The Haves and the Have Nots

As we were returning from our trip up North I had a lot of questions, and a few anxieties, running through my mind about how the property had fared while we were gone. We have now been back just a bit over a week and I have put together a list of how things stand since my last post.

1. We have a new grandson.
We traveled to Wisconsin for the birth of our grandson, Connor. I have had the immense honor of being able to witness the birth of all four of our grandchildren. As Connor, like his sister, decided he was way to comfortable and did not want to go through the birth process, he was a born a week past his due date. This gave us about 10 days up North to visit with friends and family before we got to meet him. We then stayed another couple weeks after his birth before making the long trip back to the Ozarks. While I loved all that time playing with grandbabies and being able to visit with friends and family, there are always little niggling thoughts about things going on back at the property - bad weather, deer ravaging the garden, raccoons taking over the house....

They may not have taken over, but this raccoon
seems to think he is now part of the family.

2. Raccoons have not taken over the house.
Yes, my war with raccoons continues. We do not put out suets or bird feeders in the summer, but we did need to move the hummingbird feeders out of the trees and up onto the hooks we placed under the eaves this winter. The raccoons were imbibing on nectar each night, maybe we should have added some alcohol to see if they would get tipsy and fall out of the trees.

The south garden upon our return.
There was a couple of inches of water in the
pools holding the tomato containers.

3. We have had a lot of rain.
Right before heading North, I placed the items in my container garden into kiddie pools in hopes that any rains that came while we were gone would not only water the plants but also partially fill the pools so that the plants would also have water during dry spells. I avidly checked the weather conditions while away and was pleased how many times rain storms were forecast to pass over the Geeks' Quad during our hiatus. When we returned everything was well watered and had grown quite well in our absence. Unfortunately, since our return we have continued to get rain daily. This tilts our balance of sun to generate solar power and rain to replenish water supplies off kilter. Our water storage tanks are now full and we are 'throwing away' water with each new rain, while our battery banks are not getting completely recharged each day as they do in sunny weather. We did go three days in a row with totally overcast skies and our batteries were still not depleted to the point of having the charge controller shut down our power to protect the batteries from over-discharging, so it has been a good test.

4. We have a lot of ticks.
With all the wet weather we had this spring, we did not get to treat the property around the house with tick repellent before we left. As soon as we returned I made a quick trip around each of the three gardens to see how everything had survived (or if it survived) and just while walking through the 'yard' to the north garden I brushed two ticks off my arms. Ticks like to lay in way on weeds and trees and then drop onto you as you walk by. The two main gardens, North and South, have landscaping fabric completely covering the ground, so once inside the fences I am fairly safe against tick attacks, it is just the trips made to get to the gardens that are rampant with ambushing ticks.

The north garden also had lots of growth and few weeds.

5. We have a lot of plants growing in the gardens.
Yes, our gardens have done quite well while we were away. There were very few plants that appeared to be dug up and/or missing, so something must have crossed the barrier of putridness we had sprinkled around the garden fences, but it seemed to work well over-all. There were also very few weeds and they were easy to pull, that is one advantage to planting in raised beds. A few of the  vegetables are not as hardy or as plentiful as I had hoped. In particular, my pole beans are a bit sparse. I had started these indoors along with my tomatoes, cabbages, peppers and what-not, even though beans do not tend to transplant well and should be direct planted into the garden. However, with the time it was taking me to construct the North garden, I made the decision to try starting them inside and transplanting. While the beans that sprouted did seem to handle the transplant process, there was a very low rate of germination of the seeds compared to the other vegetables I started indoors. As I was planting the garden (transplanting everything) the day before we left, I decided to plant the little seed starter pots even if the beans had not sprouted yet. By the look of my bean beds, none of these late bloomers ever really bloomed, or sprouted for that matter.

Our first produce of the season.

6. We have not had much produce from the gardens...yet.
I have been able to pick a few handfuls of English garden peas. I was trying to time their maturation so that they would be ready to pick when we returned. The only problem is that this meant I planted them about a month later then is recommended for this area. They do not grow well in hot weather, so it is best to plant them in either early spring or late summer for best results.

Alan installing the ceiling fan.

7. We have a ceiling fan.
With the entire house being wired with a 12 volt system, it is on rare occasions a challenge to find electronics that are compatible. In most cases, as long as the appliance has a 'wall wart' - that little box at the end of the cord that has the electric plug built into it - it is a very easy conversion. The purpose of the wall wart is to step down the voltage in your typical home (120v) to the voltage the appliance actually uses, which in most cases is 12 volts. For example, we bought our television at Best Buy, it is meant to be plugged into a 120v wall socket. It had a wall wart at the plug end which then sent 12 volts to the television. We simply cut off the wall wart from the end of the cord and attached a typical two pronged electrical plug so that our 12 volt house system feeds directly into the television.

The majority of people who set up solar power systems actually use an inverter to boost their battery output (12 volts) up to the typical 120 volt household rating. In doing this they loose at least 20 percent of their power just in the inversion process. Then, by using 120v appliances they also use much more power inefficiently, especially since many items in the house need to have the power stepped back down, just take a look around and see how many items in your house have wall warts attached.

Okay, after that short digression, let's get back to our new ceiling fan. Our first summer here we picked up some table fans at Walmart that were actually stepped down to 12V in the manner I described above. We lopped of the end of the cords and replaced them with plugs we could plug directly into our wiring. These fans work great for an up-close breeze as we sit and work, but we have been wanting to get a ceiling fan to circulate the air in both the summer and winter. In the winter, the air near the ceiling is probably about 20 degrees warmer than that down where we are sitting, so it would be nice to be able to mix that in using the ceiling fan. Alan spent quite a bit of time searching and found ceiling fans that runs directly on 12V. It is extremely energy efficient and pulls only half an amp, which is very similar to what one of our light bulbs pull. The fan has summer and winter settings which change the direction of the air flow and it also has variable speeds. The speed control uses a nifty idea. Remember my discussion about how most people use an inverter to boost their power back up to 120V? Well, the speed control has a mini inverter, basically a circuit board on the back of the wall switch, that varies the power between 9V and 25V. By turning the speed control dial on the wall switch, you change the voltage which changes the speed at which the motor is rotating the fan blades.

8. We have not crossed everything off our to-do list.
When we first moved to the property, we had so many projects we had to prioritize them as to what needed to be done first. Now, we tend to add projects to the list as we discover new ideas and products that will enhance our off-grid life. When most people first learn we are living off-grid, they envision a glorified, or not so glorified, never-ending camping trip. As we describe to them all the amenities we have in our home they are usually surprised. Our original goal was not to be able to simply survive off grid, it was to set up a comfortable home in which we choose to be as self-sufficient as possible. That means providing power for all of our needs and desires, having a water supply that provides enough water to live comfortably, etc. Yes, some people may think we are roughing it in some aspects of our life, but it is always a challenge we enjoy. When we come across something we want to improve in our 'quality of living' we see that as another adventure in problem solving. It has been enlightening to look back and see how far we have come from that first night in the house with oil lanterns and just two solar panels providing power to charge our computers.

9. We have not missed the on-grid life. 
In all honestly, if you asked me at the beginning of this adventure if I was going to miss any creature comforts, I probably would have come up with a list of things I thought I would miss. Maybe a washer and dryer, possibly a freezer or my KitchenAid mixer, but after over two years, I must say I am totally content. In fact, when we do have to jump back into the grid life when we makes trips to Wisconsin like this spring, we actually find ourselves homesick for our off-grid life.

We are truly blessed to have this quirky life and to have not felt the need to lead a normal life.

What's the Scoop? Give Me the Dirt!

It seems that our life each May is getting a bit redundant. Last year our May consisted of - rushing to plant the garden - heading home to Wisconsin for the birth of a new grandbaby  - returning south about a month later to see how the garden had fared in our absence. This May we have again rushed to plant the garden, are now back home in Wisconsin for the birth of another grandbaby and then will be returning in a month or so to see how the garden has survived. We have a had a new grandbaby each year for the past four years, I am hoping my garden will be as fruitful!

The East Garden
Jerusalem Artichokes in the foreground
Long Island Cheese Pumpkins in the tires

Actually, I should say gardens, as we now have three garden areas. The east garden is the original raised garden area along the road in front of the house where the previous owners had planted flower bulbs. Last year I spent days digging up flower bulbs that had multiplied over the years. This garden was not very successful last year as the dirt that was used to build it was very rocky and mainly clay. This year, I left the asparagus and rhubarb in place that I had planted there, but the only other item I planted in that dirt were Jerusalem artichokes. These root vegetables, which  are also known as sunchokes, are supposed to grow almost anywhere and are perennials (like the asparagus and strawberries in that same bed). They are used like potatoes. According to my garden spreadsheet, I planted the Jerusalem artichokes on March 23rd and when we left the property on May 10th, there were already 2 feet high. They look like sunflowers as they grow and the edible tubers have a knobby appearance similar to ginger.

Hauling tires onto the property!

I also placed some tires in this bed to use as containers. We were told that before we purchased this property, the bank that had foreclosed on it had hired a service to clean up the house and grounds. This clean-up included removing 79 tires from the yard and woods around the house.

When I told Alan I now wanted to move some tires back onto the property for gardening, he was not enthusiastic. But, when I promised to paint them to look less tire-y he agreed that I could use them. I even found someone on Craig's List giving away dozens of tires that had already been modified for gardening - they had removed one side of the tires.  So, off we went to collect a couple dozen tires and several cans of spray paint. Four of my colorful tires are now in the east garden and are being used for Long Island Cheese Pumpkins.

A. Garlic   B. Amish Paste Tomatoes  
C. Red Thai Roselle (it puts the zing in Red Zinger tea)
D. German Red Strawberry Tomatoes   E. Half-Long Carrots
F. Maestro Garden Peas   G. Luffa Gourds

Next came the south garden. I had started this area, next to the house, as a container garden last year and have expanded it this year. We placed feedlot panels around the garden area to keep out deer and then added more containers. This garden now has lots of large flower pots for tomatoes, as well as more colorful tires and some kiddie wading pools I got on clearance last fall and am using as raised beds. As soon as it was done I transplanted my tomato plants and peas from their starter pots into their containers.

The next morning, when I checked my little plants, I discovered something had climbed through the feedlot panels and dug up several of each of vegetables I had planted. Whatever critter it was, it had not eaten the plants, so I was able to rescue most of them and replant them.

Time to start googling... Alan found a product we could sprinkle around the perimeter of the garden (not near the actual plants) that was supposed to repell all sorts of animals. The label indicated this included raccoons, opossums and armadillos which were all high on our list of suspects. This product had mixed reviews on its effectiveness, so we were a bit dubious, but it was worth a try. The next morning I rushed out to inspect the gardens and everything was untouched. No critters have crossed the barriers in over a week, so hopefully we have found a solution to our nocturnal invaders.

A stack of the collapsible raised beds.
Each corner is hinged and each hinge has
prongs on the bottom for stacking.

The majority of our efforts have gone into creating a brand new garden to the north of the house that is now our largest garden area. We were able to purchase some very nice, inexpensive, collapsible raised beds that can also be stacked to make deeper beds. We chose the location for the new garden because it is flat and is the only area that is able to get sun most of the day.

The first step was to lay down landscaping fabric. Next, we placed the raised beds and then it was time to bring in the dirt. We found a business that sold mulch and top soil by the skid-loader scoop full, four scoops fills the bed of our large dually pick-up truck. We discovered this place also sold what they called 'raised bed mix' which is equal parts of top soil, sand, mushroom compost and fine pine mulch. This combination produces a loose soil with good water retention.

Using the first load of dirt to
fill the various containers in
the south garden.

Our first truck load filled all my new containers and four of our double stacked raised beds. A truck load of dirt does not go as far as you would think! FYI - it takes 75 shovel fulls to adequately fill a double high raised bed. They could use some more dirt in them, but that will be added this fall or next spring.

The North Garden - almost completed.

We knew we would need another two loads at least to complete all the beds, but with time running short, we were leaving in 4 days, we opted for one more truck load for now and then will fill the rest of the beds later in the year. So over two days, we had shoveled two truck loads of dirt into 5 gallon buckets, carried them to the beds and dumped, talk about sore muscles - especially since we have not been carrying firewood into the house for a month or so. Oh, and by the way, it was 90 degrees the week we were creating the north garden.

I actually had several reasons for waiting until just a few days before we left to bring in the dirt and plant the garden. Here's the countdown of the top three reasons:
3. I did not want to plant anything too early, to avoid any produce being ready to harvest while we were gone.
2. There was a big rainstorm predicted for Thursday night, so if we finished filling the beds with dirt before then, they would get thoroughly soaked and I could plant all my seedlings on Friday (plans were to drive home on Sunday).
1. Procrastination

So we finished off the dirt Thursday morning, completed the cattle penning around the new garden and waited for the rain. We did get our rain, so early Friday morning I started carrying all of my bedding plants to the north garden to be transplanted. It worked out that we had been able to fill just enough beds to accommodate all my waiting plants.

Adding twine climbers for my peas.

The final step was to add the various supports and trellises for the climbing plants and then a prayer that everything will survive during our hiatus. Actually, since I have a black thumb and can't even keep cactus alive, it is probably a good thing I am not around as all of our plants take root.

Oh yeah, I had mentioned my gardening spreadsheet, we live on the Geeks' Quad, would you expect anything less? When I began planting my seeds indoors I set up the spreadsheet to track:
1.) how they should be planted,
2.) when, where and how they would be planted outdoors and
3.) what the results are for each variety.
I will use these records to make changes next year to hopefully improve upon our results. Here is a list of the columns on my spreadsheet: SEED TYPE, DAYS TO GERMINATE, GERMINATION RATE, DAYS TO MATURATION, INSIDE PLANTING DATE, OUTSIDE PLANTING/TRANSPLANT DATE, LOCATION, DEPTH, SPACING, SUPPORT TYPE and YIELD. There is probably one more column I should add: DATE ALAN EATS THIS as he claims to be chlorophyll intolerant and thus does not eat vegetables....  yet.

Here are four photos of the North Garden:

A. Purple Podded Pole Beans
B. Henderson's Charleston Cabbage
C.Greasy Grits Pole Beans
D.Bronze D'Amposta Onions & Cayenne Peppers
E. Orange Bell Peppers
F. Rice Cowpeas

A. Greasy Grits Pole Beans
B. Black Edemame
C. Cantaloupe
D. Rice Cow Peas
E. Empty
F. Empty

A. Delicata (winter) Squash
B. Chantenay Red Core Carrots
C. Gold Princess Onions & Albino Bullnose Peppers
D. Potatoes
E. Early Jersey Wakefield Cabbage
F. Clay Cowpeas
G. Strawberries

A. Delicata (winter) Squash
B. Empty
C. Empty
D. Red Core Carrots
E. Gold Onions & Albino Peppers
F. Empty
G. Empty
H. Early Cabbage
I.  Clay Cowpeas

These Are A Few Of My LEAST Favorite Things

I was originally going to write this  first-of-the-year blog entry as a countdown of the things I do not like about living off-grid. But after sitting looking at a blank list, I realized there is nothing I do not like about my new lifestyle, there are just some things I like less than others. Even these 'drawbacks' have merits in their own way.

Let's start with the first thing that always pops into my mind when people ask me what I miss about my old, dependent life -
1. No Ice Cream! Our solar system provides us with a fairly abundant power supply, in fact, we recently upgraded to a larger refrigerator that is a converted chest freezer that is powered by our bank of solar charged batteries. We originally set up our kitchen with a small propane powered refrigerator. When shopping for the propane fridge, we could have opted for a 'typical' fridge design that even included a freezer, but one of these models would go through much, much more propane than the model we chose to meet our needs.

Once we realized the potential of our solar system, we decided to break one more dependency - that of buying propane for refrigeration, and switch to a solar electric option. However, with both of these refrigerators, neither has a freezer compartment. Well actually, the propane fridge was less accurate when it came to temperature control and we did at times end up with frozen milk and other items during hot weather!

THE MERIT of no ice cream in the house - There are actually two; first I tend to keep a supply of yogurt in the fridge and have that as a snack at night instead of ice cream and, second, stopping for ice cream while out running errands is a big treat. Oh, one more possible merit, we were at a birthday party a couple weeks ago and I did not feel guilty having a second helping of ice cream at the celebration.

This is NOT the spider I found, nor is it my hand!

2. Poisonous Spiders. Technically, this is not an off-grid issue, and as I think of other items I plan to include on this list some of them are not off-grid-centric but are more apparent and/or prevalent due to (a) moving south and (b) living out in the woods. Besides the brown recluse bite I had a few months ago, I also saw my first black widow spider a couple weeks ago. I was bringing in wood and one of the logs had a small black spider on it. Fortunately said arachnid was deceased, but I noticed a small bit of bright red on it, and upon closer examination I saw the tell tale red hour-glass shape on the abdomen. There were also red spots on the top side of the body, which I was not familiar with. A quick 'googling' confirmed that juvenile female black widows have these red spots.

THE MERIT of poisonous spiders - not a one that I can think of.

3. Ticks. See #2 above as to their relationship to off-grid living and their merits or lack there of.

4. Bitterly Cold Weather. On the whole, I love the volatile weather we get living in the Ozarks. In typical winters, there are days below freezing, but these cold fronts usually last for a day, or two at most, and can be immediately followed by balmy 50 and 60 degree days. Also, below zero temps are almost unheard of. However, this has not been a typical winter. We have already had a six-day stint of below freezing temperatures in December and this week we had two nights in a row where the thermometer dipped below 0. Again, this condition is not a symptom of being off-grid, but being off-grid adds some interesting complications when could weather hits, such as:

A 38 degree toilet seat!

• Going back to carrying water to the bathroom for flushing the toilet and taking showers as the hose from our gravity feed tank outside is frozen.
• Making sure we wake up every two hours or so at night to add wood to the fire. Normally we keep the bedroom door open at night so that the heat from the main area of the house also heats the bedroom, but on the below zero nights we slept in front of the fire in the living room and closed off the bedroom door so as not to try and heat the extra space. 
• We also kept the bathroom door closed to corral all the heat in the main living area, but this led to some very cold situations when it was time to 'use the facilities.' You may recall in a very early post, I had inadvertently named our toilet 'Yipee!' Well, lets just say in this last cold spell Yippee was a bit nippy.

THE MERIT of periods of bitterly could weather - Despite the drawbacks listed above, there is a great sense of accomplishment as we realize our off-grid life is not nearly as disrupted as those living a less self-reliant life during these conditions. We sit in our warm living room watching the local evening news as sleet pellets are making a gentle tapping noise as they are blown against our windows and we realize everyone else is worrying about:

• Power outages - our batteries will last through several overcast days and if need be, we can supplement the sun by charging them with our emergency generator or bicycle generator.
• Loss of heat due to power outages  - our wood burner requires no electricity and even though some rooms may be a bit chilly, we are quite comfortable snuggling up by the fire. During the very frigid temperatures I found out some of our  friends were having a hard time keeping their house any warmer than about 66 degrees because houses are not winterized down here like they are up North.

A productive canning day:
One canner load of quarts (meatloaf patties & stew meat)
One load of pints (ground beef, sausage and venison)

• Not being able to get out to the store due to icy roads - with all the canning I have been doing, based on the fact that we do not depend on a freezer, we always have a supply of ready made meals and meats and my sourdough starter provides comfort foods like sourdough pancakes for a filling breakfast. We also have a supply of shelf stable milk so there is no need for that storm induced necessity of stocking up on bread and milk that permeates our society at the sight of the first falling snowflake.

Oh, and one more MERIT to the extra cold weather this winter - It will hopefully wreak havoc on the tick and spider population next summer!

Along Came ....

I know I way past due for a blog entry. So many things have happened since my last blog it is hard to know where to start and also difficult to remember all the things I want to include in this entry. One of the reasons for the lack of blogging the past couple months has been because "Along Came A Spider", the first entry in my list of what has come along in the last few weeks. While the spider bite had me out of commission for a couple weeks, there is no excuse for the dry spell I have had on the blog other than once I get out of a routine, like regular blog entries, I often find it difficult to get back on track. So, lets start the list of "Along Came..."

1. ....A Spider
When we first moved to our property I was a bit paranoid about brown recluse spiders. I fear spiders in general, and the horror stories I have heard from people that have suffered through brown recluse bites made me very cautious when we first moved into the house. We bug bombed the house and also regularly applied 'spider spray' around the baseboards and window sills. And for a year we saw no brown recluse.

The site of the bite.

In the summer we have some harmless grass spiders make it into the house. These 'skitters' as I call them, are very similar in size and appearance to the brown recluse, but the grass spiders have two dark stripes going down the length of their body, while the recluse has the tell-tale violin shaped mark on their head. While I can identify brown recluse, you need to be fairly close to them to verify their markings. This August, on two occurrences, I found a spider in our home office that upon closer examination I determined to be brown recluses. So, after living in the house for over the year, I saw my first brown recluse in the house. So, we once again applied the periodic spider spray.

The spider bite on my temple caused
severely swollen lymph nodes .

About a month later. I woke up to find one side of my face was swollen and I could feel hard lumps that were my lymph nodes along my jawline. I also had a red lump on my temple on the same side of my face. There was no pain and I could not find a puncture from a stinger, so I did not think it was an insect bite or sting and I assumed was another swollen node. For a week, the swelling got worse but there was still no pain. I decided it was time for a trip to the clinic. The doctor was not sure what it was, but felt it may be shingles and prescribed medication that he said would take effect within 48 hours. That night  I had my first pain and discomfort and things went down hill from there. I had seen the doctor on Thursday, which meant the shingles medicine should have had me feeling better by Saturday afternoon. But, come Saturday, I was feeling even worse with body aches, chills and a temperature. I had a follow-up appointment on Monday at which the doctor stated that it obviously wasn't shingles, then consulted with another doctor in the office and they decided to send me to an ENT physician since my lymph nodes were so enlarged.

When I arrived at the ENT, he took one look at the spot on my temple and said it was a brown recluse bite. He put me on strong antibiotics and within a few days I started feeling better as the venom worked its way out of my system. Needless to say, I am once again paranoid about brown recluse spiders.


2. ....A Couple Horses
On a happier note, we did have a couple more friendly visitors one evening this past month. We got home after dark one night and discovered two horses in our yard. They were right next to our deck eating grass that had sprouted up from seeds the birds had knocked out of their feeders. These were probably two of the horses that had came out of the woods next to the houses and visited last year as you may recall from a previous post. I tried to entice the horses to stay the night by tossing carrots from the deck, but they moseyed on down the road, back toward their pasture. I guess this is an annual adventure for them.

3. ....Another Solar Panel

This is the first of the two Grape solar
panels now installed.

We are once again planning another upgrade (#6 below) and knew we should increase our solar power capacity to accommodate it. We are so pleased with our latest solar panel (the new Grape Solar we added to our array of Harbor Freight panels) we decided to add another Grape panel into our solar system. There was a friend in our Self-Reliance Group that was looking for a wood burning stove, and he happened to have a Grape panel he did not have in use. Since we had a 'spare' wood burning stove from our upgrade last January, we were able to swap for the solar panel. It was a breeze connecting it into the system, and with our current battery capacity we can actually utilize one more Grape panel which we hope to buy within the next few months.

4. ....A New Neighbor?

A new neighbor came to borrow a cup of wi-fi.

About a month and a half ago, I heard someone whistling and looked to see a man walking up the road in front of our house. I was not outside, so he did not see me, but he turned toward the house and said something that sounded like 'I helped build that house' and continued walking on. A couple days later, I glanced out the window and saw the same man standing on the road in front of or house. He kept glancing down at his hand and back up. After a few minutes we realized he was connecting to our wi-fi with his phone. (We had unlocked it when our kids were visiting and never bothered to lock it back up, because who wold be accessing it out here in the middle of nowhere? He then walked up the driveway and introduced himself .

He told us he was currently staying at the hunting cabin which is the next 'residence' north of us on our road. When we bought our property we had done some research and discovered that at one point two brothers split a 40 acre lot to create our 20 acres and the 20 acres north of us. One of the brothers built the house on our property while the other brother built the cabin to the north. He helped build our house (his uncle's at the time) and he had lived in the cabin on the property next door. He also said he was hoping to buy back the cabin which his father had sold quite some time ago. He told us the current owner said he could stay there while he, the owner, decided if he wanted to sell the property.

Well, we saw our new neighbor every few days for about the next month as he came and left from the cabin. We never heard from him on how the possible purchase of the property was going, but late one night there was a lot of yelling and commotion down the road at his place. We could not hear much of what was going on, but it did not sound good. Alan sat out on the deck in the dark with our shotgun in his lap for a couple of hours. The next day he stopped by to ask if we had heard the ruckus. He said some other neighbors had stopped by yelling, asking what he was doing on the property. We never found out if he actually had permission to stay on the property, but we stopped seeing him a few days after that and the owners came and locked the gate on the driveway.

5. ....New Shelves For My Canning Jars
I have been doing a lot of canning this fall and all my canned goods have taken over various storage areas around the house, both in the kitchen and in our guest room. I was working on some planes to build some sturdy canning shelves (remember my sturdy wood thingies from an earlier post?). Well, I am pleased to say I now have two very sturdy shelves for my canning jars and I did not have to engineer them from various scrap items.

I volunteer three days a week at a food pantry and they often get donations from various stores and business that are not food related. One day when I arrived there was a nice looking set of shelves that had been donated. My first thought was 'Wow, that would make a great set of canning shelves.' Before I said anything, the director asked if I could use any shelves, they had had quite a number of these donated from a local candle company that used these as display units in the stores that sold their candles. I explained how I canned a lot, and the director gave me two sets of the shelves. They were unassembled in boxes and very heavy, we had to pick them up in our big pick up truck to bring them home and then Alan graciously built them for me, which was not an easy job.

6. ....A New Refrigerator

The 'old' propane fridge.

Yes, we have performed another upgrade in our off-griddiness. You may recall that we were using a propane powered refrigerator. It looked like a small chest freezer and we hooked it up to a 40 pound propane tank which needed to be refilled about every 3 months. The fridge was adequate but had two downsides. (1) it was difficult to keep a steady temperature and it often became too cold and we ended up with a lot of frozen stuff in our refrigerator, including eggs. (2) We were dependent on going out to buy propane for its operation.

During some research time, Alan discovered information about using a chest freezer as a refrigerator. This seemed like a good off-grid solution because the freezer would be well insulated to hold its temperature and would run infrequently enough that we could power it through an inverter connected to our bank of batteries. Thus, we would have a solar powered refrigerator and would no longer need a supply of propane for refrigeration.

Our new fridge, powered by our solar system.
Note the clock in the upper right corner of the photo,
it is timing the actual 'run time'.

There were a couple of hurdles to overcome to put this plan into action:
(1) We would need more solar power being generated to add in the refrigerator. This was solved with #3 above.
(2) Chest freezers are not designed to be able to be set to temperatures above freezing. This was solved by adding in a brewer's thermostat which would control the power cycling.
(3) The freezer needed to run off the inverter (120 not 12 volt). This would mean the inverter would have to be on 24/7 to be ready for the fridge whenever it periodically starts up, which would be very inefficient. The solution was finding an inverter that remains off, but checks every few seconds to see if there is something demanding power (ie., the fridge), in which case it turns itself on.

With the new inverter and the added thermostat we now have a larger fridge that runs off our solar system. When we first set it up, we also installed a small clock in line with the fridge. This way, the clock only ran when the fridge was running so we could determine how much time the fridge was actually pulling power. At 8 AM we set the clock for 12:00. Throughout the day, we could check the clock to see how much time had elapsed on it, which was 3-4 minutes each hour. At 8 AM the next day the clock (and fridge) had run only about 1 hour and 15 minutes.

7. ....A Family Celebration
Once again we went back 'on-grid' for our annual Turkey Palooza - a fun, crazy time with family the week of Thanksgiving. I did enjoy taking some of my home canned meats and vegetables to include in some of our meals.

Thanksgiving Dinner with the family.

8. ....My Parents

My parents experiencing our off-grid life.
We moved their daily Yatzee game in front of the fire.

My parents came to Turkey Palooza and then came back with us to see our property and enjoy off-grid life. After a week at Turkey Palooza, they were able to stay with us for two weeks at our property. We had a great time, with only one slight damper, which brings us to...

9. ....A Winter Storm
I had told my parents that the average temperature for this time of year is in the 50s during the day and the 30s at night. Well, for the first two days we were in the high 60s, the next day was in the 50s and then we were hit by a winter storm. Freezing rain covered everything in ice, followed by sleet and 5 inches of snow. Normally all of this would have melted within a day, but we have been hit with another weather fluke and temperatures have not been above freezing for 6 days. As I am writing this we have been house bound for six days, schools have been closed since last Thursday and I just heard they are closed again tomorrow (Wednesday) so they will have been closed for an entire week.

Pumping water from the extra storage tank after
we shut off the gravity feed tank to the bathroom.
We had conveniently placed this extra water under
the storage room window!

There have been thousands of people without power, who have had no heat, lights, etc. for a week. One advantage to being off-grid is that nothing much changed for us. We went through more wood than usual for this time of year and we closed off our outside water tanks and carried water to the bathroom like we did 'in the old days' of last year so as not to have the water lines freeze, but we still had power for lights, TV etc.

Realizing that while the winter storm has thrown many people for a loop with the loss of 'modern conveniences', our off-grid life was barely impacted and this reinforces that we are reaching the goals we are striving for in self-reliant living.

 

Oh, What's the Use! Really!

One thing we enjoy in our off-grid life is coming up with ways to re-purpose items to meet our needs. In most cases, it starts with an idea of something we want to build or a problem we want to solve. After mulling it over and discussing it with each other we end up with either a plan we devised together that we think might work, or an idea from one of us that we want to prove will work.

Over the past year, we have had many success stories, some that are still in the works, and a few failures. Today, I am going to share a few stories that cover all these scenarios.

First is the "Hey! That Really Works!" category:
As I think of some of the random items we have used in interesting manners to fulfill our needs, I realized we have various types. There are those that we have used, thought they were wonderful at the time and then later upgraded to yet a better idea. There are others that we use all over the place as a solution to a myriad of challenges - our go-to accessories to off-grid life. And then there are those that, when we see them we realize they have potential and thus bring them home and find a purpose for them.

Problem: Showering With No Running Water
Solution: Backpack Sprayer Becomes Our First Shower

When we first arrived at the property we had no running water. We had a fully equipped bathroom - tub, shower stall, sink and toilet but no water. On our first, of many, many trips to home improvement stores, Alan picked up a watering can. I was trying to figure out which weeds he felt deserved to be watered in the yard as we had no grass, flowers or vegetables anywhere on the 20 acres that I knew of. When I questioned the reason for this purchase, he introduced me to our first shower. The previous owners of the house had installed a bath/shower enclosure, but had never finished it off. The end where the plumbing is connected has open access in the bathroom. So one of us could hold the watering can over the enclosure and thus be the shower-er while the other stood inside the tub enclosure as the shower-ee. The solution was adequate, but not really convenient, especially for the one of us with long hair. (Note only one of us had long hair at that time.)

One day, while at one of our favorite shopping meccas - Harbor Freight, Alan spotted a backpack sprayer that is usually used by lawn care specialists and gardeners to spray liquid fertilizers or insecticides across large areas. Ding! the light bulb above his head lit up. With the 'business end' of the shower enclosure open for easy access, Alan was able to creatively mount the sprayer so that we could operate the pump handle while standing inside the shower. Imagine that, taking a shower was no longer a two-person endeavor.

In past posts, you have read how we have had several revisions to our shower and we now have hot, pressurized water that can sometimes be practically unlimited as long as we have had recent rainfalls and the 275 gallon holding tank is not getting low. Despite these extravagant upgrades, we still keep the backpack sprayer attached to the shower stall as it was one of our favorite inventions and can still be used as a back-up if need be. There is a saying that "two is one, and one is none"... always have a backup!

Problem: Gardening On Property with NO Dirt
Solution: Wood Pallets and Kiddie Pools
I knew I would have to used raised beds for gardening as our mountain property is comprised of rocks (of all sizes) held together with clay as hard as concrete. I built one raised bed last fall because I had picked up some berry bushes on clearance. I started bringing in bags of top soil to fill the bed every time we went to Lowe's or Home Depot. I could not believe the amount of dirt it took to fill that one bed.

My peppers and carrots did well
in the pallet bed.

Over the winter, I started researching alternatives to your typical raised beds and came across wood pallets being used. There are two configurations for this - lay the pallets on the ground, fill with dirt and plant so that the dirt between the slats are the rows. Or, back the pallets with landscape fabric, fill with dirt and then lift them so that they stand nearly upright, leaning them against something so they are at a slight angle. I went with this option since I could rest the top of the pallets against the bottom of our deck, which is several feet off the ground. I felt that by growing the plants at this angle in the dirt, I could grow plants with larger root systems. Since this was experimental, I did not want to put all my eggs in one basket, nor did I want to construct multiple pallet beds if they were not going to work, So I started out with one for this year and planted celery, peppers and carrots in it. The celery died rather quickly, but I had heard celery is difficult to grow, so I was not deterred. To date I have harvested quite a few peppers and some baby carrots. So I consider this experiment a success and plan to build more pallet beds over the winter.

Hoping the baby carrot plants will be ready to harvest
before the first frost

One thing I have learned since moving south is that there are many vegetables you can plant twice in the growing season down here. My carrots seemed to be doing well, so I wanted to plant more that would hopefully be ready to harvest by late fall. I still had a packet of 'stubby' carrots, that grow to about 5 inches. Another alternative raised bed idea I had (Ding!) was to use small plastic kiddie pools. There were some on clearance at the local Dollar General so I picked one up, drilled a few holes in the bottom and filled it with a mix of top soil and peat. There were more carrot seeds in the little packet than I thought, because it looks like I have grass growing in the pool, I will need to do some thinning soon.

A broken tote becomes a
container garden.

I also had some peas I had not planted this spring (remember the birth of grandbaby #3 meant a trip back to Wisconsin right in the middle of planting season). The seed packet said you could also plant the peas in June or July as a fall vegetable. Well, it was now early August, but the kiddie pools were cheap and I still had more dirt, so I decided to give it a try. I started the peas and some brussels sprouts in planters and then have since transferred the peas to the pool (so much for no peaing in the pool!) and some of the brussels sprouts are now in a plastic tote that a corner had broken on. I had drilled holes in the tote for drainage and we will see how it works as a container garden, double points for re-purposing something that is broken.


Problem: Washing Large Laundry Items Like Sheets and Blankets
Solution: Zeke's Bathtub
When it comes time to wash sheets, blankets and throw rugs, I could just bundle them up and haul them off to a laundromat; but that goes against all our off-griddiness. For months, my washing machine was a 5 gallon orange Home Depot bucket. I could only fit in a few pieces of clothing at a time to 'churn', but as long as I did laundry often it was not a problem - except when it came to washing our bedding. After stuffing a sheet into the bucket, there was very little room to add water and definitely no way to get any agitation action with my hand washer (similar to a plunger).

Zeke inspects his off-grid bathtub,
complete with colorful plastic frogs.

Enter re-using a solution from another problem solved: When our youngest daughter's family was coming to visit last January, I realized we needed a solution for giving our 18 month old grandson baths. He was too big for your typical baby bath tub, and putting enough water in our tub would quickly deplete our water supplies. I remembered the big plastic buckets with rope handles that we had used as toy chests for our kids years ago. One of these would be large enough for Zeke to sit in, and yet would only take a few gallons of water to fill it deep enough for his bath. On our next shopping day, I picked up my idea for a toddler bath tub at Wal-Mart and it worked great for Zeke's bath times in front of the wood burning stove.

Rinse  Cycle

When our guests left, I realized I could fit a lot more laundry in this large storage bucket than in my current orange 5 gallon washing machine. It does take a bit more water to get it deep enough for adequate agitation, but since our water collection and storage had also improved by then, it was not an issue. However, I still could not bring myself to pour enough of our hard earned water into the tub be able to wash our sheets. You may recall at one time we had been making trips to the car wash to fill our water containers. One morning as I was putting a load of sheets in the tub before heading to church I got another idea (Ding!) - we were stopping at a car wash after church to fill our water bottles, so I decided to throw the tub (with bedding) in the back of the truck. After church, we filled it at the car wash. And, there was an added bonus - the trip home on our road provided lots of agitation!

Problem: A Plethora (my favrorite word) of Items that Need Secured for Various Reasons
Solution: Bungees Cords, Ratchet Straps and Zip Ties
I have lost count of the sets of ratchet straps (tie-downs) and packages of bungee cords and plastic zip-ties we have purchased over the past year. We have learned to always keep some on had, both at the property and in our vehicles. I will include a few photos of some of the more interesting ways they have been used:

Rachet Straps in Use
Getting our new mattress home, Constructing the shower,
Winching the wood burning stove up the stairs to the deck

Bungee Cords in Use
Rainwater collection tarp, Securing screening on the water trough,
Aligning the downspout over the opening in the IBC tank

Category #2 are the "We're Still Working The Kinks Out" ideas:
These are basically ideas we want to work on and haven't had the time (or incentive), or projects we have started on but have not perfected. Well, if not perfected at least working half way decently, but we know it is just a matter of time or finding just the right do-dad even if we don't know what that is yet.

The Not-So-Hot Tub

Alan's idea of relaxing after a long day used to be a long soak in a hot bath. However, that is not congruent with our new life. But once we had full use of our repaired deck, we started thinking about the possibility of a hot tub. There is such a thing as a wood heated hot tub.

I know what vision popped into your head just then, but they use a heat exchanger to heat the water, not a stack of burning wood under the actual tub. We are not ready for that endeavor yet, but we did have a nice sized cattle trough sitting empty since our son-in-law had upgraded our bathroom water storage.

A plethora of totes were set out on
our deck to collect rain water from the roof

This spring, Alan made a trip up north with friends that had been visiting and I stayed at the property. He was only going to be gone a couple days and I figured it would be a good test to see how I could handle things on my own. We had massive rain storms almost the entire time he was gone and I was still collecting water in our wide assortment of totes. We had an empty IBC (250 gallon storage tank) we had not put into use yet, that was sitting right below our deck. I was able to empty water from the totes to a bucket and then lean over the deck rail and pour it into the IBC. I collected so much water, I filled the IBC and it was still raining. It was very hard to watch all that water just flowing away since all my totes were again full and I had nowhere else to transfer the water to for storage.

Alan's not-so-hot tub
(Remind you of a television commercial?)

Then (Ding!) I remembered the black trough we had to use to store water in for flushing the toilet. We had upgraded to the gravity fed system with the larger IBC tank Grayson had set up for us and the trough was sitting empty behind the house. It needed some cleaning - but, hey! - I had lots of water right now. I scrubbed the sturdy 100 gallon container and moved it up on the deck. It looked sort of like a bath tub sitting on the deck so (Ding-Ding!) I was going to surprise Alan with a not-so-hot tub when he got back home. The cool-tub worked fairly well for part of the summer, Alan even picked up a small swimming pool filter we could run to clean it. We still need to work on some maintenance issues, and the tub is currently empty but we will probably re-visit this project in the fall.

The Greenhouse Food Dehydrator

Greenhouse, Water Warmer
& Possible Food Dehydrator

We happened to be at Harbor Freight one day (surprise-surprise) and I saw they had very inexpensive small greenhouses on sale. They are basically a set of metal shelves that have a plastic cover with a door that zips open. I originally got this to use for starting garden plants. I bought it last fall, thinking it would not be used until spring. However, soon after we brought it home Alan thought of another use (Ding!). He painted a couple sturdy plastic gallon jugs black, filled them with water and placed them on the greenhouse shelves. Voila! Warm water waiting for us when we need it.

We really didn't use our warm water heater for long because we got the propane water heater for the shower soon after that and Alan plumbed it to be able to heat up jugs of water as well. However, is that another Ding! I hear (Ding!), I have been experimenting with another use for the greenhouse this summer. With the vegetables ripening, I decided I wanted to start dehydrating most of them. Yes, I love to can, but not when it is over 90 degrees everyday. And besides, dehydrated vegetables will take up a lot less space than canning them. I will be hiding most of the garden produce in soups and stews as Alan claims to be chlorophyll intolerant, so appearance is not a big issue in the final product.

With the ambient temperature between 90 and 100 most of the day, I figured the area inside the greenhouse would be warm enough to set up as a dehydrator. After some testing to verify the temperatures, I placed my first rack of tomato slices into my super-sized dehydrator and was looking forward to a batch of sun-dried herbed tomatoes. I forgot to take one thing into consideration - the bottom of the green house is not enclosed. The shelves sit on out deck and the plastic cover slides over the top of the shelves and covers all four sides when zipped, but not the bottom. Flies quickly learned of the opening, and as I did not want to store the dried foods that were fly-leftovers, I tabled this project for a while. This winter I will either perfect my greenhouse food dehydrator, or build a solar dehydrator. For this year, I am using the pilot light in our oven to dehydrate our produce. While I am prepping the food I turn the oven on low for a few minutes to heat it up a bit more that the pilot light does, then shut it off and pop in the trays of food. The trick is to remember to remove the drying foods before preheating the oven for baking, I did end up with one batch of blackened tomatoes.

The Canning/Pantry Shelves
We have a variety of shelving units around the house. Some are more industrial, such as the ones in the utility room which hold many heavy items such as cans of paint and our bottles of filtered water; while others are the cheap plastic pop-together type. However, none of these shelves fit a current need I have for storing my home canned foods and other pantry items. The flaw with all these shelves is the height between the shelves. I want shelves that are spaced more narrowly together, just a bit more height than a quart jar between each shelf. I do not want to double stack my jars on the taller shelves, nor do I want all the wasted space if I put just one level of jars on these shelves. So, I have been on the lookout for an inexpensive way to create the shelves that would be just right for my canning - very sturdy and with closely spaced shelves.

Wood Thingies patiently waiting on my
park bench dreaming of the day they will
be part of a shelving unit.

Enter my wood-thingies. We have some close friends down here that we have been spending a lot time with (and it's not because they have air-conditioning). We are very like minded and share a lot of interests and laughs together, and they are much more talented at being resourceful and re-purposing items. One day, as we pulled into their drive, I spotted three stacks of what I started calling 'those wooden thingies' for lack of a better way to describe them. On closer inspection, the first idea to pop into my head (Ding!) was canning shelves. I learned these wood-thingies-of-vast-possibilities were a dumpster find, and I made sure to bring our conversation around to what they were going to use them for, and, more importantly, if they had any to spare. I snagged nine of them with plans already starting to churn in my head as to how to make these the end supports of a sturdy canning shelf unit. I have re-worked them several times in my head, but have as yet failed to remember to actually measure the frames to determine the width I need for the actual shelves.

And finally there are those "What Were We Thinking" ideas:
These are the ones we hate to admit to, the ones we should have known were not good ideas.

Needed: Another Wooden Frame to Elevate an IBC
Not-So-Good Idea: Alan will build this one himself
Earlier in this now lengthy blog post, I mentioned that our son-in-law had built a platform that would hold a full IBC tank for a gravity feed water supply to the bathroom. I am sure you have all done the math to determine what this actually entails, and came to the conclusion that when filled the water alone (275 gallons) weighs over a ton. 2289.33925 pounds to be exact if the air temperature is 68 F.

The IBC sits on the frame
constructed by Alan...

We had another IBC and we decided to elevate it in a similar manner. We wanted it to catch rain off our shed roof and then we would connect it into the utility room for laundry, etc. As we had a pump in the utility room to draw water from this tank, we only wanted to elevate it enough to be able to place a bucket under the spigot so that we could directly drain water from the tank for watering the garden. So, with the platform only needing to be a couple of feet high, and the fact it would not need to hold quite so much weight as this was a 250 gallon tank, Alan got to work on the construction project. One thing Alan will be the first to admit is that he is no carpenter. He is great with plumbing and electrical work, but we both breathed a huge sigh of relief when our son-in-law came down to work on our drywall and deck replacement. But hey, the platform didn't have to look pretty, and we had plenty of scrap lumber to reinforce it and make it sturdy.

I was working on other projects inside the house while Alan tackled this one. Every once`in a while you know there is a project that is best not worked on together, and I was pretty sure this would be one of them. I did occasionally check out the door to see how it was going, especially if I hadn't heard any hammering or muttering in a while. In a surprisingly short time, the platform was in place and the empty IBC was on it. While our bathroom IBC is cylindrical, this one is a cube, as most of them are. The majority of these large cubes are reinforced by being placed in metal frame cages, but this one had come in a cardboard box, which we had removed - think giant milk jug.

... until water was added.

With the tank in place, Alan started transferring water from yet another IBC - the one next to the deck that I had filled from all the totes of rain water. I peeked out the door a few times as the new raised tank was filling and all was going well. When it was full, and Alan shut off the transfer pump, I breathed a sigh of relief. The platform had held and our new tank was ready to provide water to the utility room and our garden. Back to work on my project in the house. About ten minutes later, I heard a loud cracking noise and a ground shaking thud. I raced to the door and saw the new tank was once again on the ground. Surprisingly, it had not ruptured. However, since it was still full, we once again had to transfer all the water back to the tank by the deck so that we could move the fallen tank out of the way to start over.

The sturdier IBC is now located behind
the house AND on the ground

We decided to switch gears and build a platform out of concrete block and a pallet. This worked with almost no mishaps. We once again transferred the water back to the shed tank and with the addition of some rain gutter we were also set to collect rain water from the shed roof. We quickly learned that 10 feet of gutter on the shed did not provide nearly as much water as 10 feet of gutter on the house roof. Don't worry I am not going to get into that geometry problem. So, after all that, we decided to take the now empty IBC sitting next to the deck, move it behind the house, next to the utility room and attach gutter to that section of the roof to fill the tank. Alan used 20 feet of gutter here and in the last rain storm that 250 gallon tank was filled and overflowing within a a couple hours.

Needed: More Water 
Not-So-Good Idea: Collecting Snow
If you have been reading these posts in the past, you will know I am somewhat obsessed with collecting water. When we started out, we realized keeping up with water consumption was much more difficult than supplying our electricity needs. We originally had to drive out and bring water back to the property. Then we retro-fitted the well on the property so we could draw water from it using a torpedo bucket. Next, we set up rainwater collection systems, which greatly boosted our water supply. Despite always having an adequate water supply, I still feel the need to collect all the water I can, it is so hard to watch water just pour from the roof onto the ground during a rainstorm.

Snow collecting equipment

This winter, we had several big snow storms - about 2 to 3 inches each time and I had another bright idea (Doink!) All that water was just sitting on our deck, waiting for me to collect it. So, I grabbed some special snow collection tools from the kitchen and started filling containers with the snow from the deck rails as I assumed it would be cleaner than snow from the deck itself.

Buckets of snow
equals cups of water

I dragged the snow-filled totes back into the utility room and waited for the snow to melt to add to our water stores. Boy was I disappointed, depending on the 'fluffiness' of snow, it can take about 10 inches of snow to equal one inch of water. All those totes of snow I collected produced maybe a couple gallons of water. And, FYI, falling snow is dirtier than you would think.

Needed: Containers to Transplant Squash Vines Into
Not-So-Good Idea: Using Children's Sand Buckets
This was my first time gardening in a long, long time. That and the fact that we have no dirt on our property means there was a lot of trial and error this year. My original plan was to use a flower bed that was already in place as my main garden for this year. After digging up hundreds of rogue flower bulbs from the plot, and ignoring all the rocks I was hitting, I was ready to start planting.

Root-bound squash plant

I had started a lot of seedling indoors and was in the process of transferring them to the garden plot. This is a small plot that was quickly filling up. I had some acorn squash plants that needed to be transplanted, but I was worried their vines would take over everything if I added a row of them to the garden plot. The area we had fenced off to keep the deer from the garden was larger than the garden itself, so I decided to put the squash in containers along the inside of the fence. They would be a couple feet from the other garden crops and would also be able to vine up the fence we had constructed. All I needed were containers. (Doink!) I had some sand buckets that I had used to anchor the garden flag stakes I had used for my birdhouse display (another not-so-good idea because they were top-heavy even with rocks in the little buckets). As the metal stakes had punched through the bottoms of most of the plastic buckets, they were already set with drainage holes. I added top soil to the buckets and transplanted my happy little squashlings. And they grew great.... for about a month and a half. Then all growth stopped. I was basically practicing root-binding, like the tradition of Chines foot-binding, but with plants. Alan did not seem very upset with my failed squash crop, I guess the green on the outside of squash constitutes chlorophyll intolerance. Needless to say, I will be visiting the farmer's market for acorn squash this year.

And that covers all the Not-So-Good Ideas.... When I started thinking about this section, I was hard-pressed for any failures to share. I am sure this dilemma was not because we had no failures, but because we so quickly forget them and move on to what we hope is a better idea. Hmmm, a platform for an IBC made from wooden-thingies and zip ties. Add a bit of duck tape and voila...  CRASH!