Although I grew up in Sandpoint, Idaho, my parents had property further north near Bonners Ferry, which was about 30 miles south of the Canadian border. On the property was a small little cabin, maybe 500 sqft altogether. It had originally been built in the late 1800's as a house for one of the wealthier settlers in Bonners Ferry, and my dad remembered when it had been skidded from downtown up the hill and to its location in Paradise Valley. There it had set for many years, and had not had anyone living there since the early 1950's. My husband was out of work, we needed a place to live, so we moved there. The house had an old well, but it had caved in years before; so we hauled water in 55-gallon drums in the back of our pickup truck. The property was on 80 acres, mostly woods, and had some old fruit trees on it; so we had apples, pears, and little yellow plums. One of the apple trees was a crab apple and it was awesome when it bloomed, which was every oher year. The in-between years, it only had a few blooms and crabapples on it. The cabin had one bedroom (a very tiny one, maybe 8x10), a kitchen with an old wood cookstove, a tiny room that had been either a dining area or maybe just a pantry, which had a trapdoor down to the cellar. There was a ladder nailed to the wall in the bedroom that went up to the attic. The boys slept up there, and my daughter slept in the little pantry room. Outside, there was an outhouse, which was not bad in the summer; but pretty darned cold in the below zero winters. On the plus side, we never had to worry about freezing pipes... I had an old wringer washer, and we hooked it up with a 100' extension cord, and washed clothes outside with the water from the barrels, and then hung them on the clothesline to dry. In the winter, we had to go to the laundrymat to wash the clothes. The wash-water was then used to water the little garden; so nothing was wasted. It was a beautiful area to live, and I think that all of the work we had to do just to survive helped my kids to grow up being resourceful .
This reminds me of the house where my husband grew up in Arkansas. No car could reach up to the house because of a creek. I remember you had to walk over a bridge that was just wide enough for two people to cross over. The house was very small and surrounded by beautiful trees and lots and lots of canna lilys all over the place. I found some old metal buckets and we began to dig some out to take home.
This really sounds awesome. I never stay in one place for very long and my memories of the places I lived are mostly as brief as my stays were. I briefly remember staying on an old chicken farm. The chickens were long gone, but they had left their feathers. Needless to say as children, we came out the chicken run covered in feathers. There were several wonderful places, but as a child, you can make any place wonderful.