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Lacsara as one of the zones a short way up from the village, say 15 minute walk from the edge of Breb village. You just follow the main track and stay on it until you get to Mihia's land and take a right down a track to the stream. Once your over the stream your on our land. The plot here is 3.5 hectares of land. The stream runs down ones side of it and curves around the middle so there is like a headland sticking out in front of the cabana. I bought the land off two brothers. They left Breb 40 years ago and moved to Sarbi over the hill. The hadn't farmed the land for 5 years and it was getting over grown. All our neighbors here seemed quite please when we bought the land here as they are annoyed it has not been kept and the weeds where (are) creeping onto their well kept meadows.
The cabana is in good condition and was well kept for most of it's life. It came from villa of Sarbi like Copăciş and was the longest negations of the lot. each time I agreed a price he wanted more, he could never cope with the fact that if i agreed a price, that must mean i would go higher. It took awhile but we got there. It's 10 meters long by 6 meter. So a normal size for a traditional Maramures house. It is made of pine and all the beams except for a few right at the bottom are in good condition and needed little restoration when putting up again. We estimate form talking to the family that sold the cabana to us that it is around 75 years old.
Lacsara is a similar height above the village as Zapodi but is much more private. As it has it's own headland as such, no one walks through the land to get anywhere, where as Zapodi is on a main track up the mountain with people walking past now and then. Lacsara is completely surrounded by trees and you feel very protected against the wind and elements. If you walk up behind the cabana to where the picture was taken above there is a great view down the valley. We plan to build a huge swing here using the trees we need to clear to 'tidy up' the land and keep up with Jones and Pop's next door. The view is as good as Zapodi but different as you are still backed by forest for most of your view.
Lacsara has access to it's own stream to the left of the cabana shown above where children can paddle in the steam, make dam's make a mess, do what ever there want. We have all kinds of ideas for here, making a small dam so people can swim. Every one in the village wants us to build a large dam here and make a trout farm. I can see the benefit to them, when I'm not around... we'll see. One good idea is the stream drops 32 meters in height from the top of the land to where it leaves it further down the valley. I've calculated we can get around 2 to 3 kilowatts of electricity from this drop and so make enough electricity to have electric heaters on all winter, even if someone is not staying in the cabana.
As you can see from the picture above Penny has made a great job of restoring the house to it's original state and has cleared a lot of the meadow of small trees that where sprouting up everywhere and has started the long process of killing off the weeds. We are told we just need to scythe, scythe and scythe the hell out of them and eventually the grass takes control again and viola.
Penny did all the work on this house. I marked out the foundations for it and had to leave to do some work in Bucharest. When I returned six weeks later this is what I found. the roof was competed after I left again. the cabana has all winter to settle into it's new location and be ready for the hassle branches to be nailed to the interior and then covered in mud. This is the way houses like this have been built in Maramures for thousands of years. The skills are still known in the village though few still use them. It lets the wood breathe, allowing for the moisture collected in the winter months to seep out in the summer and stop the wood from rotting. If you use cements it locks in the water and the beams are rotten within 20 years.
We see the cabana being used by families who want to 'get away from it all' and stay the whole week up the valley only coming down into Breb during the day now and again. If when you stay with us in the Casa Mic and you would like to camp out under the stars one night. This is a great place to do it. We have sleeping bags and all you need for cooking over an open fire so you can 'sleep out' any time you want.
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