How Poor are You?

Sometimes, we're much poorer than we realize, but I'm hoping for the kind of wealth mentioned in this story in the next few years.

One day a father of a very wealthy family took his son on a trip to the country with the firm purpose of showing his son how poor people live. They spent a couple of days and nights on the farm of what would be considered a very poor family. On their return from the trip, the father asked his son, “How was the trip?”

“It was great, Dad”.

“Did you see how poor people live?” the father asked.

“Oh yes”, said the son.

“So, tell me, what did you learn from the trip?” asked the father.

The son answered:
“I saw that we have one dog and they had four. We have a pool that reaches to the middle of the garden and they have a creek that has no end. We have imported lanterns in our garden and they have the stars at night.”

“Our patio reaches to the front yard and they have the whole horizon. We have a small piece of land to live on and they have fields that go beyond our sight. We buy our food, but they grow theirs. We have walls around our property to protect us, they have friends to protect them.”

The boy’s father was speechless. Then his son added:
“Thanks, Dad for showing me how poor we are.”

I have several designs dancing around in my head for my future house, and this is one that finally made it out onto paper.  It definitely needs to be tweaked so the deck is facing south.  My other thought is to put the deck off the bedrooms, but then it's not as inviting for general use.  I can't claim the original design is mine, but the modification is.  You can find the plans for this house here. 

If you're into cool building styles from unconventional materials and are inexpensive to build, then you might also want to check this site for more information and tutorials as to how to build a straw bale house for yourself.