I have a confession, at least it seems like one. However like most things that people try to keep hidden there are parts that aren’t so secret and some of this you might already know about us. Then there are parts that well, we just haven’t wanted to let get around.  Just a word of warning, when I was working this post out in my mind earlier one thing after another was coming to the forefront to want to put  down on “paper” so this could either be a really long post or a 2 parter.

So let’s start with the part of the confession that is already known. If the average person from 2018 walked into our home, our tiny little off grid cabin in the woods,  many would feel like they stepped back in time.  There is no electricity to speak of, save the little invertor generator whose extension cord comes in through one of the cabin walls as an invader, to charge our computers and occasionally run a strand of white Christmas lights when the kerosene is low or when we are trying to conserve it. Dirty little secret that is not part of the confession I’m getting ready to make…gas is WAY cheaper then kerosene and I mean WAY cheaper at least in these parts.  Gas is average right now about $2.50 a gallon while kerosene which is not found in the pump up here but in the local hardware stores is an average $10 a gallon.  With winter and a lot more dark, to help decrease the cost we have used the generator to help us save some cash. 

Back on topic here, if there is not electricity in our cabin then there is no electric refrigerator.  We have no well, which means even if we did have a well without electricity there is not running water.  Our water comes from a community artesian well….picture in your mind something similar to the pioneers having to travel to a river to haul water back in their wood barrels and wagons.  Our wood barrels are plastic 5 gallon containers and our wagon is a big red suburban, our river is of course the artesian well.

We have no septic which means we have no flushing toilet….for those of you who cannot imagine it and are certain we must be breaking some kind of health code please relax as this is not the case. We live in an area where “remote” cabins are approved by the county as it is mainly a recreational area so we are approved by our counties health department (yes there are not only codes within our county that must be followed by all be we are also within the codes and are approved for them by the county and we have the permit to prove it).  We have a composting toilet (no they do not stink) hence the permit.  I would compare it to an outhouse the pioneers would have used but as I stated, it doesn’t stink and it is not outside. It just is not the “norm” of our society which is of course what many find odd.

Our heat source is a woodstove as well as our cook source and how we heat our water. We have an old fashion ice box for our refrigeration needs and what furnishings we have either have been hand made to fit into a century ago or they are from a century ago.

Our 3^rd child was too young to remember eating at a restaurant when we stopped going and our 4^th child never has…ever. Not because we have wanted to deprive them but because we do not believe that much of that food is worth eating and it didn’t really fit into our vision of our family dynamics.  They are amused at going to someone’s house that cooks in an electric or gas range or in a microwave. They believe milk comes from an utter and not a carton from the store. They know eggs come out of the backside of a chicken and that chicken on the dinner plate once had feathers. Wood is split with an ax and they have no idea what a log splitter is because in their life time the only log splitter they have ever seen is their Daddy or older brothers splitting wood and yes even on occasion myself.

Through the years, off and on, we have grown and preserved our own food and almost always cooking/baking from scratch with as little modern day process foods as possible.

So my point thus far, yes, many who see or walk into our home have stated they feel like they have stepped into a different time. It was the same way prior to our moving and going off grid.  Most of you reading this that have followed us on youtube know our story, that for years while living in a “wired” house we still tried to adapt our lifestyle as much as feasibly possible as it can be to off grid living when living on grid.  That is difficult but you can imitate it to a large degree although all of that is probably better for another post however in order to get to my confession I need to lay some foundation regardless if you know how we lived previously or not.

I will try to make filling in the blanks brief. Back up to 1994, Ron and I met the first couple we had ever known that actually had a wood cookstove. Not only was it a wood cookstove but they actually used it and it was an antique.  Mini confession coming up: keep in mind that prior to 1993 I had spent a few years watching Little House on the Prairie endlessly. Besides the family values that the show displayed what I really drank in was the day to day way of life that they so masterfully showed in the first few seasons of that series.  When watching the reruns for the umpteenth time, enough to know the story line by heart word for word, what I was really watching was not the people, but the stove, the clothing, the furnishings, the lack of modern amenities. I understood that I was greatly fascinated with that and it was great that Ron was fascinated too (maybe not enough to watch them as many times as I did) but we both admitted our fascination and also we both knew that people didn’t live like that anymore. So we took that fascination and decided to surround ourselves with antiques for atmosphere, as many as we could, and I started cooking from scratch. As sad as it sounds because after all it is just a show, that show greatly influence me as it gave me an introduction to a time that I longed for (yes I am aware that many of the things it presented were factually inaccurate) but my point is that it sparked something in us.

History was brewing inside of us so we stumbled around finding things that would draw us closer to what we considered to be a simpler time. I started reading old cookbooks and homemaking guides and found my cooking changing to fit those years versus what I had been use to. Our microwave soon left our home permanently.  Old magazines with people’s memories of living in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s were also important ways for us to spend our time together as it gave a us a connection to the past we otherwise would not have had. We were captivated by them.  But that was as far as we could go until we met that couple. When I saw that beautiful stove in their kitchen and the homemade loaf of bread she had just baked, our lives changed forever.  I had no idea, nor did Ron, that day would mark a day that would forever change us and the course we were to take that would transform over a period of years.  After meeting that couple, or should I say the cookstove, months passed by and though you couldn’t really see any changing on the outside of us, changing was happening on the inside. Things such as thoughts, feelings and ideas were culminating and brewing but neither one of us really knew what to do with those things at that time. 

About a year later we met another “first”. We met our first homesteaders.  They weren’t off grid by any means but they were homesteaders, raising their own food and preserving it.  They raised dairy goats and chickens.  They had geese and turkeys.  They had self-sufficiency, much more than most and certainly more than anyone we had ever known.  If we thought something happened to us and our outlook a year earlier when we met the couple with the wood cookstove we were in for a surprise when we met the homesteaders and it is safe to say that those around us were not prepared for the changes that were about to overtake us.  See what happened was the love of the past and the introduction to modern homesteading culminated for us at that moment.  We viewed homesteading as not only an intelligent way to live and raise a family but homesteading gave us the okay in the modern world to embrace some of the history and ways of life from the past that prior to that we could really not logically explain to ourselves or anyone else why it would be worth the time and effort to do any of that stuff…..we were young and the fact of doing it for satisfaction as enough of a reason had not crossed our minds.

It wasn’t long after that we sold our home in town, moved to our first property in the country, fired up the wood cookstove, raised milk goats, chickens and planted a garden.  The inner wants that had been viewed as odd, even by us, were being filled and it was well with our souls.  That doesn’t mean it was any better received by those around us. People had still thought we had lost our minds and (mini confession #3) that did slow us down a bit and sometimes it slowed us down a lot.  We found that we constantly had to explain or justify our actions as they were outside of the norm.  We were okay with the progress we had just made for several years but as time passed the progress that we found fulfilling before wasn’t enough any longer. The problem was the thing we really wanted to do just seemed even farther out there then what we had already done so again, we put another inner desire on the back burner.

Now if you are a homesteader and you are reading this I want to put a disclaimer in here. First off people of all different circumstances homestead. Some homestead on a city lot. JD Belanger, for us homesteaders that started a couple decades ago would know him as technically the grandfather of modern day homesteading.  He said that the place he was most productive as a homesteader was on a 1 acre yard in town. When he stated that he was living on several hundred acres.  My reason for pointing that out is and I quote him “homesteading is a state of mind”.  It doesn’t matter if you are doing it on a city lot, an apartment terrace, or 1000 acres, you are a homesteader because you are being productive and being as self-sufficient as you can/want.

Besides different lot sizes for homesteaders, homesteaders come with different ideas. Some homesteaders want all the modern amenities of today’s culture while on grid with no desire to be off grid. Some want to be off grid, this may mean being off the electric grid yet still having a power source of wind, solar or generator while having modern amenities or it may mean totally no electric or a combination off and on grid.  For us totally off grid called us, it lined up with our vision of what life would have been more like from the early 1900’s and prior. Remember our love of history, our desire for a similar life and our love for homesteading while living in the modern world they were all trying to mesh together and this of course means they conflicted with each because one of them in the mix just didn’t fit the others. That was of course the modern world.

Okay this might be a good spot to stop for this post. My confession will have to come in part two.