Burn Less Wood
My real estate career started when I was about 6. I spent hours with Legos and Lincoln Logs as a kid, building, building, building. My favorite toy was a big wooden dollhouse with two stories and a pink roof. I was more interested in the floor plan than the dolls. I wanted to be an architect at a very young age.
My mom was an interior decorator, and one of my dad’s passions was gardening. I’m sure their creativity and all those home and garden magazines had an influence on me!
As a young woman on my own, I redesigned every house my friends or I lived in. I drew floor plans for hours. I guess I had outgrown Legos and Lincoln Logs!
At 22, I wanted to learn drafting. When I drove by a glass-walled architect’s office, though, I saw row after row of drafting tables, and I feared I’d be inside all day. I knew I wanted to be outdoors.
I stumbled onto horticulture at 24 and worked seasonal jobs at parks, resorts, personal residences and farms. I mostly loved farming, but it wasn’t very promising financially.
I decided to pursue residential landscaping after studying horticulture at UNH. I continued to study landscape design (and finally learned drafting!) after graduating. I was glad to discover that landscape design is tied to the home. The shape and function of the house, as well as family needs, determine the garden. So again, I was tapped into architecture.
In 1985, I bought my first home. It was a summer ‘camp’ for a retired couple - a 22’ travel trailer with a 12'x18' room added onto it, which sat on an acre on the Lamprey River in Lee, NH. The lot had great solar potential and southern views to the river.
My first winter there, I watched the sun every day. My little living room was flooded with sun and warmth. I hardly built a fire in the daytime. I designed a post and beam passive solar home and found a carpenter, who learned his trade from the Shelter Institute in Maine. The following summer, we started building.
I became my own contractor for this project, and I built a beautiful, passive solar, heavily insulated, energy efficient home of native materials. It sounds easier than it was, believe me, but the learning experience was more than worth it.
Personal turmoil and one too many brutal winters drove me away from that house in New Hampshire. I traveled a bit and ended up in Taos in 1988, designing homes and gardens on paper all the while.
The sun of the southwest further excited me about solar design. I couldn’t believe more people weren’t taking advantage of this free energy source. If it worked for me in cloudy New Hampshire, it had to work very well here in sunny New Mexico!
I was fortunate to live at New Buffalo in Arroyo Hondo when I first got here. The room I had was in an adobe wing with a solar greenhouse attached to it. Food was growing in the greenhouse, and the adobe wall on the north side of it acted as thermal mass to store collected heat. That heat was transferred to my room on the backside of that wall. I hardly ever built a fire in winter. This seemed to be a perfect heating system! Ah…. I had found solar again.
Every house I ever looked at to buy for myself had to have some solar potential. I passed it by if it didn’t have a south face with no obstructions. After three years of looking, I found one! My daughters and I have lived in our passive solar home since 1999. I’m happy to be living with the sun again. I rarely build a daytime fire.
As of this re-writing in late summer 2007, I am adding a solar greenhouse for food and heat, and replacing old windows and my sliding glass door with energy efficient, low-e windows. This old ranch house is getting better and better. I want to see how little wood I can get away with burning!
So here I am now, your potential Realtor®, engrossed in homes and land since childhood. That lifelong interest and curiosity of mine is your benefit! I am also a Certified EcoBroker®, trained in green real estate: environmental issues, building, solar applications, green financing and more. My personal experience and professional training are a perfect combination to get you into the home of your choice! I am confident in my abilities, and you can be, too.
Besides homes and gardens, my other interests include my two teenage girls, photography, beading, reading, writing, textile arts and being outdoors. I am an avid recycler and have been gardening organically for over 30 years. I love to travel, but my favorite vacation is to sit on my back porch and watch the light change on Taos Mountain.
You can read about my EcoBroker® designation here.
