I love quiet mornings. The sun has risen long ago in these early hours, but the light is soft and slanted. The air is cool and even the grass has a new-born freshness to it after sleeping through the night. In the morning, I make coffee, take vegetable scraps out to the chicken yard, and…
Tag: off-grid
Vintage Tables and Houseplants: Winterizing the Yurt
The maples around us are bright red and yellow; Even the oaks are starting to change. The ferns are rusty gold all down the path to the beaver pond. We’re stacking wood and planning for winter’s bacon. The whole world smells of October. Inside the house, we’re shifting furniture and hanging curtains – getting ready…
Candlemas Lights
We’ve been making a lot of candles this winter. Thanks to a generous hand-me-down from my mother-in-law – 15 lbs of beeswax! – and a recommitment to avoiding those careless trips into town for one or two things, like lamp oil, we’re been needing to just ‘make do’ for a night or two with candles…
Off-Grid Whole 30
So I assumed I’d never do another whole 30 after my failed attempt to complete one in 2016. I mean, no beans? We eat beans all the time. And no rice?! Rice is pretty much the backbone of our meals. It’s seems like such an expensive way to eat, honestly. And I really couldn’t afford…
Off-Grid Living: 3 ‘Don’ts’ for Making the Homesteading Life Work
Are you thinking of making the leap into off-grid homesteading? Longing for a cozy cabin just outside the reach of rampant materialism and the current cultural ennui, but don’t really think you can cut it? It can be a challenge, but you see – that’s one of the joys of going off-grid. Once you cut ties…
Washing Dishes..
We have piles of dishes to clean today…mostly canning jars that just need an extra scrub to get the dust out before they’re used for canning. But it’s been a busy week (again! Oh-my-goodness August is an insane month for us this year!) Dishes are not my favorite chore. I grew up with a dishwasher,…
7 Quick Takes: Intentional living, minimalism, and me.
Off-grid intentional living, in pursuit of some beautiful, wabi-sabi ideal!
Nighttime in July
In the summer, the sun stays up late into the evening. When it finally goes down, we light a lamp or two, or even just a couple candles, and sit out on the stoop to watch the moon rise. The evening sky is full of june-bugs, mosquitos, bats, moths, bright, early stars, and the moon,…
Off-grid, Online
There are all sorts of off-grid homesteaders. Some have solar panels that can power a typical suburban lifestyle: television, desktop, washing machine, lights, all the trappings of modern, American living. Others cut down firewood with hand-saws, make their own beeswax candles, and long-ago abandoned phones, computers, and the online life that goes along with it….
Kitchen Magic
Our yurt is 24′ in diameter, which means it is about 450ish square feet altogether. But yurts are so expansive inside, the dome is about 11′ high and if it isn’t divided up into rooms with walls and doorways, the space feels bigger than it is. When I’m cooking at the stove, it feels like…
Y is For Home! 