photo credit Watson Brown
The shape of a traditional North American farmhouse tells the story of a home put together one piece at a time as the family inside grew and prospered. The main unit comes first, with a perpendicular section added later along with any number of shed roofs and additions to the sides.
This method of building worked very well for people living on the frontier, where they had to rely on themselves for the materials, labor and funding needed to create a place to live. Without builders or banks, people would create a starter home with whatever materials were available and make improvements and additions as their means allowed. Because of this, these homesteaders owned their farmhouses from the very beginning; freeing them to use that income to build a better life.
Though the challenges of making a home have changed from our frontier period, (typhoid and bears versus schools and crime rates) the desire to have a place where we can settle and build our lives is still the same. Additionally the opportunities from this method of building that home in this homesteading method also remain the same.
Though the style of a traditional farmhouse might not express the way we live our modern lives, building in phases can break down the construction costs of any type of home into manageable pieces; avoiding the need for a lifetime of indebtedness to the places we live.
More to follow on some ideas for how this might be done.