Brandywine Farm was established on a blank piece of canvas in Hilham, TN in 2011.
We scoped out the landscape and me and my husband started building a Shed so we had more room than the 19′ RV. We were going to build a cabin at a different location; however, very small living in a 24×16 was so cozy and liberating that we decided this would actually be our home. We built it wil about 90% recycled building materials that we scrounged from other projects and demolitions. We called it our SHEDTEAU. We started on 5/22/11 and added a bedroom at the beginning of October. We added a larger bedroom in 2014 and converted the old bedroom into a large pantry. Farm work and canning required some extra storage space.
We added a deck too!
BARN. We built a small barn in 2013. It has 4 stalls with lots of swing gates so it can be configured in lots of ways.
ELECTRICITY: In the beginning, we had a generator. We ran the generator to pump water into our tanks (see WATER). We bought 4 RV/Marine deep cycle batteries and hooked them together. We charged them with our generator. We bought an RV inverter to convert the 12v DC into AC for the house. We ran the generator to wash clothes. A few months later we got a great deal on some unfinished solar panel “laminates” and built out own panel rack.
During this upgrade, we bought an OUTBACK charge controller to control the power coming in from the panels to the batteries. We also bought a 48v Outback 3648 inverter (OutBack VFX3648 VENTED Inverter). This would give us 3600 watts into the house using 48volts. We bought more RV batteries for more storage. In 2014, we bought more solar panels so we would have to run the generator less. Adding freezers for food storage bumped up our electricity usage. We also upgraded our batteries to Trojan T-105RE solar batteries. They have a warranty for 7 years.
WATER: We dug out the creek and sunk a large watering trough in, fashioned a lid, put a pump inside and ran pipe up the hill the the house. We got 2 used storage tanks and a 12v water pump running off a battery bank. (see ELECTRICITY). We later changed to coming straight from the creek through a dual filter system into the house.
