel in Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay. I’d gone there to test out an idea: what if I left the RV life behind and settled in a different country altogether — a small, democratic nation with a lot going for it?

Walking the old cobblestone streets, listening to conversations I couldn’t understand, I felt nothing but doubt. Was I really ready to learn a new language, to leave family and friends behind for an unfamiliar culture? If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this life, it’s this: listen to your heart.

And my heart kept whispering the same thing — it’s time to go back to Virginia. I first moved to Alexandria in 1998, then to Williamsburg three years later, and came to love the state. In 2020, I traded my house for an RV and spent almost six years on the road. I always knew I’d leave that life eventually, and the real surprise wasn’t that I’d stop — it was where I’d land. Virginia felt like home. Of everywhere I’ve been, of everything I’ve seen, there’s something about the quiet beauty of these mountains that pulls at me. It’s where I want to watch the seasons turn, ride my bike along old railroad beds, build friendships that last. Home.

Standing in Uruguay only confirmed it. And it confirmed something else, too: I didn’t want a suburb, and I didn’t want the isolation of rolling into a garage and shutting the door on the world. I wanted a community — a place that takes care of the earth as much as it takes care of its neighbors. My mission came into focus: build a cottage court in Virginia.

Dreams take work. On March 2, I left my RV co-op community in Southern California for the last time. By March 15, I’d moved into a small apartment in Waynesboro and spent the following months hunting for land inside the Waynesboro and Staunton city limits. What I found instead was a string of dead ends — parcels with no roads, no water, no public sewer, and price tags to match. In June, I turned my attention south, to the town of Abingdon.

And now, as July comes to a close, I’m under contract for a lovely two-acre parcel there. Here’s what happened this month — and what it cost.

July Highlights

July is the month the dream started becoming real. On July 9, I received — and accepted — a counter-offer on the Abingdon land. My first reaction was disbelief, and honestly, three weeks later, it still hasn’t quite settled into my bones. I’ve found a home for Blue Ridge Cottage Court.

Two words sum up my July: due diligence. I formed a new LLC and funded it, including a loan from a friend. Then I lined up bids and signed contracts with professionals to survey the property, run a Phase I environmental study, and complete a geotechnical assessment. All three reports are due to the realtor by August 8.

I paid extra to expedite the environmental study — if it turned up signs of contamination, I’d be looking at a Phase II study and soil sampling, another costly step. The final report just came in, and I couldn’t be happier with the outcome.

The report also traced the property’s history:

• 1891–1922: undeveloped land

• 1934–1976: tobacco warehouse

• 1986–2018: tractor-trailer storage

• 2023–present: vacant

It’s strange that land like this sits empty so long. Sometimes an owner just doesn’t want to sell. Sometimes it’s tangled up in an estate battle between heirs. Sometimes the offers on the table simply weren’t generous enough. In my case, it might just be a matter of timing and a well-placed offer. Either way, I’m thrilled.

Plus, I just received the Geotechnical Exploration Report. And I have to admit, I understand very little of it! I used Claude AI to help me with a summary, and here’s a synopsis:

Bottom line: The soil will hold your cottage court, but it needs careful prep work. This isn't a red flag — it's a normal southwest Virginia karst-country result, and the engineering company gave you a clear playbook for building on it safely.

The Numbers: July Expenses

July also marked the start of my LLC and a dedicated business checking account, which will track every dollar from here forward. Here are my expenses for the month:

• LLC formation: $100

• Earnest money (incl. wire fee): $3,025

• Phase I Environmental Study contract (incl. wire fee): $2,575

• Geotechnical Exploration Report: $4,658

These are just July’s line items — behind the scenes, I’ve also been raising and shifting funds to have the LLC account ready for next month’s closing. Total project expenses to date: $13,649.

Hours-wise, I logged about 38 in July — a mix of frantic activity and long stretches of waiting. That brings my running total to 458 hours: 11.5 forty-hour weeks.

Here Comes August!

Closing is set for August 24 — our big expense, and our big celebration. The survey bill comes due, and then there’s the land itself, realtor fees, and closing costs.

On August 15, I’ll move to a rental just eight miles north of Abingdon. Onward to the next adventure.

If you’re interested in becoming a founding member, fill out the interest form and tell me how you can contribute — your skills, your interests, your ability to help get Blue Ridge Cottage Court financed. I could especially use help in environmental sustainability and permaculture, plus advice on legal structures and financing. Comments, suggestions, and resources always welcome.

Fill out the BRCC Interest Form

(If you’re new here and wondering about cottage courts, start here).

🏘️ Cottage Court Chronicles is free and accessible to all. If you’d like to support this journey, I gladly accept trail snacks (contribute here).

This week, Blue Ridge Cottage Court passed a major hurdle: the environmental assessment came back clean. As of this morning, we’re 26 days from closing. Two pieces of due diligence remain — the survey and the geotechnical assessment — both due August 8. So far, we’re right on schedule.

Once I close, my attention shifts to house plans, site design, civil engineering, structuring the community legally as a condominium (a requirement under the ordinance), and securing a special use permit from the Town of Abingdon. But right now, in this holding pattern before closing, I’ve been thinking about something easy to overlook until it’s too late: the land itself.

I don’t want the land to be an afterthought — something that only gets attention after the houses go in. So I’ve started putting the wheels in motion for the microfarm.

Microfarms and Permaculture

You can have a microfarm that isn’t based on permaculture. And you can use permaculture practices without creating a microfarm. For BRCC, I want both.

A microfarm is a small, intensively cultivated piece of land — often under an acre — where diversity replaces monoculture: vegetables, herbs, fruit trees, and berry bushes all working together in a tight footprint. Build it on permaculture principles, and the design goes further: plants are grouped to support each other, water is caught rather than piped away, and waste from one part of the system feeds another. The result is less a farm you manage and more a small ecosystem you tend — one that grows more self-sufficient and abundant with each passing year.

I’m about to take ownership of 2.16 acres of blank canvas — grass and a cove of trees in one corner, unbuilt since the tobacco warehouse that once stood here closed in 1976. The placement of our cottages will largely be dictated by lot dimensions and town ordinances: setbacks, square footage, fire truck access, parking. But that doesn’t mean I can’t start thinking about the land now.

Can Stormwater Practices Feed Into Permaculture Goals?

Logistically, the houses come first. Crews trench for water, sewer, and utilities; foundations get set; land gets moved and leveled. And somewhere in that process, there has to be a plan for stormwater.

That’s exactly where permaculture design can earn its keep. Most large subdivisions handle stormwater with a retention pond — an expensive, oversized solution for a cottage court our size. The Town of Abingdon actually encourages alternatives:

The use of paver stones, pervious pavement, grasscrete, or other types of low impact stormwater development techniques are encouraged for walkways and parking areas. (Ord. No. 2023.01.03)

In Virginia, the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) sets the rules through the Virginia Stormwater Management Program, but day-to-day permitting happens locally — so ours will most likely come through the Town of Abingdon or Washington County, not directly from the state. DEQ publishes a stormwater handbook to guide the process (it’s 1,656 pages). Ultimately, though, geology decides what actually works.

And our geology has an opinion. Abingdon sits on Cambrian limestone with prominent karst development — sinkholes and underground drainage woven right into the local terrain. That complicates stormwater design in two ways: runoff can trigger new sinkholes, and sinkholes can swallow the very stormwater practices meant to manage them. The handbook devotes an entire section to designing for karst.

The upshot is a short list of naturalized practices well-suited to our site — ones that spread and slow water instead of concentrating it into one deep point:

1. Bioswales — planted channels that slow and filter runoff as it crosses the site

2. Bioretention cells / rain gardens — shallow, planted basins that filter and infiltrate water gradually

3. Permeable pavement — for driveways, parking, and walkways, infiltrating over a wide surface instead of one concentrated spot

4. Rooftop disconnection — routing roof runoff onto lawn or buffer areas instead of into pipes

5. Rainwater harvesting — cisterns and rain barrels that capture and reuse water rather than infiltrating it, making them especially low-risk on karst

6. Vegetated buffer strips — along our east buffer, filtering runoff before it leaves the site

Stormwater management is a science, and it takes real expertise. But the decisions made at the front end — where water is caught, where it’s allowed to soak in, where it’s channeled — will shape where our plants and trees can actually grow. So here’s the question I keep circling back to: can we manage stormwater in a way that also serves the microfarm, the gardens, the orchards?

I have an open canvas that requires stormwater practices approved under the VSMP anyway. Why not choose practices that double as infrastructure for the farm?

I’ve been hunting for local permaculture expertise, and reached out to Silver Branch Permaculture in Floyd, Virginia. After an introductory call, we’ve scheduled a site visit for early September. If I can partner with a permaculture expert now, before the houses are even drawn, we can design stormwater management that doesn’t just check a regulatory box — it feeds directly into the larger permaculture vision for this land.

And grow we will.

Interested in Joining us at Blue Ridge Cottage Court?

If this project has been stirring something in you as you've read along — now is the moment to lean in. If you’re interested in becoming a founding member, fill out the interest form and tell me how you can contribute — your skills, your interests, your ability to help get Blue Ridge Cottage Court financed.

Fill out the BRCC Interest Form

(If you’re new here and wondering about cottage courts, start here).

🏘️ Cottage Court Chronicles is free and accessible to all. If you’d like to support this journey, I gladly accept trail snacks (contribute here).

I’ve hit that point in the cottage court project that I’ve hit on so many other projects: I’m ready to move forward, and I can’t. Not until our due diligence studies are done. That doesn’t stop me from planning the next step, the one after I close on the land — but I have to hold it in check. More than that, I don’t want to be a pain in the butt to the people helping me get this project across the finish line, especially my architect. I’ve asked plenty of questions, and gotten timely answers, from Town of Abingdon officials. Everything else can wait until after closing.

I’ve been here before, and I know myself well enough by now to see the pattern. On every project, I move full-speed ahead, sometimes to my own detriment. My pace is faster than most people’s, especially when I’m passionate about something, and I can drive others a little bonkers expecting them to keep up. So this is the part where I practice something that doesn’t come naturally: slowing down. Patiently. Until the studies are in.

Which raises the obvious question — what am I doing with myself in the meantime?

I’m creating. And gosh, it feels good.

The Joy of Creating

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what actually draws me to build Blue Ridge Cottage Court. The community. The lifestyle. The sustainability. The location. And underneath all of it, something simpler: the act of making a thing exist that didn’t exist before. That pull feels especially strong right now, because the news is full of war, politics, and inhumanity. Some days it feels like we’re hell-bent on destroying the very planet we live on.

I can’t fix any of that from my studio apartment. But I can act locally. I can create. So lately, that’s exactly what I’ve been doing.

My first instinct was to pour that energy into my fiction series, Compass Rose Mysteries. It didn’t take. I just wasn’t enjoying the process, and forcing it wasn’t going to make it joyful. So instead, I’ve started prowling Facebook Marketplace for furniture deals and refinishing what I find. There are limits — whatever I buy has to fit in my Jeep or my friend’s RV, and a little studio apartment only has so many places to stash a project mid-transformation. But within those limits, $125 recently got me a headboard, a platform bed frame, and a 42” round table. It’s the table that’s taken over my imagination.

I’m playing a game of re-enactment. Years ago, I spent whole weekends hunched over an unfinished table, painting a different scene on each panel. Around the rim I’d painted a handful of phrases, and I ended up living several of them, especially “Make an Adventure.” At the time, I was building my career and adopting a child from Ukraine. I’d dream about all the places I’d one day visit, never guessing how literally that would play out — the campfire scene I painted is downright eerie in hindsight, because RVing wasn’t even on my radar yet. Back then, my plan was to stay in my career until I’d saved enough to retire early. Life had other ideas. At 54, my career was gone. Two years later, I traded the house for the nomadic RV life, and it turned out to be the adventure of a lifetime. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

So now I’m working on a new table, and a new theme is taking shape: a landscape scene for each season, cats worked in somewhere because it wouldn’t be my table without them. But the idea I keep circling back to is this — each seasonal scene reflects an actual season of my life. I haven’t figured out how to say that part in paint yet, but here’s the shape of it so far:

Spring — new beginnings and blooms. The easy panel: a Wisconsin dairy farm on a beautiful spring day. Big red barn. Cows. Hay fields.

Summer — heat and momentum. My “summer” was school, adventure, and some genuinely hard years, all tangled together. Long days of work. The age of being responsible. Airplanes. Motherhood. Williamsburg, Virginia.

Autumn — the RV years get their own season, and it’s the shortest by far. But brevity isn’t the same as insignificance — six years was enough to change everything. It’s about remaking life even as the leaves are falling around.

Winter — the easy one. Days at my cottage court. The Blue Ridge Mountains. Abingdon, Virginia.

My Ask

A lot has happened since I first picked up a brush for that old table. So help me finish this one: what phrases belong on that outside rim? Add your ideas in the Comments.

Interested in Joining us at Blue Ridge Cottage Court?

If this project has been stirring something in you as you've read along — now is the moment to lean in. If you’re interested in becoming a founding member, fill out the interest form and tell me how you can contribute — your skills, your interests, your ability to help get Blue Ridge Cottage Court financed.

Fill out the BRCC Interest Form

(If you’re new here and wondering about cottage courts, start here).

🏘️ Cottage Court Chronicles is free and accessible to all. If you’d like to support this journey, I gladly accept trail snacks (contribute here).

Introducing a new series on community income, shared stewardship, and the radical idea that neighbors can grow something together.

Every post in this series has described something we grow, raise, or make on the commons. An apple orchard. Mushroom logs. Honeybee hives. A cutting garden. Taken together, they form something more than a collection of income ventures — they form a living demonstration of permaculture principles in action.

And a living demonstration, by definition, is something you can teach from.

BRCC as a Learning Laboratory

Imagine a Saturday morning workshop on the commons. Ten participants gathered around a stack of freshly cut oak logs, learning how to inoculate them with shiitake spawn. Or a fall afternoon walking the orchard with someone who can explain why we chose these particular apple varieties and what heritage fruit conservation means in Southwest Virginia. Or a spring session on permaculture design — how to read a piece of land, stack functions, close loops, and build a system that takes care of itself over time.

These aren’t hypothetical programs. They’re the natural extension of what we’re already doing. The commons is the classroom. The residents are the teachers. And the southwest Virginia region — with its growing interest in sustainable living, heritage food culture, and the environmental awareness that comes with living in the Southern Appalachians — is full of people who would show up for exactly this kind of experience.

What We Could Offer

The workshop program would grow organically from whatever the community knows and cares about most. But some natural starting points:

Permaculture design fundamentals — the principles behind everything at BRCC. How to design a productive landscape that works with nature rather than against it. What it means to stack functions, observe before acting, and design for resilience. This is the foundational course that explains why BRCC looks and works the way it does.

Mushroom cultivation — inoculating logs, understanding the fungal lifecycle, harvesting and storing. Hands-on, tactile, and endlessly fascinating to beginners. One of the most popular workshop formats at small farms across the country.

Beekeeping basics — an introduction to hive management, bee biology, and the role of pollinators in a sustainable food system. Offered in partnership with the community hives, with residents who keep them as guides.

Sustainable home design — what net-zero construction actually means, how passive solar design works, what makes a building envelope truly efficient. BRCC’s own cottages become the teaching tool.

Seed saving and garden biodiversity — why genetic diversity in the food system matters, and how a home gardener can participate in preserving it. Connects naturally to the heritage apple story and to any vegetable garden on the commons.

The Setting Does Half the Work

Part of what makes BRCC a compelling workshop venue is simply what it is. Participants aren’t sitting in a conference room looking at slides. They’re standing in a working community garden, handling real materials, talking to people who actually live this way. That experiential quality is genuinely rare — and increasingly sought after.

The Numbers

Workshop income is modest per event but remarkably low-overhead. A half-day workshop with 10–15 participants, priced at $45–$75 per person, generates $450–$1,125 from a single session. Run eight to ten workshops annually across the growing season and into fall, and the program could contribute $4,000–$10,000 per year to the community income pool — with no land required beyond what we already have and no materials beyond what we’re already producing.

The labor investment is real but shared: one or two residents per workshop, a few hours of preparation, and the time to teach. For residents with teaching backgrounds or subject expertise, this is meaningful work rather than a burden.

Who This Attracts

It’s worth saying plainly: the people who sign up for a permaculture design workshop or a heritage seed saving session are exactly the kind of people who might want to live at BRCC. Every workshop is quietly an open house. Every participant who leaves inspired and connected is a potential future neighbor — or at minimum, someone who understands what this community is and tells others about it.

That’s a kind of return that doesn’t show up in the income projection but matters enormously for a community still finding its founding residents.

Your Question for This Post

Workshops work best when the teachers are genuinely passionate about what they’re sharing.

What sustainability topic would you most want to learn about — or teach — in a setting like this?

Tell me in the comments.

(If you’re new here and wondering about cottage courts, start here).

🏘️ Cottage Court Chronicles is free and accessible to all. If you’d like to support this journey, I gladly accept trail snacks (contribute here).

A week ago — July 9 — I signed a contract to buy a 2.16-acre parcel in the town of Abingdon, Virginia. What a day. I celebrated, I texted friends and family, I let myself feel proud for about twelve hours.

Then it was time to hustle.

The contract gives us a 30-day due diligence period — everything has to be squared away by August 8. Basically, I had just one full week to research contractors, gather quotes, and get contracts signed. It’s been a flurry of phone calls and emails ever since.

Due diligence sounds like a single step. It isn’t. It’s really three separate investigations running at once, each asking a different question:

Can everyone actually afford this deal?
Before anything else, both sides need to show they can perform. Does the buyer have financing lined up — or cash in hand? Does the seller have clear authority to sell? Money problems on either side can sink a deal that looks clean on paper.

Is the title clean, and does the land even have a plat?
This is the paperwork side: pulling title, checking for liens or easements, and confirming the boundaries match what’s recorded. It sounds routine — until it isn’t. In my own deal, there’s no recorded plat for the parcel at all, just a decades-old metes-and-bounds description. I flagged this for the surveyor myself and sent him the deed so he’d have what he needed.

Will the land support what you want to build on it?
This is the physical reality check: soil conditions, environmental history, stormwater, access, zoning. A Phase I Environmental Site Assessment, a geotechnical study, and an ALTA/NSPS survey — a detailed, standardized survey lenders require before they’ll insure title on a deal like this — usually run in parallel here, because each can surface a dealbreaker the others won’t catch.

Skip any one of these three, and you’re not doing due diligence — you’re gambling.

The Timeline

My realtor uses an app from Amitree to keep the whole process organized — it tracks every step, keeps all parties in the loop, and even offers a list of local service providers. I get an absurd amount of satisfaction every time an item gets marked “Completed.”

The real estate agent manages the overall process, and the attorney handles the title research. Everything else falls on me — which I’ll break down into two areas: Finances and Contracts.

Funding the Purchase of Land

I already have my own LLC, so I know firsthand how easy it is to set one up in Virginia. For a $100 filing fee, I created an LLC for the purpose of purchasing the land — the entity that will hold it, at least until we secure a construction loan and the land transfers to the community as a whole.

On Monday, I opened a new bank account and put things in motion to fund it. With a loan agreement between myself and my financial partner/friend, we transferred funds into the account. It was an uncomfortable, scary moment for both of us. For reference, we’re working to get the land to the pre-construction stage for under $300,000. Personally, I look at the land as a way to diversify my portfolio — an investment in the future, and I believe there’s real appeal in what we’re building. No risk, no gain.

Contracting the Pros

I spent all day Friday on my laptop researching potential service providers, then sent out emails to several businesses asking for quotes and timeframes. Claude AI was genuinely critical here — helping me draft intelligent emails, and even reviewing contracts. There's an enormous amount of jargon involved. Take the ALTA survey, for example: it requires completing a standardized form (Table A) with 19 line items to check. Do I want "vertical relief with the source of information (e.g., ground survey, aerial map), contour interval, datum, with originating benchmark, when appropriate"? Beats me. So I sent the form to my architect and asked him to fill it out for me. If there's one lesson from this week, it's this: lean on the people who already know this process.

The Environmental Study

I started by searching for firms that could handle Phase I of the Environmental Study. Technically, there are three possible phases here:

Phase I is a records-and-observation review — no soil samples, no lab work. A consultant researches the property’s history (old maps, aerial photos, prior land uses, government records) and walks the site looking for anything that hints at contamination: old tanks, stained soil, nearby industrial use. Most properties stop here. It’s the phase that tells you whether you need to worry at all.

Phase II only happens if Phase I turns up a red flag. This is where actual testing begins — soil borings, groundwater samples, lab analysis — to confirm whether contamination is present and how bad it is.

Phase III is rare, and it’s not really “testing” anymore — it’s remediation. If Phase II confirms contamination, Phase III is the cleanup plan: removing contaminated soil, treating groundwater, whatever the situation requires.

I’m rooting for Phase I to be the whole story — a clean report, and we move on. But in case a Phase II becomes necessary, I opted to pay a bit more for a 10-business-day turnaround, to give us a little more wiggle room. I found a company that was remarkably responsive, offered a quote in the expected range, and had my first contract signed Monday morning.

Geotechnical Assessment

Next came quotes for the geotechnical assessment, where engineers stop asking “what happened here historically” and start asking “what’s actually holding up a building.” A licensed geotechnical engineering firm — not the same as the soil evaluators used for septic design — drills a series of soil borings across the site and analyzes what comes up: soil composition, density, moisture content, groundwater depth, and load-bearing capacity.

The result is a PE-stamped report telling your design team what the ground can actually support. It answers questions like: What kind of foundation does this soil call for? Will the site need extra compaction or drainage work before building? Are there hidden issues — expansive clay, shallow rock, unstable fill — that could affect construction cost or method?

Where the Phase I Environmental Study asks whether the land is safe, the geotechnical assessment asks whether it’s buildable — and how. It’s one of the reports lenders and engineers rely on most heavily before design work moves forward.

I found two companies that service the area, though it took a while to get a response. That contract was signed yesterday. Meanwhile, my architect is drafting a very basic layout of where our houses and clubhouse might sit on the property. The geotechnical contractor assured me he can get on-site next week.

The Survey

An ALTA/NSPS survey — named for the American Land Title Association and the National Society of Professional Surveyors — is the industry standard for a development-grade boundary survey. It goes well beyond confirming where the property lines sit. A licensed surveyor documents easements, rights-of-way, encroachments, flood zone status, and access to public roads, all against a standardized checklist called “Table A.” Lenders and title companies typically require it before they’ll insure title on a deal like this, because it gives everyone — buyer, seller, lender, title company — the same detailed, verified picture of exactly what’s being bought.

A topographic survey answers a different question: what does the land’s surface actually look like? Rather than focusing on legal boundaries, it maps elevation changes, slopes, drainage patterns, existing vegetation, and any natural or manmade features — trees, utilities, structures — across the site. This is the survey my engineers and architect will lean on when figuring out how water moves across the property, where a building can realistically sit, and how much grading or earthwork the site will need.

Together, the two surveys cover the same ground from opposite angles: the ALTA survey tells you what you legally own and what encumbers it; the topographic survey tells you what the land physically does. Most development deals need both before design work can really begin.

On quotes, I found a $1,000 difference between one surveyor and the next — a good reminder to always get several. Turnaround is within three weeks, which should land right at the edge of our August 8 deadline. We’re good to go.

Utilities: The Quiet Third Track

While the environmental, geotechnical, and survey work has been eating most of my attention, there’s been a quieter thread running in parallel: utilities. The parcel hasn’t had water since 1984 — forty-two years unconnected — so getting sewer, water, and power sorted is its own small due diligence project.

The good news first: sewer runs right at the street, so that connection should be straightforward. The town has tap fees published online, and the remaining logistics — exact hookup point, any work needed to bring it onto the site — are still to be worked out, but there’s no red flag here.

Water is through the Washington County PSA, and this is the one piece with a known wrinkle: the existing meter will need to be upgraded before we can get full service to the site. Not a dealbreaker, just another line item to plan for.

Power is AEP, and honestly, this one is less about anticipating problems and more about learning the process — how to request service, what they’ll need from us, and when in the timeline to start that conversation so it’s not the thing holding up construction later.

None of these three feel like they’ll be the piece that trips up the project. But “should be easy” and “confirmed easy” are different things, and I’d rather find out now than assume my way into a surprise in six months.

Costs

Here's the thing about due diligence: it's necessary, and it's expensive. If we find the site is contaminated, the title isn't clean, or there are geological issues that impede where and how we can build, there's still time to pull out or ask for a modification of the contract. Each step moves us closer to closing — and while we feel good about where we are, there's still the fact that this property hasn't been connected to water since 1984. It's essentially been vacant for 42 years. Forty-two years!

Here’s a breakdown of costs associated with due diligence:

• LLC Formation: $100

• Environmental Study Phase I: $2,550 (+ $25 wire fee)

• Geotechnical Assessment: $4,658

• ALTA & Topographic Survey: $5,500

TOTAL = $12,833

That’s a sizeable investment. But each study guides us as we move toward permits, sales, and construction.

What’s Next?

With each contract signed and studies underway, I can set that work aside for a bit and work with the architect on the layout of the cottage court and house plans. I’m also starting to look for consultants who can guide me on finances and legalities — today I’m working with a bookkeeper to get the LLC properly set up in QuickBooks.

When I look at the entire project — from a blank parcel to a vibrant community and micro-farm — it freaks me out a little. How do I get from here to there? But I’ve learned to take this project in chunks. In many ways, I was born for this kind of work: throw spreadsheets, timelines, Gantt charts, and checkboxes at me, and I’m at home. There are a lot of moving parts — but they don’t all have to move at the same time.

My focus now is getting to closing with as few bumps as possible. So excited.

Interested?

If this project has been stirring something in you as you've read along — now is the moment to lean in. If you’re interested in becoming a founding member, fill out the interest form and tell me how you can contribute — your skills, your interests, your ability to help get Blue Ridge Cottage Court financed.

Fill out the BRCC Interest Form

(If you’re new here and wondering about cottage courts, start here).

🏘️ Cottage Court Chronicles is free and accessible to all. If you’d like to support this journey, I gladly accept trail snacks (contribute here).

I grew up on a family farm where 240 acres was considered small. So when I tell people my cottage court sits on just over 2 acres in town — with 10 to 12 houses and shared land for growing things — I understand why some of them can’t picture it. To some family members, it’s simply unimaginable. Why would anybody want to live that way?

Here’s why: one of the main reasons I’m building an intentional community with a cottage court model is to create a true community — a network of friends who become chosen family. A place of real support and real connection.

Maybe you already have that. If you’re settled on 100 acres, you’ve chosen a life that values privacy and self-sufficiency, and that’s a good life. If you live near family or people you love, you’re probably set too. But if you’ve never lived this way, I’d ask one thing: don’t dismiss it before you understand it. Look at what it actually is before deciding it’s not for you.

So let’s talk about what it actually is.

The Neighborhood

The land is under contract but not yet closed, so consider this the plan rather than a done deal. If the purchase goes through, Blue Ridge Cottage Court will sit on 2.16 acres in Abingdon, Virginia — a historic Blue Ridge Highlands town home to the Barter Theatre, the Virginia Creeper Trail, and a walkable downtown that already feels like a small community of its own. Ten to twelve houses will be arranged around a shared green, with a clubhouse at its center.

• Home styles. Seven home designs, roughly 870 to 1,430 square feet — two to three bedrooms, one to two-and-a-half baths — so residents can choose the footprint that fits their life.

• Net-zero by design: homes are built to net-zero energy standards with a high-performance building envelope, energy modeling, and advanced structural insulated panel (SIP) construction.

• Shared green & clubhouse. A true common space for gathering, relaxing, or simply passing through on the way home.

• Thoughtfully placed. Dark-sky lighting, native plantings, and pollinator-friendly landscaping throughout.

The Microfarm

A microfarm is a small, intensively managed piece of land used to grow food on a scale between a backyard garden and a traditional farm — usually focused on high-value crops (vegetables, herbs, flowers, mushrooms) or small livestock like bees or chickens, and often sold directly to the community through farmers markets, CSAs, or local restaurants.

At the center of Blue Ridge Cottage Court is space set aside for exactly that — a genuine working landscape meant to become part of the neighborhood’s daily life. What’s actually grown here is up to the people who live here. Current thinking includes:

• A heritage apple orchard — a living orchard producing real fruit, season after season

• Gourmet mushroom cultivation — shiitake, oyster, and other specialty varieties grown right on the property

• A honeybee apiary — supporting the orchard, the native plantings, and the region’s pollinators

• A native plant nursery — a resource for the community’s own landscaping, and a small enterprise of its own

The final mix will be shaped by the homeowners themselves, together, once the community takes shape.

How Community Works Here

Our cottage court is built around a simple idea: community should be real, not required. There are no mandatory meals, no mandatory meetings, no expectation of a certain amount of socializing. Some neighbors will linger at the clubhouse or gazebo most evenings; others will simply enjoy a friendly wave and a well-kept shared green. Both are welcome. Both are enough.

The microfarm works a little differently, and intentionally so. Because it’s a living, working part of the property — not just a shared amenity — every household contributes something toward keeping it thriving: a hand with the harvest, a turn at the farmers market table, help with the books, or a particular skill lent where it’s needed. It’s not about hours logged. It’s about everyone having a real part in something the whole neighborhood shares.

The big decisions — what’s grown, how it’s shared, how responsibilities are divided — are made together, by consent, whenever they’re actually needed, not on a fixed schedule. The day-to-day work follows the seasons, not meetings: whoever’s involved that week handles the planting, the harvest, whatever comes up. It’s a light structure for a light community — enough to set direction and keep things fair, never enough to feel like a bureaucracy.

Who This Is For

Blue Ridge Cottage Court is for people who want to know their neighbors’ names — people right-sizing from a larger home, young families looking for a built-in sense of place, remote professionals drawn to a walkable and sustainable setting, or anyone who’s liked the idea of a more connected neighborhood but wanted it without heavy commitment. What unites them isn’t age or background — it’s wanting a real, working, shared landscape at the center of where they live.

Interested?

If this project has been stirring something in you as you've read along — now is the moment to lean in. If you’re interested in becoming a founding member, fill out the interest form and tell me how you can contribute — your skills, your interests, your ability to help get Blue Ridge Cottage Court financed.

Fill out the BRCC Interest Form

(If you’re new here and wondering about cottage courts, start here).

🏘️ Cottage Court Chronicles is free and accessible to all. If you’d like to support this journey, I gladly accept trail snacks (contribute here).

Introducing a new series on community income, shared stewardship, and the radical idea that neighbors can grow something together.

It’s not all about income-production, so this post is different from the others in this series.

The apple orchard, the mushroom logs, the honeybees — those ventures have real income projections attached to them, timelines, and startup costs. This one doesn’t, at least not primarily. This one is about what happens when a community of ten households discovers what its members know how to make — and decides to make things together.

What Might We Make?

Great question — I don’t know yet. And that’s the point.

The craft life of Blue Ridge Cottage Court will be shaped by whoever chooses to live here. What skills do they bring? What do they love to make? What do they want to learn? Those questions matter more than any predetermined product line.

But here are some possibilities that fit naturally with the land, the region, and the spirit of what we’re building:

Birdhouses and bat houses — built from scrap wood, painted or carved with BRCC branding, and sold at the farmers market, local stores, or given as community gifts. Bat houses in particular are deeply useful — bats are voracious insect predators, and a colony near the orchard is a genuine asset. Making and selling them tells that story beautifully.

Holiday ornaments — small, handmade, distinctly Appalachian in character. Apple shapes, tiny dulcimers, honeybees, mountain cabins. Made from natural materials grown on the commons — dried botanicals, beeswax, wood scraps from the orchard pruning pile.

Carved gourds — grown in the garden, dried, and carved or painted with folk art motifs. Gourd art is a genuine Appalachian tradition with a dedicated collector community, and the carving itself is deeply satisfying work for anyone drawn to it.

Wreaths and dried arrangements — from a small cutting garden on the commons, seasonal and beautiful, sold at the holiday market or at the farm gate.

Branded community items — a BRCC honey jar label, a stamped beeswax candle, a small basket of apple butter with a hand-tied tag. The kind of thing residents give as gifts, visitors take home as souvenirs, and the community sells at a table at the Abingdon farmers market on a Saturday morning.

What This Is Really About

None of these ventures will fund the community’s HOA fees. That’s not why we’d do them.

We’d do them because making things together is one of the oldest forms of community. Because learning a new skill from a neighbor is a gift. Because a Saturday afternoon carving a gourd or assembling wreaths around a table in the clubhouse is exactly the kind of life a cottage court makes possible — and that a subdivision simply doesn’t.

If the birdhouses sell and the ornaments find their way into holiday stockings across the area, wonderful. If the carved gourds become something people seek out on the Crooked Road Heritage Music Trail, even better. But the real return on this investment is measured in something other than dollars.

A Different Kind of Question

This post is less about convincing you of a business case and more about finding out who you are.

What do you make? What have you always wanted to learn to make? And what would you want to teach?

Tell me in the comments. The craft life of BRCC starts with that conversation.

(If you’re new here and wondering about cottage courts, start here).

🏘️ Cottage Court Chronicles is free and accessible to all. If you’d like to support this journey, I gladly accept trail snacks (contribute here).

Yesterday I was touring the State Arboretum of Virginia with my two good luck charms — dear friends from my years living in Williamsburg. It felt fitting: back in 2020, I got the call from the realtor about the sale of my house while walking the colonial district with those same two friends. History has a way of rhyming. Sure enough, as we wandered the arboretum yesterday, my phone rang again. This time it was the realtor with news on Blue Ridge Cottage Court: the owner had come back with a counteroffer, and it was one I could accept.

I said yes.

I’ve been awake since 4:00 am putting the next steps in place. Someone pinch me — this wild idea is about to become real.

Our Land

I’d had my eye on two prime parcels in Abingdon. My realtor approached both owners, and only one was open to an offer — luckily, it was my first choice.

The site sits in town, half a block from the Urban Pathway, which connects directly to the Creeper Trail. At 2.16 acres, it’s the right size for our cottage court. Public water and sewer already run to the street, which means utility hookups should be straightforward. And the parcel is flat — about as easy a build site as I could hope for.

A little history: while emailing with the County, I learned the existing water tap hasn’t been used since 1984. My realtor discovered the property had once been used as a tobacco warehouse. Curious, I pulled up historical aerial imagery through the county GIS system. The earliest available photo, from 2007, shows what look like semi-truck trailers parked across the lot. Every photo since is equally bare. As far as I can tell, this land has sat vacant for 42 years.

That’s a long time for a piece of land to wait. Maybe it was waiting for me. Or maybe the owner simply reached a point where retirement looked more appealing than developing it himself. Either way — I’m still a little stunned to be standing here.

Costs

I promised transparency about the numbers behind this project, so here it is: I paid more for this land than I’d originally wanted to. Here’s why I think it was still the right call.

I spent months searching for land in Staunton and Waynesboro before this, and what I learned is that the price of land was never my real problem — terrain and infrastructure were. Steep grades, no utilities at the street, drainage issues. This parcel has none of those headaches. It’s cleared, level, and fully served by existing streets and utilities. In a landscape where “cheap” land often comes with expensive problems attached, this lot’s real value is that it’s simply buildable — right now, with far fewer unknowns.

Going in, we knew the owner wouldn’t seriously entertain an offer around $150,000. We were prepared to land somewhere near $200,000. I offered $192,500. His counter came back at $210,000. I could have gone back and forth for a middle number, but I didn’t — I accepted.

My goal now is to get the site fully prepped for pre-construction at a total cost of $300,000 or less. Depending on what the environmental study turns up, I think that’s still within reach.

Due Diligence

We now have 30 days to complete due diligence, with the option to extend to 45 days if a Phase II environmental study is warranted. Time to get moving. Here are the major pieces I need to knock out:

• Title search — confirming clear ownership and checking for any liens, easements, or encumbrances on the property

• Boundary survey — pinning down the exact property lines so there are no surprises once we’re ready to design and permit

• Geotechnical study — testing soil conditions to inform foundation design

• Phase I Environmental Site Assessment (ESA) — a records-and-site-visit review, no digging involved, that flags any “Recognized Environmental Conditions”

• Zoning and utility confirmation — making sure the site is set up for what we need before we go further

If Phase I turns up a concern, it triggers a Phase II — actual soil and groundwater sampling — which is the piece that could push our window from 30 days to 45. If Phase II finds contamination, Phase III is the cleanup: a remediation plan and regulatory sign-off before we can build. If any of this turns up serious problems, we can renegotiate, walk away, or require the owner to fix it before closing.

Consultants Wanted!

I’m thrilled. I’m also, honestly, a little terrified. Can I actually pull this off?

Right now, the three big areas of need are finances, legalities, and recruiting and marketing. On the finance side, there are a lot of moving parts to coordinate — loan agreements, pre-sales, construction financing. Legalities run right alongside that, tangled up with planning and permitting. And ultimately, none of it matters if we don’t get the third piece right: finding the people who will actually buy into Blue Ridge Cottage Court.

That’s the part I care about most. We’re not just building houses — we’re setting expectations for a community. I want to see cottage industries grow up around our common areas, a shared sense of individual and collective responsibility, and a real commitment to giving back locally. At its core, this project is built on an ethic of supporting your neighbors, embracing diversity, and building a better environment together. A place where neighbors become friends.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be reaching out to find consultants who can walk me through the details ahead — the minutiae I don’t yet know I don’t know.

Happy dance. I’m so excited.

If this project has been stirring something in you as you've read along — now is the moment to lean in. If you’re interested in becoming a founding member, fill out the interest form and tell me how you can contribute — your skills, your interests, your ability to help get Blue Ridge Cottage Court financed.

Fill out the BRCC Interest Form

(If you’re new here and wondering about cottage courts, start here).

🏘️ Cottage Court Chronicles is free and accessible to all. If you’d like to support this journey, I gladly accept trail snacks (contribute here).

Introducing a new series on community income, shared stewardship, and the radical idea that neighbors can grow something together.

If you’ve been following this series, you know we’re considering a heritage apple orchard. And if you know anything about apple orchards, you already know what comes next.

Apples need pollinators. Without bees working the blossoms in spring, the orchard produces a fraction of what it’s capable of — or nothing at all. So in one sense, honeybees at BRCC aren’t optional. They’re infrastructure.

But they’re also considerably more than that.

What Bees Do for the Commons

Place two or three hives near the apple orchard and the benefits ripple outward across the entire shared land. Every flowering plant on the commons — the kitchen garden, the native plantings, the herbs near the clubhouse — becomes more productive. Bees don’t respect property lines, which in this case is exactly the point. They work the whole neighborhood.

And then they come home and make honey.

Apple blossom honey is a distinct and genuinely special product — light, floral, with a delicate flavor that reflects exactly where it came from. In a world of generic clover honey on grocery store shelves, a jar labeled Blue Ridge Cottage Court Apple Blossom Honey tells a story. That story has real value at a farmers market, in a local specialty shop, or as a gift item the community sells from the commons itself.

The Practical Picture

Beekeeping is one of the more approachable ventures on our list — the startup costs are modest, the footprint is tiny, and the learning curve, while real, is very manageable with the right mentorship.

Startup costs for two or three hives — equipment, protective gear, and initial bee colonies — run roughly $1,000–$2,000. That’s among the lowest entry points of any venture in this series.

Production from a healthy, well-managed hive runs 40–60 pounds of honey per year. At direct-to-consumer prices of $10–$20 per pound for local specialty honey, two or three hives could generate $800–$3,600 annually — not a fortune, but meaningful supplemental income with very little land required. Beyond honey, beeswax opens a second revenue stream: candles, lip balm, and soaps made from community beeswax are natural add-ons that residents with craft interests could develop.

One honest caveat: the first year is typically a break-even or investment year. New colonies spend their energy building comb and establishing the hive rather than producing surplus honey. Expect meaningful yields starting in Year 2.

On the question of stings, allergies, and local rules — all worth a brief acknowledgment. If we can build in the Town of Abingdon, it allows beekeeping, but requires a zoning permit and mandates that hives be set back at least 15 feet from property lines and 50 feet from any dwellings on adjacent properties. On a shared commons, that means siting hives thoughtfully — away from high-traffic areas and with neighboring properties in mind. This is a solvable design problem, but it’s one for our architect to weigh in on early. Anyone with a known bee allergy would also need to be part of the community conversation about placement.

Labor is the pleasant surprise here. Hive inspections take an hour or two every few weeks during the active season, and harvesting honey once or twice a year is a satisfying half-day project. Beekeeping rewards patience and observation more than physical labor. Whether the community has an experienced beekeeper among its founding residents or needs to find one — through a local beekeeping association or Virginia Cooperative Extension — is an open question, but Abingdon is well-positioned to connect with regional expertise.

The Bigger Picture

What I find most compelling about bees at BRCC isn’t the honey income. It’s what they represent in the permaculture framework we’re building: a single investment that stacks functions across the entire commons. Pollinate the orchard. Support the garden. Produce honey. Generate beeswax. Connect the community to the oldest agricultural partnership in human history.

That’s a lot of work for a few small boxes in a corner of the yard.

Your Question for This Post

Honeybees feel like a natural fit to me — but I’m curious whether they feel that way to you.

Would honeybees on the commons feel like an asset to you as a resident, or a concern? What would make you more or less comfortable with the idea?

Tell me in the comments.

(If you’re new here and wondering about cottage courts, start here).

🏘️ Cottage Court Chronicles is free and accessible to all. If you’d like to support this journey, I gladly accept trail snacks (contribute here).

I can hardly believe it!

After an initial inquiry to two landowners, we learned that one was a hard no — and the other was open to considering a respectable offer. My realtor spoke with him and came away knowing exactly what kind of offer he wouldn’t even consider. That gave us our floor: we needed an offer strong enough to grab his attention, but not so strong that we’d have no room left to negotiate. With the 4th of July holiday upon us, we’ve given him extra time to think it over.

And I have to tell you — this is our #1 lot in all of Abingdon (Virginia). I can’t share many details yet, but here’s what I can say: it’s a flat parcel in town, an easy walk or bike ride to shops and restaurants. It sits in a zone that permits cottage courts. And there’s public water and sewer already at the street — which means, unlike the land we looked at in Staunton and Waynesboro, this parcel won’t require us to sink a fortune into infrastructure before we even break ground.

So here I am, sitting in that strange, familiar space of tempered excitement — thrilled about the possibility, while staying clear-eyed about the fact that the offer could be rejected, or that a complication could surface even if we do move forward to a contract. But still. This is a very big deal.

Penciling It Out vs. Emotions

Somewhere along this project, I had to sit with the question: does it pencil out?

I’m not a professional developer or contractor, so I had to dig into what that phrase actually meant. Penciling something out means running a preliminary financial analysis to see if a land or property purchase makes economic sense. Every dollar spent on land and infrastructure ultimately gets baked into the cost of the house — and we can’t push those costs beyond what the market will bear.

My failed searches in Staunton and Waynesboro turned out to be good training ground. They taught me a lot, and I’m more confident now, standing in front of this parcel, because of them. I know the kind of money my friend and I are willing to invest in land and site prep. But there’s still plenty of gray area. If we get a counteroffer, how much room do we actually have to negotiate? If the environmental study flags a need for further testing, what will that cost us — and at what point does it stop making sense to continue?

So while I’m bursting with excitement on the inside — and I mean bursting, the kind where you catch yourself grinning at your phone for no reason — I’m working hard to stay even-keeled on the outside. I’m going into this with my eyes wide open. I need to be able to walk away from this parcel if I have to. We owe it to the project to do our due diligence before signing anything hastily. As much as I want this piece of land, I have to be patient, and smart, about the whole affair.

But friends, if this comes together, this is the moment Blue Ridge Cottage Court stops being a vision on paper and starts becoming a real place with a real address. A place where ten households gather in the courtyard on a summer evening, where neighbors know each other's names and check in when someone's porch light stays dark, where the land is treated as something to steward, not just build on. We are so close.

Wish us luck! I’ll be sharing updates the moment I have news.

If this project has been stirring something in you as you've read along — now is the moment to lean in. If you’re interested in becoming a founding member, fill out the interest form and tell me how you can contribute — your skills, your interests, your ability to help get Blue Ridge Cottage Court financed.

Fill out the BRCC Interest Form

(If you’re new here and wondering about cottage courts, start here).

🏘️ Cottage Court Chronicles is free and accessible to all. If you’d like to support this journey, I gladly accept trail snacks (contribute here).

At the end of each month, I provide an overview of happenings and expenses that go along with the development of Blue Ridge Cottage Court.

Transparency is becoming a rare trait. On social media, it’s all about out-shining each other — cool trips, new cars, smiling fans. But what about the work, and the money, behind the scenes? The hard stuff. The steps that let others follow the same path. For the most part, it’s missing — especially when it comes to money.

I was trained and worked as a financial coach, and I can tell you: talking about money is taboo. We share so much in life, but almost nobody shares their income, their financial struggles, or their investment strategies (or lack thereof). If we’re not rich, it’s framed as our own fault — when in fact the system is stacked against the average wage-earner. A billionaire can skip paying into Social Security, use loopholes to shield wealth from taxes, and surround himself with a force field of loyalists willing to do almost anything, if the price is right. And there are few consequences.

Here’s my world instead. I’ve worked for every dollar in my accounts. My start in life was the family farm in Wisconsin. I lived in absolute poverty and had lost hope by my early 30s. Thirty years and a couple of career breaks later, I learned how to save and invest, kept my expenses low, embraced a minimalist lifestyle, and stretched those funds further than even I expected.

My financial partner, who will also have a house in the cottage court, is a proud Chicago working-class single mom. She worked hard her entire life and retired early with a healthy pension and retirement account. In a lot of ways, we’re the American Dream of old — the kind that might feel out of reach for today’s younger generation, given the cost of living. We were both raised to be honest, ethical, and frugal, and that’s the lens this project runs through.

So every month, I open the books. This is an investment not only in my own future, but in a lifestyle I believe will benefit the larger community. Let’s get to it.

June Highlights

June was the month Blue Ridge Cottage Court stopped being an illusion and started becoming a real possibility.

My original plan was to build in Staunton or Waynesboro. That plan died on buildable land — or rather, the lack of it. A two-acre lot with public sewer, water, and a functioning street simply doesn’t exist there at a price that pencils out. Bringing that infrastructure to a raw lot turns the math into an unaffordable pipe dream. So that was that.

What I needed instead was a town that already has — or is open to — a cottage court ordinance, has developable land inside city limits, and is attractive enough to actually draw home buyers. I believe I’ve found it: Abingdon, Virginia.

Two road trips to southwest Virginia later, I can call June a success on every front. I toured the town, met with a realtor about land, and found a rental property. In mid-August, I’m moving to a rental on a mini-farm in Meadowview, about eight miles north of Abingdon. And we’re about to put in an offer on a 2-acre parcel in town. More on that once the dust settles — fingers and toes crossed.

The other thread running through June was groundwork for cottage industries — ways residents can offset costs, or even earn income, once the community is built. If you want to follow that conversation, it’s here. I also wrapped another online course, Starting a Community, from the Foundation for Intentional Community. I’ve now taken several of these, and while each covers the fundamentals well, I keep hitting the same wall: not enough depth. Going forward, this project probably needs mentors or consultants who’ve actually done this, not just courses that describe it.

The Numbers: June Expenses

June was my most expensive month yet — $1,004 across four line items:

• FIC course - Starting a Community: $129

• ThriveThemes renewal (powers my websites): $180

• One night’s lodging at ElderSpirit: $60

• Mileage, government per diem rate: $635

In terms of hours, I put in roughly 67 in June, much of it behind the wheel traveling to and from Abingdon. That brings my running total to 420 hours on this project.

The bigger number is still ahead of us. As my financial partner and I move on the land purchase, we’ll be loaning the LLC funds from our personal savings and retirement accounts — money built over decades of work. That’s real risk. But I believe what we’re building will resonate with people who want to live in community and give back to something larger than themselves. I’m excited for what’s next.

What July Has to Get Right

Best case: July is the month we get land under contract and start due diligence. If this particular parcel falls through, I have a couple of landowners on the edge of town to approach next — not as central as the site I’m chasing now, but workable.

Once land is secured, the real work shifts to people: building a pool of interested, qualified home buyers. That means two things running in parallel. First, targeted marketing to grow our list of potential Blue Ridge Cottage Court members. Second, finding a bank willing to underwrite a construction loan — which, realistically, means most homes will need to be pre-sold with sizeable down payments before a lender will even talk to us. The two problems feed each other. One step at a time.

If you’re interested in becoming a founding member, fill out the interest form and tell me how you can contribute — your skills, your interests, your ability to help get Blue Ridge Cottage Court financed. I could especially use help in environmental sustainability and permaculture, plus advice on legal structures and financing. Comments, suggestions, and resources always welcome.

Fill out the BRCC Interest Form

(If you’re new here and wondering about cottage courts, start here).

🏘️ Cottage Court Chronicles is free and accessible to all. If you’d like to support this journey, I gladly accept trail snacks (contribute here).

Introducing a new series on community income, shared stewardship, and the radical idea that neighbors can grow something together.

There’s something almost otherworldly about fungi. They don’t photosynthesize. They don’t have roots. They break down what’s dead and turn it into something alive. And in the right hands — and the right community — they can generate meaningful income from very little space.

This post covers two ventures that both live in the fungal world but couldn’t be more different in their timelines: gourmet mushroom cultivation, which could generate income in Year 1, and a truffle orchard, which might not produce its first harvest for a decade. One is a quick win. The other is a gift to whoever lives here twenty years from now. Both belong in the BRCC story.

Gourmet Mushrooms: The Fast Return

Shiitake, oyster, and lion’s mane mushrooms are having a moment. Demand from health-conscious consumers, local restaurants, and farmers markets has pushed specialty mushroom prices to $10–$25 per pound for direct sales — and unlike most crops, mushrooms can be grown in a small, shaded space that would otherwise sit idle.

The method that makes the most sense for our commons is log inoculation — drilling hardwood logs, inserting mushroom spawn, sealing with wax, and stacking them in a shaded corner of the property. It’s low-tech, low-cost, and very much in the permaculture spirit: using what’s local (hardwood logs) to produce something valuable. Inoculation costs run roughly $1–$2 per log. A modest operation of 100–200 logs is entirely manageable on our footprint.

The income potential is real but modest. A Cornell University study found that a small 500-log operation could gross around $9,000 over five years. At our scale — 100 to 200 logs — think of mushrooms as a reliable supplemental income stream rather than a primary one, with the added benefit that harvests can go directly to Abingdon restaurants building their farm-to-table menus. That relationship alone has value beyond the dollar amount.

Labor is genuinely light: inoculation is a one-time community project per batch of logs, and harvesting is periodic and straightforward. This is one venture where the whole community — including people with limited mobility — could participate meaningfully.

Truffles: A Fun Experiment

Now for the venture I think of less as an income strategy and more as a community adventure.

Truffles are among the most valuable food products on earth — Black Périgord truffles can fetch $600 per pound with restaurateurs. They grow underground, attached to the roots of inoculated trees, and are found by trained dogs during the winter harvest season. The image of a crisp December morning, a dog working through a small orchard, nose suddenly pointed at the ground — that’s not a fantasy. It’s happening right now in Virginia, at places like Virginia Truffles in Rixeyville, where guided hunts fill so fast they ran a waitlist of 90 people.

But here’s the truth: truffles are genuinely risky. Soil conditions must be near-perfect. Native competing fungi can invade underground and crowd out the cultivated species entirely. Growers can tend an orchard faithfully for a decade and come up with nothing. Even Virginia Truffles — with professional guidance, a microbiology lab on site, and field study trips to Europe — waited eleven years for their first harvest. There are no guarantees here.

So why mention it at all? Because the investment is tiny — 15 inoculated seedlings run $375–$750 — and the experiment itself is genuinely delightful. We plant a small corner of the commons, tend it lightly, and see what happens. If the fungus cooperates, we’ve got something extraordinary on our hands. If it doesn’t, we’ve lost very little and had a decade of interesting conversations about what’s happening underground.

If the orchard does produce — and that's a genuine if — the harvest experience is extraordinary. Truffles grow underground, invisible, attached to tree roots. The only way to find them is a dog trained to detect the scent, working through the orchard on a winter morning while you follow. That's how it's done in France and Italy, and that's how Virginia Truffles does it in Rixeyville. If we ever get there, it would be one of the most memorable things BRCC could offer. But we plant these trees knowing we may never get there — and being at peace with that.

The Numbers, Briefly

Mushrooms: Startup costs of $500–$2,000 for a 100–200 log operation. Income potential of $3,000–$8,000 annually at full production, selling direct to restaurants and farmers markets. Year 1 viable.

Truffles: Inoculated seedlings run $25–$50 each; 15 trees would cost $375–$750 plus soil preparation. A low-stakes, long-horizon experiment — we make no income projections because the outcome is genuinely uncertain. What we can count on is the fun of trying.

Labor: Mushroom logs require inoculation (a great community project), periodic watering, and harvesting — light and very shareable. Truffle orchard maintenance is minimal: light cultivation, mulching, irrigation monitoring a few times a year. Neither venture requires intensive daily labor.

A Question for You

Both of these ventures fascinate me for different reasons — one practical and immediate, one patient and visionary.

Which appeals to you more: the quick return of a mushroom operation, or the long-game romance of a truffle orchard? Or both?

Tell me in the comments. I genuinely want to know.

(If you’re new here and wondering about cottage courts, start here).

🏘️ Cottage Court Chronicles is free and accessible to all. If you’d like to support this journey, I gladly accept trail snacks (contribute here).

Abingdon, Virginia has officially risen to the top of my list for building a cottage court. It has the ordinance. It has available land in town. And now, apparently, it has a home for me — complete with sheep, pigs, and bunnies.

Let me back up.

Since leaving my full-time RV life in March, I’ve been renting through FurnishedFinder, which has been a genuine game-changer for someone without a fixed address. I spent a couple of months in a little apartment in Waynesboro, then relocated to a studio on majestic Afton Mountain. It never occurred to me that I’d end up pivoting south, chasing a cottage court dream through the Blue Ridge region. But here we are.

Finding a One-of-a-Kind Rental

Abingdon shares a problem with communities across the country: a serious shortage of housing. Rentals are scarce, prices are high — especially if you have pets — and what’s available tends to be generic apartment-complex living, which holds zero appeal for me. I wanted something with character.

On the advice of a new friend in the area, I posted a notice on NextDoor on a Sunday evening. By Monday morning, I had a response that stopped me in my tracks: an apartment on a mini-farm in Meadowview, about eight miles north of Abingdon, available right in my August timeframe.

A mini-farm? I was already intrigued!

I texted to get the details. The rent — $1,250/month including utilities, no pet fees — was a genuine bargain. So Friday morning I drove three hours south to meet the owners and take a look.

What I found was a spacious, beautifully renovated 900-square-foot walk-out apartment. Two of the walls are earthen — it’s built into a hillside — but there’s plenty of light streaming in through windows and large patio doors. Out back, I can share the space with the resident sheep. I've been told the sheep love cats. Isabella and Coco will have to weigh in on this.

The owners then took me on a tour of the larger property, and I was moved by what they’re doing. The main structure was once a schoolhouse for African American children during Virginia’s era of segregation. The owners are carefully refurbishing and honoring its history as they bring it back to life. The building is still very much a work in progress — a complicated construction zone — but their vision is clear and meaningful.

And then we got to another wing of the property, where the owners currently live. That’s where I met Lucy and Burger, two full-grown pigs, and a cage full of bunnies. Lucy, for the record, is very enthusiastic about peanuts.

I signed up on the spot. I asked for a six-month lease with a month-to-month extension, which gives me time to settle in and enough flexibility to adjust course if the cottage court project moves faster than expected. Just as importantly, I can see ways to genuinely help the owners — not every exchange has to be purely financial, and I’m looking forward to learning new things alongside them.

What Else Abingdon Has in Store

With housing sorted, I can focus on what brought me here. A few posts back, I mentioned the College for Older Adults at the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center — a program for learners 50 and up. It kept nagging at me: Why aren’t you teaching a course? So I reached out to the director, and I’m now on the schedule to teach “AI Made Easy.” I’m excited about it. It’s exactly the kind of connection I’ve been looking for — sharing something useful and meeting people from the community at the same time.

That leaves just one item on the list: land. And friends, there’s movement on that front too.

Stay tuned — that story’s coming next.

Here's to everyone out there thinking outside the box and finding their own unexpected path. The sheep are waiting.

Leave a comment

(If you’re new here and wondering about cottage courts, start here).

🏘️ Cottage Court Chronicles is free and accessible to all. If you’d like to support this journey, I gladly accept trail snacks (contribute here).

Introducing a new series on community income, shared stewardship, and the radical idea that neighbors can grow something together.

There was an apple tree next to the old brick farmhouse where I grew up in Wisconsin. By any reasonable measure, it should have been dead. The trunk had rotted through — hollowed out, really — and yet every fall it bore fruit. Good fruit. Apples unlike anything I have ever pulled off a grocery store shelf before or since.

I never knew what variety it was. We just ate them and turned them into delicious apple pies. And I didn’t think much about that tree for decades, until I started designing a community where the land is supposed to do something useful — and I started wondering what kind of apple could survive that long, in that condition, and still produce.

The answer, I’ve come to understand, is a heritage apple. And the story of what happened to them, and what’s being done to bring them back, is one worth telling.

What Happened to the Apple

North America once had roughly 17,000 varieties of domesticated apples. Today, U.S. commercial orchards grow fewer than 100 apple varieties — and just 11 of them account for 90 percent of grocery store sales. The rest didn’t disappear because they were inferior. They disappeared because they were inconvenient.

Conglomerates negotiated national contracts and switched to apples that matured fast and were suited to long-distance shipping. By 1950, most smaller orchards had been forced out of business. The apple on your grocery store shelf was selected for its ability to survive a truck ride, not for flavor, complexity, or connection to place.

Appalachia felt this acutely. Appalachian traditions around heritage apples were eroded and ultimately destroyed by urban migration, factory farming, and corporatized food systems. And right here in Virginia, the losses were real and local. Heritage varieties include types you won’t see in the grocery store, such as Virginia Beauty, Crow Egg, Magna Bonum, and Fallawater — apples with names that sound like they belong in a folk song, because in a way, they do.

The People Going Looking for Them

Here’s the part of this story I find genuinely moving: people are going out to find them.

Tom Brown of Clemmons, North Carolina, has spent nearly 25 years searching for Appalachia’s lost heirloom apples. To date, he has reclaimed about 1,200 varieties, and his two-acre orchard contains 700 of the rarest. Most haven’t been sold commercially for a century or more; some were cloned from the last known trees of their kind.

Brown stumbled into this work almost by accident. He didn’t know what a heritage apple was until he stumbled on them at a historic farmer’s market in 1998 — a little stand with a bunch of strange-looking apples laid out in baskets. Colors ranged from bright green to yellow-streaked, sunset pink, and purplish black. Some were plum-sized, others as big as softballs. He tasted apples with rosé wine-colored flesh, apples soft like pears and sweet like honey, apples with a tart, peachy finish.

The people who hold clues about their locations are typically in their 80s or 90s. Each year trees are lost to storms, development, beetles, and blights. Brown has devoted his later years to beating the clock.

He’s not alone. The Lost Apple Project in the Pacific Northwest has volunteers armed with pruning shears, old maps, and an uncanny sense of smell for ripe apples, searching abandoned orchards for varieties that have slipped through the cracks of time. And right here in Virginia, the proliferation of cideries has led to a modest renaissance in the cultivation and consumption of rare varieties. Vintage Virginia Apples, near Charlottesville, grows heirloom varieties with names like Ashmead’s Kernel, Albemarle Pippin, Ralls, Baldwin, Winesap, and Esopus Spitzenburg — each one, as they put it, with its own personality and its own uses.

The tree next to that old Wisconsin farmhouse — the one that refused to die — was part of this world. I just didn’t know it yet.

What This Looks Like at BRCC

Our productive land may be modest — somewhere between half an acre and one acre, once you account for the community footprint. A full commercial orchard this is not. But a community heritage orchard on that scale is entirely achievable, and potentially quite productive.

Here’s the case for it:

Heritage varieties are low-input by design. They were bred over generations to thrive in specific climates without chemical intervention. Many of the Appalachian varieties Tom Brown has recovered are exactly suited to Virginia’s mountains and foothills — they don’t need coaxing.

The market is real. Local restaurants, farmers markets, and the growing craft cider industry in Virginia are actively looking for interesting fruit. Many heirloom varieties are wonderfully suited to being pressed and fermented into ciders, while others are sold for cooking and fresh eating. An orchard that produces five or six distinctive varieties offers something no grocery store can.

It gets better every year. Unlike annual crops, an orchard is a long-term asset. The trees we plant in Year 1 will be producing for decades — some heritage varieties, as I learned on that Wisconsin farm, for a very long time indeed.

It connects us to place. There’s something meaningful about planting Virginia Beauty or Fallawater in Abingdon, Virginia — varieties that belong to this landscape, that carry the foodways of the people who lived here before us. That’s not just sentimentality. It’s the kind of story that sells fruit at a farmers market and fills seats at a harvest dinner.

The Numbers

On roughly half an acre, we could plant 25–40 semi-dwarf heritage trees — enough for 6 to 8 varieties ripening in succession from late July through October. But which varieties? Rather than guessing, I'd want to start by surveying local chefs and farmers market vendors in Abingdon to find out what they actually want and can't easily source. That conversation alone would build the relationships we'd need to sell the fruit. Before any trees go in, I'd also want to identify the right regional expert — someone who knows which heritage varieties thrive in Southwest Virginia's specific climate and elevation and how to take care of them without chemical pesticides. That research is on the distant horizon.

Startup costs are modest: trees, soil prep, deer fencing, and irrigation run roughly $3,500–$8,000 total — or $350–$800 per household as a one-time investment. There’s no heavy equipment, no specialized infrastructure.

The honest caveat: this is a patient venture. Expect a small first harvest around Year 3, full production by Year 5. At maturity, heritage apples fetch $3–$6 per pound at farmers markets and with local restaurants — well above grocery store prices. Thirty trees at full production could net $8,000–$18,000 annually after maintenance costs.

What about the work? An orchard requires consistent seasonal attention — winter pruning, spring pest monitoring, summer thinning, fall harvest — totaling roughly 200–300 hours per year. Spread across ten households, that’s about 20–30 hours per person annually, or one committed Saturday a month during the active season. The harvest weekend in particular could become one of the signature events of the BRCC year. Pruning is a real skill, though — one area where we’d budget for a professional consultant in the early years until residents find their footing.

A Question for You

I’m genuinely curious where you stand on this one.

Does a heritage apple orchard as part of a community income strategy sound appealing to you — yes or no? And why?

Tell me in the comments. Your answers will shape what I bring to the founding residents of BRCC.

(If you’re new here and wondering about cottage courts, start here).

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