HarlanHouse

This is the story of the complete process we are going through to build a small house on a rural 3।1acre property in Harlan, Oregon, a one time sawmill town that has been without a mill for many years. Except for a few residences, all the land here is either zoned agricultural or timber conservation ( the former mill site being industrial). That zoning implies certain restrictions regarding building a residence, and it was necessary to go through a lengthy process to obtain a ?? variance?? to then be able to apply for a septic permit and a building permit. Another aspect to this process was the clean-up of the property which was covered in blackberry vines, scotch broom and junk, which was the residue of many years of habitation, first as saw mill housing and later on (after the mill closure) as a site for various mobile homes and trailers। All of this culminated (after complaints, etc.) in a court proceeding where in the occupants were ordered to remidy the inadequate septic system and remove the illegal trailers, and eventually the county took possession of the property. The property remained that way for some years until we acquired it and it decided to clean it up to make it useful. When we began the clean-up process we encountered the two derelict mobile homes, a 24 ft. travel trailer, a horse trailer, a large delivery van 35 tires and wheels, old lawn mowers, logging cables and other kinds of metal objects, and lots of buried garbage, most of these items being covered by the berries and scotch broom. Regarding the mobile homes, we did a lot of research to try to find a way to recycle them, but nothing proved to be workable. We read about projects in other states where mobile homes and loaders and dump trucks and labor had been donated, and even in those cases it did not turn out to be economically worthwhile. To be sure, Pam and I could have spent the entire summer stripping out the two homes by hand and making multiple trips to the land fill with the mounds of garbage that was inside them and that would have resulted from the process, but the prospect of receiving $400 to $500 per trailer after all the work was not sufficiently rewarding. Neither would it have dealt with the tires, cable, lawn mowers, garbage, etc. Sooooo in the end we hired a contractor with a big excavator and he removed 240 cubic yards of material and it all went to the landfill in large drop boxes. And we are still picking up bits of scrap metal, broken glass, garbage bags, piping, etc. - another pickup load so far.