As mentioned previously, I never camped as a child. While I have come to enjoy sleeping in the great outdoors, we realized the impracticality of spending multiple days/nights at the homestead without some sort of shelter. With the clever advent of my husband’s shed-trailer (discussed here), we eliminated much of our lugging back and forth of goods.
The summer of 2020 taught me many things; that I have a pretty non-existent social life as a matter of normal, daily, living, we use far too many paper towels, and my job can’t be done remotely. I also learned that when in self or state imposed isolation people buy these items in abundance: paper products, disinfecting products, wood chippers, fences and sheds. Interesting how many of the list above revolves around trees/pulp products. If you were cleaning with pine-sol, I guess it would come full circle. According to those in the business, sheds have been selling like hot cakes. Large, splintery hot cakes. I guess people are working from home and realize they can’t muzzle their children without many repercussions and are resorting to an adult wood-fort in the yard.
Shed Shopping in a Zombie Apocalypse
We considered buying a shed kit, but it was very hard to find one in stock. And it would need to delivered to the house and transported to the lot as our homestead has no delivery address. AND we would have to actually build the shed. I have been told that cost of building materials is rising sharply and doing out the numbers in my area, buying all of the lumber and hardware would be even more costly than the kit and not too far behind the “Amish” shed we eventually bought already assembled and delivered. I am a little hazy on where exactly the Amish fit in to all of this, but my son did some research and told me that all of the sheds you see for sale in the roadside shed patches come from a single factory in Louisiana. The lumber is then sent to the Mennonites where the sheds are assembled into one of several styles and distributed to their dealers. Apparently our shed was assembled by Mennonites in North Carolina, I was fact-checked by my son, so no Amish were involved in the process.
The Winning Shed
After visiting several road-side shed farms (I now see them everywhere, I assume they were always there) we were fortunate to find our dream shed close by the lot. Most of the shed places offer delivery within a 50 mile radius. We opted for a 12×20, double lofted, barn-style shed in a light color with a metal roof.
We had been told by multiple outlets that custom order sheds were backed up several months due to demand and the ones on the lot were being sold quickly. We purchased the shed despite not being quite sure if our site was adequately prepared or if the delivery truck could make it up the former logging road leading to our lot. My husband had had several phone conversation with the shed-manager, he was not there the day went to the shed ground, but his new trainee was there! I know she was new, we were very patient, she had no idea about how and when they could deliver our shed. The shed-lady got the shed-manager on the phone and he freaked us out by telling us they couldn’t deliver the shed if we had left any stumps. Would our hand-cleared lot pass muster? We tried showing pictures to the clueless but kind shed-lady. She agreed with us that it looked FINE. Shed manager was back-peddling. Eventually we had a verbal agreement that the dealer would refund our money if the delivery driver said they couldn’t get it up there, that’s good enough in our book! Most of our cleaning was by hand, the trees were relatively small but very dense, we had no idea how wide or flat the site would need to be for delivery of our shed.
We were told it would be about 2 weeks until delivery, we had plenty of time, or so we thought. Luckily, we are very impatient and immediately went back and cut down more trees. A neighbor stopped by and offered his backhoe services, we gladly accepted, he would return during the week to clear out the width and flatten the site a bit more. This is where my important dos and don’ts list in land clearing comes in. The dust, Ken Burns could have held off on making his Dust Bowl documentary and photographed our dusty and weary faces upon returning to our ravaged land. The wood chips and grass seed have given us hope once more.
After the 3 hour trip home, we got a call from the shed-man that they wanted to take a trial run up to the lot prior to the delivery truck making the trip. My husband talked to Roger, the backhoe man, he had returned the next day and done the additional clearing. The 3 hour trip was made again by my patient and bear-fearing husband and he led the shed-man up to the lot. We passed the shed-man test. I wasn’t there for the delivery, but my husband said it quite the production! There is a separate “rascal” type of pulling machine that places the shed on the site after it is delivered from the truck, they use concrete blocks to level the shed and Voila! No more tent camping with the bears!
At some point I will show you the treacherous, miles long, single lane gravel road we take to reach this glorious indoor/outdoor space, it is not for the faint of heart or weak-willed shed delivery people.
