If it were up to Everett “Jake” Jacobs and his wife Barbara Jacobs, they would stay for the rest of their lives on their “little piece of paradise” just outside Birchdale.
“We enjoyed every bit of it,” Jake said. “This has been fun for us.”
The couple moved to Koochiching County from Montana 21 years ago through the county’s “Bidstead” program — similar to homesteading — in 1991.
The county offered them a plot of tax-forfeited land with the requirement that they would build a house and live on the land for at least 10 years, while staying self-sufficient. The program was intended to boost the county’s declining economy in its most rural areas, and help support the rural school districts and businesses. The program drew national and international attention as “modern-day homesteading.”
In the end, the Jacobs’ were among a handful of people who went through with the program, and are the last “Bidsteaders” in the area.
The then-county board’s hope for economic revitalization through the program did not become a reality. But from the Jacobs’ perspective, they made it their own personal success.
“I’ve always wanted to build a house of my own,” Jake, 74, said with a smile. “When most people say they built their house, they mean they picked up the phone and called the carpenter. We built the house ourselves, so if something’s not right, I know who to blame.”
“He was able to fulfill a dream that he had all his life,” Barbara said. “And I felt like I was living my dad’s dream — he wanted to live on land with a little brook going through it, and we have a brook going through our land.”
As Jake’s health deteriorates — he was diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and has diabetes and heart problems — it’s becoming more difficult for he and Barbara to maintain the 54 acres of land. The Bidstead property is 20 acres, and a few years after living on it, they purchased the surrounding 34 acres from the county.
“We couldn’t talk our kids into moving up here to take care of us, so we’re going to move closer to them,” Jake said as he laughed. “Our parents chased us around when we were younger, so we’ll find them.”
The couple will be moving to Peoria, a city in southern Illinois, in less than three weeks. They’ll be living in an apartment about six blocks from their daughter, Debbie. Their other children live in cold areas — a son in Devil’s Lake, N.D., and a daughter in Cut Bank, Montana — and the Jacobs’ wanted to live somewhere warm for a change, Barbara said.
Moving will be bittersweet, they said — they’ve come to love the community, the wilderness and life in rural Minnesota. The couple has moved around the nation throughout their lives, and although at first, they had viewed the move to Koochiching County as a new adventure, they said this is the only place in the world they call home.
“This is our little piece of paradise,” Barbara said.
Starting from scratch
The couple applied for the program when they were in their 50s, and they had adult children living on their own. Jake was retired from the U.S. Air Force, but had a background in carpentry.
Barbara was his “apprentice,” Jake joked, and she learned about construction, electricity, plumbing and other work as they built the house together.
“And I told him where to go many times,” Barbara said with a laugh.
Barbara peeled bark from trees they cut from the property, and they used much of the wood to build the house. Inside, the railings on the stairs are trunks of thin trees, and larger trunks were put in as part of the foundation.
“We cut down a sapling, I peeled it, dried it, varnished it, and made it into a railing,” Barbara said.
They kept the tree trunks’ curves and shape. They also used the siding from an abandoned homestead house on the property, built in the 1940s. Jake said the property had been abandoned for more than 40 years.
A boulder they found when digging the stairwell to their basement is now part of their landscaping — a large decorative rock surrounded by flowers in their yard.
The couple built the house over the span of several years. They lived in a camper on the property at first.
“The first year, we just piddled around,” Jake said with a smile.
Next, they dug the basement and lived there as they built the rest of the house. The Jacobs’ moved their camper into the garage and made it their kitchen until the house’s kitchen was finished.
“The neat thing was, it was nearly eight years before she had a kitchen, but the camper kitchen worked just fine,” Jake said.
Jake was a “farm boy” from Parker, S.D., and Barbara called herself a “city girl” from West Haven, Conn. Their different perspectives helped make their teamwork successful, the couple said.
“If something was too heavy, he could figure out a way to move it around — it didn’t have to make sense, it just worked,” Barbara said. “He’s a go-getter, and he thinks very logically.”
Every time Barbara said to Jake, “you can’t do that,” it would motivate him to show her it was possible, he said.
“It gave me a challenge, and I’ve always enjoyed a challenge,” he said. “We enjoyed every bit of it because we were doing what we wanted to do.”
When the couple realized the camper was stuck in the garage from being their kitchen for so many years, Jake walked in, deflated some air from the camper’s tires, and got the camper out.
But the best thing he was able to show her was it was possible to live on his retired military income, he said.
“To me, it was fun, because I was proving to her that we could do it,” Jake said. “She didn’t think we could live on my Air Force retirement pay. But every month, I got to say, ‘See, I told you so.’”
To get the beginning materials, the couple sold $13,000 of timber from the property to loggers. They also worked in the cold-weather testing industry over the winter months, and would buy material for the house in the summer.
“We built with cash; we didn’t ever loan anything for the house,” Jake said.
But not everything went smoothly. Jake dug the basement too deep and water from the ground seeped in through the dirt as he was trying to build. The couple had to wire all the electricity and take care of the plumbing; the land did not come wired for utilities. And they didn’t have heat right away, so they built an outdoor wood stove to keep warm. For years, they heated water and hauled it up the stairs for a bath.
“You just roll with the flow,” Barbara said.
And through the challenges, their sense of humor and can-do attitude got them through, Jake said. If he didn’t know how to do something, he’d read a book about it to learn, he said.
“They say if you build a house together, that’s the quickest way to divorce court,” Barbara said with a laugh. “But we’ve always done everything together. It’s been a wonderful experience.”
Jake feels a sense of accomplishment because he was doing what he always wanted to do, in a community of which they’ve become very fond.
“I love building things, and this was my chance to build something without anyone telling me how to do it,” Jake said.
Most of the ideas for the house were Jake’s, and Barbara was OK with that, under one condition, he said.
“One of the things she insisted on was if we were going to be working together all day long, when we came in the house, she expected help around the house, too,” Jake said as he looked at Barbara and smiled.
The couple modified their plans as they went, and Jake said he learned that construction has to be tailored to the type of land in the area.
“If you don’t pay attention to what’s workable in the area you live in, you’re being really stupid,” he said, adding that he’s made his fair share of bloopers on the house. “It’s funny — if I had built the house just one foot higher it would have been so much easier. The water kept fighting me from the spring flowing in, and every time it rained, it put us back.”
The couple said they don’t have many regrets.
“Every step of the way, you really appreciate the next thing you accomplish,” Jake said. “We started out with a bucket under a tree for a bathroom. We roughed it — it was like camping all the time. Now we actually have two bathrooms.”
Looking back, they had things they wanted to do with the house, but didn’t get a chance to.
“We had a lot of dreams that didn’t come true,” Barbara said.
“It all takes time, and you just run out of time,” Jake said.
Saying Goodbye
The Jacobs’ will miss the people they’ve met in the community the most, they said.
“We felt at home right away,” Jake said. “In fact, people offered to help us in any way they could.”
They are moving at the end of the month, and are selling the home to their neighbors’ son, who is now an adult.
“He would ride over on his tricycle, and say, ‘Well, I just stopped to see what you’re doing today,’” Barbara said with a smile. “And we’d show him what we were working on.”
The couple had never heard of or been to Koochiching County before they heard about the Bidstead program on a radio advertisement, but have gotten to know the Birchdale community well over the years.
“It’s a very active little community here,” Barbara said. “I don’t know why people think they’re bored if they’re out in the country — because we were never bored.”
Barbara credits her new attitude when moving to Koochiching County for all the friends she’s made.
“When we lived in Colorado Springs — we moved around a lot — we didn’t know anyone. I was very lonely. And later, when we lived in Washington, D.C., I didn’t know my neighbors,” she said. “I made up my mind since then, I was never going to be as lonely as I was in Colorado Springs. I made it a point to meet my neighbors. And that’s been our life ever since.”
Jake added that all the people he’s met in the area will always be his friends.
“I’ll miss our friends, but I plan on keeping them,” he said with a smile. “Besides, they’ve already decided they’ll stop to bug us when they go on trips and stuff.”
And the couple has taken several pictures over the years of the house they built together.
“It’s a unique house — there’s not another one like it, because there’s not another architect like me,” Jake joked.
Barbara added that although they are excited for their new adventure in their next chapter of life, it’s still hard letting go.
“We planned on living here until we died,” Barbara said.
