We needed to change the water pump after almost 4 years. We have very calcareous water and found this beautiful limestone formation. This explains why the display of the water level did not function any more.
A little side note: We filter all of our drinking and food cooking water.
Winter came with up to -16°C
We got snow and some beautiful winter weather with low frost temperatures. To protect the bottom of the caravan against to much cold we collected snow and piled it up against the caravan to close the gab underneath. This way we can keep the wind out and it is a nice hide out for our cats.
We have icicles building on the outside of our windows. The windows do not close nicely everywhere, so there are some gaps. The extreme temperature difference between outside and inside makes for a lot of condensation on the inside of the windows. I need to wipe it of every day, but partially it already runs down the window and makes these nice icicles.
Inside the caravan we have it nice and warm. We still did not need to put the heater on its max. We did encounter some problems though. The drain of our small sink in the back was frozen and we could not use that. Obviously that is not a big issue, since we still have the sink in the kitchen, which did not freeze. A bigger problem was that our water source froze and we could not fetch water. Of course we already expected this and put some extra water in containers in our barn. The warmer wetter came just in time. Our water was used up right at the time we where able to get fresh water again.
As I have mentioned a few times, we are planning to travel and do not need it any more
We have sold our Tiny House. Despite the fact that it is ratter small emptying it out was more work than I had imagined, but finally we got it done.
Then the day came that a crane and low bed trailer where there, to lift and take away the Tiny House. Some how it was a strange feeling seeing the Tiny House lifted and driven of, of our property, but it is the start of the preparations for our travel over winter. It was quite impressive seeing the Tiny House up in the air. The Tiny House is too wide for normal transport, so it had to be moved at night with a police escort. As we heard late from the buyer all went well and the Tiny House sits on its new location perfectly.
There are a number of reasons for us to want to leave Germany, but work prohibits us from leaving permanent. Of course it would also be a shame for all of the work we have done on our property. We are escaping winter, travelling south. We are going to look for the region we would like to move to in the future. A place where we can build up a proper homestead, with vegetable gardens, fields for grains, pasture and different animals. We hope to build up a big enough homestead to be self sufficient some where in the future.
We have someone who will take care of our cats, but the dogs will go with us. My husband will drive our tractor with the caravan and I will drive our car with a trailer with all sorts of supplies, but more to that another time.
We have not travelled like this before and are very excited. The main problem I see is with the type of dogs we have. We have to avoid lots of people and try to find places where they have the change to run around freely now and then.
We still have some things to do, but as soon as they are done and the wetter will allow, we are leaving.
We also will document our travelling on our channel in YouTube: Straver Homestead
Beautiful Chaos 