Many of the old timers on this forum remember the work of Mark Chenail on the 200sf house design contest (http://www.countryplans.com/contest.html) (where he won 1st place :)) and later when he did a series of Dog Trot design templates (http://www.planhelp.com/public/programs/downloadsearch.cfm?keywords=dog&searchtype=keyword&searchmode=keyword&cat=all&sortby=recent&search=search) for PlanHelp.com.
Now Mark is developing some of his own plans and has written a good article on homesteading and has an overview of building a very simple post and beam type of first structure. The article is at Homestead.org and the main site has lots more information on animals, gardening and other homestead topics.
http://www.homestead.org/MarkChenail/SimplestHouseofall/SimplestHouseofAll-p1.htm
(http://www.homestead.org/MarkChenail/SimplestHouseofall/Simple12.gif)
Good for Mark. :)