Going to Collections....

Wow, I can't believe it has been a month since my last post. One of the reasons for the hiatus has been because I have had a lot of work-work projects keeping me busy, and I am sure people do not want to read about the intricacies of PHP programming and all the excitement that it entails. Well, it has caused me to stay up to the wee hours of the morning at times if that can be considered exciting.

Despite being tied down to the job the last few weeks, there has been some progress on the property and with spring making it's presence known, there are more and more projects on the planning board and in the works. I thought it might be interesting to write a post about some of our 'collections'. In the past, I have had a variety of collections over the years - ceramic pigs, miniature hats & hat boxes, and hedgehogs to name a few. As you may recall, one of the goals in my off-grid life is to not have a bunch of 'stuff' that serves no purpose other than to collect dust and cause clutter in the house. I am more lenient went it comes to outdoor collections, like the birdhouses I quickly filled the front yard with to make the property look like it was no longer abandoned.

First, I am going to share a digital collection. I have been feeding the wild birds all winter and Alan and I have been having fun trying to identify all the various types of birds that come to visit us now. Here are pictures of the various ones we have identified (I downloaded pictures from the internet rather than trying to get our birds to pose):

Caroline Chickadees	Carolina Wren	Crows
Dark-Eyed Junco	Downy Woodpecker	Eastern Bluebird
Blue-winged Warbler	Northern Cardinal	Red-bellied Woodpecker
Red-headed Woodpecker	Tan-striped Sparrow	Tufted Titmouse
White-breasted Nuthatch	Yellow-rumped Warbler (also called a Butter Butt)	Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

On a more off-grid note, we now have a collection of water tanks. In a past blog, I included a picture of the second water tank we installed - a cylindrical 275 gallon tank we mounted outside of our bathroom as an upgrade to our first tank, a 100 gallon stock tank. It catches rain water from the roof and acts as a reservoir for filling our toilet tank. The last rainfall we had was a drencher that lasted throughout the night and we woke up to a full and over-flowing tank! We now have plans to also pipe this tank over to the shower system. I am a little hesitant to add this convenience to our shower for fear of using too much water. We currently limit our showers to a 2 1/2 gallon bottle of water that we carry into the bathroom each time we want a shower. If we pipe the bathroom storage tank to the shower we will no longer have that 2 1/2 gallon limitation lurking in the back of our heads as we rush to rinse off all signs of soap before the water runs out in the bottle as we do now. We may get so extravagant as to go through 5 gallons of water for a single shower.

Water Tank #2, we will be adding
a rain gutter to the shed soon.
The water in it is what we pumped
from our tarp/totes collection system.

Our second water tanks is a 250 gallon cube. Alan has built a stand for it and it is located next to our shed. We are going to mount a rain gutter on the shed and catch the rain water in this tank to be used for all our other water usage. During that last rain storm that filled our bathroom water tank, we also deployed our tarp and rubber totes collection system on the deck. When our 'shed' tank was in place, we pumped all the water from the totes into the tank and there was almost 100 gallons in the tank when we were done. Not bad for a tarp and a few totes!

We treat the rain water (and well water) in two ways, depending on how we use it. First, we strain the water. We have a funnel with a fine screen mesh on the small opening at the bottom. Originally, we just dumped the water we wanted to strain into this funnel to fill our water storage bottles. However, depending on the volume of stuff being caught in the small screen at the bottom of the funnel, we were constantly stopping to clean out the funnel as we strained water. First we added a kitchen strainer to the top of the funnel to catch the larger debris before it went into the funnel. This helped, but we still needed to eliminate some of the smaller particles from reaching the tiny screened orifice at the end of the funnel. This led to our third layer of straining which is a wash cloth placed between the kitchen strainer and the funnel.

This strained water is used for anything that does not require potable water - laundry, cleaning, showers, initial rinsing of dirty dishes, etc. For any water that we will possibly be consuming such as the final rinsing of dishes, cooking and drinking we run the strained water though our Sawyer water filter which I have written about in past blog posts.

This week we added one more water tank to our collection. We bought this one at a Little Debbie outlet store and it is a deluxe model which is housed in an aluminum frame. This will be our mobile water tank. Although we currently have plenty of water between rain storms and our well, if the summer is as dry as last year, we will need to be making trips to the spring a few miles from our house. Now we can fill this large tank and transfer it to our storage tanks rather than going to the spring with our little 2 1/2 gallon water storage bottles we use in the house.

Tank #3
for transporting water from the spring

As we were driving home from the Little Debbie store, we decided to stop at the car wash and wash out the tank. As you may recall, our cylindrical tank had been used to store honey. When we got it, there was a residue of dried honey and dead bees in the bottom of the tank. Since it was already at our house when we discovered this, I came up with the solution of dumping a few pans of hot water into the tank and then I manually titled the tank back ind forth to slosh the water and melt the solidified honey. After about 45 minutes and some sore arms, the honey any bees gushed out of the nozzle at the bottom of the tank when I opened it. We thought the car wash would be a better/easier solution this time. We were so WRONG!

This is soy lecithin,
think greasy-clumpy-jello.

According to the label, this tank contained soy lecithin and it was solidified on the bottom of the tank, much like the honey. However, when we hit the sludge with the high pressure spray gun at the car wash, all that sludge dispersed all over the interior of the tank and we could not reach all the spots it was now adhering to with the wand of the sprayer. We cleaned it as best we could, then drove the tank home with the nozzle still open hoping more crud would drop from the elusive strongholds on the interior tank walls and be jostled out of the tank through the spigot. This was a partial success, except that 'Truck' now has globs of yellow goo in his truck bed and there is still residue in the water tank as well. At this point I google 'What is soy lecithin' and find this: Lecithin is a generic term to designate any group of yellow-brownish fatty substances occurring in animal and plant tissues. Yep, that describes our yellow sludge.

Yep, the last off the yellow goo
seems to be draining out.

We have set the tank on a slope with the spigot on the low side and opened, hoping that the sun will heat up the tank enough to melt the soy lecithin and cause it to slide down to the bottom of the tank once more. I guess I should google the melting point of the soy lecithin to see if even the summer sun will be hot enough to do this. This is yet another proof that off grid solutions are better! If I had just waited until we got home and used the same process as I had with the dried honey, we would not have this mess which was caused by the hi-powered washer that we now have to contend with.

The deck wood becomes heating fuel.

We have also expanded our collection of firewood. You may recall the assortment of free lumber odds & ends we got last fall, along with our various loads of firewood we purchased and the compressed-sawdust eco-bricks we picked up at a Tractor Supply store when they were on sale. Our firewood supply was starting to run low, but since our son-in-law replaced our rotting deck last month, we have lots of scrap lumber in varying stages of decay stacked up under our new deck. Grayson sawed the rotting planks between the supporting joists so we had dozens and dozens of  of planks that were between three and four feet in length. We clamped our sliding circular saw to the truck bed, hauled the generator out of the shed and started sawing all the old deck lumber down to dimensions that would fit in our woodburner. We added at least another month's worth of fuel to our supply by burning the old deck. When we told our daughter that the old deck was now being used to heat the house, she was worried it was dangerous to burn that wood, but (1) the wood stove is air tight, so no fumes escape it while burning, and (2) the deck was rotted because the previous owners had not used treated lumber on the deck.

While working down here, Grayson also found reasons to take our chainsaw out into the woods near our yard and felled a few trees, most of which he cut up into lengths that will fit into the woodstove. I have also added these 'yule logs' to my collection when I go out and bring in wood for the day. These large and mainly fresh-cut logs burn slowly so we put them in the stove before going to bed so we do not have to get up as often to keep the fire going throughout the night.

Up north I had a collection of recipe books, but I only used two or three out of the entire stack. Since these unused books were against my policy of everything in the house having a purpose, I did not bring them down to the property. However, I have started a limited collection of cookbooks pertinent to our new life. I have included a photo of a few I collected over the winter: one of Ozark recipes, one of recipes mothers have handed down over multiple generations and one on cooking with storage type ingredients (great for our limited refrigeration and no freezer).

I also received a very special cookbook this winter. There is a cookbook I remember from my childhood kitchen that I have always said it is the only thing I ever wanted to inherit from my mom. Well, like the prodigal son, I received my inheritance early! When my parents came from Pennsylvania to spend Thanksgiving with our family, I remember I mentioned that old green cookbook. Well, the hint must have worked because I received what I consider a treasured family heirloom in the mail after they returned home. (I really wasn't hinting, it just came up in conversation because we cook so much during Turkey Palooza.) As I experiment with recipes in my various cookbooks, I plan to share them on this blog. My daughter, Eryn, called soon after she returned home to ask for my dumpling recipe which was a favorite of her family while they were here. I may have to start with that one.

Zeke likes Grandma's crocheted rug.

I am ending this post with one final, rather strange collection I have ended up with. One of my winter projects was crocheting a rug using t-shirt yarn. You start by making yarn from old t-shirts. I made quite a few weekly trips to Goodwill to purchase t-shirts. I went each week because Goodwill color-codes their clothing and each week they rotate which color is half-price. I would only buy half-price t-shirts each week.

When making the yarn for the rug, I would start by cutting the bottom off the t-shirt at the arm pits. Only the bottom half of the shirt, the 'tube' below the arm pits is used to make the lengths of yarn. So, I now have a collection of dozens of t-shirts that have been cropped to arm pit length. Alan has suggested they should be my summer wardrobe, as they would be nice and cool, but I have relegated them to the rag box. I am sure there will be some upcoming spring and summer projects that require rags to be used in some manner.

Maybe I should offer a prize to anyone that comes up with
a crafty use for all these top-halves of t-shirts.

BEING a Grandma slows you down

Puddle Jumping!

For the past 5 weeks I have been a hands-on grandma as our youngest daughter and her family had come  for an extended visit. I think Alan described the visit succinctly in an email to his sister, "Gray did great work for us, hanging the drywall, relaying the entire deck, and replacing soffits. We had a fantastic visit, and all of us were shocked to see how far Zeke grew and advanced while down here. Day one, he had great difficulty walking over the rough ground from the car to the steps. When he left he was racing down the drive, across the gravel road, and over rocks and logs, and climbing our mountain with Arn. Never wanted or accepting help, wanted to conquer it on his own. Also grew in understanding more complex concepts, how things work and go together. And, he really loved the bluegrass concerts we went to! He applauded for the instruments he favored, and especially for the tunes he favored. He was one of the hardiest clappers at the events we took him to! And Eryn graced us with some of her wonderful cooking, once she got the off-grid aspects under control. She said the hardest aspect of our lifestyle for herself was no running water; she uses a lot in her cooking. We also got in 99% of the things we wanted to expose them to here; from many many BBQs, other southern style restaurants, and the beautiful scenery. All in all a great visit!"

Feeding the birds was one of Zeke's favorite chores.
Of course that may be because it was an egress to a
couple hours of playing outside!

Yes, Zeke had me moving faster than usual at times, so that obviously is not what I mean by the title of this entry. Actually, it was Grandma's chores that were slowed down as Zeke was around to help me out with so many of them. For example, feeding the birds, which used to be about a 15 minute task to fill all the feeders and replace the suet in the holders became a 1 to 2 hour job depending on how many exciting things Zeke found to distract us. I could go on and on about all the fun we had and how amazing my grandson is, but alas, that is not the point of this blog. This purpose of this blog is to chronicle our off-grid life and all it entails. And, since I haven't personally posted an entry for over a month, a have a bit of catching up to do...

The addition of two adults and a toddler has prompted a few more upgrades around the property. Below is a list of some of our various resources and how they fared during the visit:

1. Electricity
Our solar system actually kept up with the increased usage quite well, better than we had expected actually. Our daughter was doing some free-lance work on her computer while she was here and we soon learned her computer had a voracious appetite compared to ours and we needed to have it plugged into the 120V inverter whenever she was working. Despite that, plus her husband's computer, two extra cell phones and extra lights on in the house, we only needed to start the generator once and that was after three rainy, overcast days in a row.

2. Water

Zeke and Grandpa working on
some of the water chores.

With a toddler in the house and our daughter being pregnant, we made the decision before they arrived that we would we purchasing more water than usually as we would only use the reverse-osmosis water we buy from the vending machine at the 'local' park for cooking, rinsing dishes and for Zeke's bath. We are quite confident of our filtration system, and hardly every use the park water ourselves anymore, but we wanted our guests to feel safe in the water they were using.

However, we did not realize how much water we would need. I was guessing we would use about 175% more water - 50% more for each of the two adults and a generous 75% on top of that for Zeke. We had three 5 gallon water cubes that we take down to the park for water, and even when Alan and I were using that water on a regular basis for cooking and drinking, we would only fill them up about once a week at most. When our guests arrived, we soon were making the water run almost every other day. Fortunately, on one of our sight-seeing outings we stopped at an interesting shopping center we wanted to show them and Alan found a great deal on new 5 gallon water cubes and we picked up 4 more. The additional volume and the fact that Eryn and Grayson were quickly becoming proficient in off-grid water conservation meant less frequent trips to buy water.

We also discovered our 100 gallon rain water trough used to fill the toilet was not quite adequate and there were times we had to carry buckets of water into the bathroom. So, time for another upgrade. A while back, I had sen an add on Craig's list for large food grade plastic containers that were selling for $50 to $60 depending on which size you chose. There were 275 gallon cylindrical tanks and 250 gallon square tanks. We had saved the contact information, so Alan called to see if they were still available and he and Gray went to pick up one of the square tanks. Now we were going to be true Ozark mountain people, with our 250 gallon water tank in the back of the pick-up truck that we would take and fill at the spring.

Our new platform and water tank for
our gravity feed toilet system. Also not
the new soffit at the top of the photo. 

Alan had taken our smaller truck to pick up the tank since we girls and Zeke stayed at home. On the way home, he and Gray were swinging by the spring to fill the tank and then we could use a 12V transfer pump we have to fill the toilet trough from our new water tank. Fortunately Alan took the time to do the math on the way to the spring to calculate the weight of 250 gallons of water. Because they were in the small truck, they could only fill the tank about half full, that however made the trip home over the curvy mountain roads interesting due to the water sloshing back and forth.

As we were filling the toilet trough, Gray commented that he could build a stand outside the bathroom where we could put a second tank to replace the trough. The tank would triple our capacity, we could still catch rain water from the roof in it like we did the trough, and with having it raised up on a platform, higher than the toilet, we could now flush and the tank would be gravity fed - no more hand pumping to refill the toilet tank. So, we made a trip to get another tank. This time it was one of the round ones and the interesting thing is that it had been used to store 275 gallons of honey. There was still a residue of dried honey along with a few dozen dead bees in the bottom of the tank so I dumped in a few gallons of hot water and used a lot of brute force to swish it around to melt the honey and loosen the bees. Note that our honey pot is on the clean water side of the toilet.

White hose to transfer water in.
Green hose to feed the toilet
Clear hose as a water level gauge

Another trip to Home Depot for a few plumbing fixtures and we now have an auto-filling toilet (version 3). The new version also includes a Y-valve so that a hose can be attached to feed water to the toilet and a second clear plastic hose is connected in and then runs up the outside of the tank and acts as a gauge displaying the level of water currently in the tank (similar to the clear tubes on commercial sized coffee pots.   We do have plans to pick up one more water tank as funds are available to place next to our shed. We will rig it up to catch rain from the shed roof as well as use it to transfer water from the container we take to fill at the spring. This will greatly increase our supply of non-potable water, not only for the toilet but also for laundry, gardening, etc.

3. Heat

When Eryn, Gray & Zeke arrived, we were in the middle of a cold spell. Our wood burning stove, while it appeared large at the store and in our pick-up trip on the the trip down from Wisconsin, turns put to be rated for less square footage than we were trying to heat with it. While the house was not cold during the coldest temperatures, it was closer to chilly than toasty warm and we had to work hard at stoking it to get the  temperature up into the yellow segment of the thermometer we have mounted on the stovepipe above the woodburner. This thermometer serves as a gauge to indicate when the woodburner is not hot enough to burn efficiently (below the yellow zone), is hot and still in the safe zone (yellow), and is overheated and in danger of a chimney fire (red zone).

We had some colder than normal temperatures back in December and that was when we realized we would probably be upgrading the woodburner before next winter. We were warm enough for now, but we would plan on an upgrade for some extra heat next year. We had seen a larger stove that we liked at the local Tractor Supply and decided we would by it in the spring if they put it on clearance. Well, about a week after the kids arrived, we went to Tractor Supply for more bird seed (Zeke was taking his job seriously!) and we saw they had already marked the stove down to its clearance price. So, we paid for it and the next day Alan and Gray picked it up and brought it home.

Eryn and I could not lift the stove pipe high enough for the
men to perform the switch, so a little ingenuity was needed.

We once again hoisted a woodburner from the truck bed up the stairs to the deck and wheeled it into the house. Then came the 'interesting' task of swapping out the smaller stove for the larger one/ With a little ingenuity and a lot of extra muscle (thanks, Gray!) the job was completed much more quickly than I expected and the house is now toasty warm, even when the nights got what they call 'extremely cold' down here. A note to our Wisconsin friends, that translates to temperatures in the 'teens', not what we would consider as extreme cold up north. The new stove easily stays up in the yellow zone and we can bank it at night and not have to get up every couple of hours to add wood to keep it going.

We could fit a lot more than we expected
in our little propane refrigerator.

4. Food Storage
With our very limited refrigerator space I was worried about how we would store all the extra food I thought we might need. Eryn writes a blog on healthy eating plus there was Zeke's milk, juice, cheese and other items that would all need refrigerated, not to mention fresh meats if they did not like our staples that include powder milk for cooking and canned meats for many of our meals. Well, we had to play Jenga a bit to get everything to fit in the fridge, and during the cold weather some items went out on the deck, but everyone seemed to enjoy the various meals made from our normal pantry items here on the property. In fact, Eryn even used a jar of my pressure canned chicken in one of her meals she prepared for us. In fact, here is link to a food blog entry she made while here: fromfaminetofoodie

What Else Is New?

Grayson, Zeke and Maja on our
new front deck.

Our son-in-law has a roofing business, and one of the reasons they chose to visit for the month of January is that the roofing business is very slow in Wisconsin in January. So, Gray asked us to come up with a list of projects we would like him to work on during the visit. The two main projects were dry wall and deck repairs. The damage that needed repaired in both these projects was quite extensive. Much of the dry wall in the living room had been ripped out or damaged, as well as portions of the walls in all the other rooms and a majority of the deck was rotted to the point of being unusable.

While working on these projects, Grayson came up with a list of other things he would be able to do if we wanted, so maybe there is another extended stay to be planned for next year.

Some of the more popular off-grid toys:
Canning jar rings, cardboard tubes and
short lengths of t-shirt yarn.

Zeke is probably too young to have memories stay with him of all his adventures down at Grandma & Grandpa's on this trip, but when he returns, some of the more 'creative' off-grid toys Grandma came up with will be here waiting for him along with lots of puddles for jumping in on rainy days and rocks and sticks to be thrown and collected. In fact, maybe those squishy packages he occasionally gets in the mail will include some special items to remind him of the great adventures he had and those that are still waiting for him.

What's Next
All of these recent projects have added more items to our to-do lists: painting lots of drywall, staining a HUGE deck and restocking my canned foods just to name a few. And spring is just around the corner down here. Although we are in the middle of a massive snow storm as I am writing this - they are predicting up to three inches- I had daffodils blooming in the yard yesterday and we heard frogs a few nights ago so I will also be starting more gardening projects soon.

One of the first items on the list is washing and dusting drywall dust off of everything in the house, but Alan pointed out one dirty spot in the office that I think will stick around for a while:

Zeke left a little handprint on the sliding glass door.

"Well, it's certainly not as rural as I expected." I made this comment to my husband just moments before we turned onto my parent's road. Pavement, houses, and farms were certainly not the "off-the-grid" surroundings I had imagined. However, as we slowed our vehicle and turned onto dad and mom's road, my expectations began to become reality as the pavement wound further and further into the brush, and eventually gave way to gravel road, then simply rock and sand, with trees closing in closer and closer around us and the woods growing more and more dense. Yes, indeed, this is what I was expecting!

My rugged mountain men!

Before Grayson and I embarked on this month-long taste of off-the-grid life, my mom asked me to begin a list of what I was expecting off-grid life to be like. Then, after we had arrived and sampled a bit of their new lifestyle, I could compare my expectations to reality in a guest blog post, here.

I actually found myself having a difficult time with this list, because I didn't exactly know what I was expecting our visit to be like. Now, I think my subconscious had a few more expectations than I did, because the months leading up to our trip I had several quite vivid, disturbing dreams (I'm sure my current pregnancy had nothing to do with the absurdity of these dreams....) One of these dreams entailed us arriving to a house half-finished. Now when I say half-finished, it was actually quite a contrasting dynamic as we moved room to room, discovering half of the house to be fully finished with plush, white carpets, brilliantly white painted walls and new windows--much like a home you would find in our suburban Milwaukee. However, moving into another room we found decaying wood, spiders, a thorough covering of dust, broken windows, and a very massive hole in the floor dropping about 15 feet to the ground. I was appalled that my parents would actually deem their home safe enough for my curious one and a half year old son to live in. Other dreams I had of our foreboding experience included a plethora of wild cats, of which I have a great phobia of. Needless to say, these dreams, exaggerated as they were, left me a little bit uneasy of what we would find down that rugged dirt road.

Grayson pulled our Jeep into my parent's drive just as the sun was beginning to set. Although a bit road weary, I was very grateful to see my parents waiting on their deck for us after we had not seen them for a couple of months since their last visit up North. We had been on the road for three days (Traveling with a toddler and a 5-month pregnant woman seems to slow progress on the road quite a bit), and all I wanted was a warm house and bed to greet us. And, thankfully, that's just what we had waiting inside for us!

As I wrote earlier, I had a hard time coming up with my "Expectations of Off-Grid Living" list before our trip. However, as we end our third week of being here, I've come to see that I did indeed have many expectations that I simply didn't realize I had! I'll detail some of these below, and how my expectations have been either confirmed, or proven wrong.


I expected to be "roughing" it...
Grayson warned me before our trip that we would basically be camping for an entire month. Now, I enjoy camping, but for an entire month? That's a bit long to be roughing it. I knew my parents had no electricity, only solar power, but my understanding of the capabilities of solar power were very minimal. So I expected to be living with candle light and limited electronics for a while. I imagined my cell phone to be dead of power most of the time, and that we would have to very carefully ration any power we were afforded by the sun. Along with this, I knew dad and mom had no running water. I wasn't too concerned about this, knowing they had somehow rigged up a way to take a warm shower and flush the toilet--I could live. They warned us quite a few times to bring warm clothes as it would be very cold. I hate the cold. It literally hurts my body to be cold, and because of my health condition I always have very low blood pressure, which causes me to become very cold very quickly. My biggest apprehension about this trip was that I would freeze, which, my husband will attest that when I am cold I am cranky! I feared that the cold would leave me a cranky and bitter visitor.

Zeke and Grandma painting

So how rough is living off-grid? Well it turns out, not rough at all! The solar power has greatly surprised me, being one of my smallest concerns or inconveniences. My parents have been able to power the entire house by the sun. Yes, after a couple of cloudy days we have to begin watching how many times we flip on the light switch or charge our computers, but electricity has not been a rough part of this experience in the least. What surprised me, however, was how rough it is living without running water. My parents do make sure we have adequate water for doing dishes, showering, and drinking. However, (up until they bought a very large water tank last week), we had to closely ration our toilet flushes depending on how much rain we got, or if the outside toilet tank water had frozen the night before. This wouldn't be as big a deal except that pregnant women pee every fifteen minutes.... The other challenging aspect of no running water is cooking and washing dishes. This, I have concluded, would be my biggest difficulty to living off-grid. I cook--a lot! And I cook with mostly fresh produce, which needs to be thoroughly washed. And a lot of cooking leads to a lot of dishes--usually 2 full loads a day at home. I do wash dishes by hand at home (Our version of "roughing it" is not owning a dish washer...), and although I don't mind at all washing dishes in wash basins with bottles of water here, it would be very time consuming to do so with how many dishes we dirty at home. As to the cold? This expectation as well was found wanting. Besides a couple of mornings of waking up before anyone had put more wood in the fire, I have really been very comfortable the entire trip! We've even enjoyed many 40+ degree sunny days to play outside and take walks in the beautiful Ozark mountains.

I expected to watch my son like a hawk....
Although my dreams of gaping holes in the floor and wild cats preceding our trip were quite unrealistic, I did, as a mother, have quite a few safety concerns for Ezekiel living down here for a month. I knew my parents were taking strong precautions to ready the house for him, including completely barricading the wood fire stove. I was still uncertain, however, of what conditions to expect their house to be in. Along with this, I knew Grayson would be doing a lot of work inside the house, turning the living room into a construction zone, which is not an ideal place for a toddler to be playing. I also didn't understand that snakes and spiders actually hibernate, so I added to my list of worries that my son would be bitten by a poisonous animal of some sort, if not carried away by a cougar.

It turns out that my parents, even though long distanced from their days of parenting toddlers, remember quite a few things of how to keep one safe! They prepared the house quite adequately to keep my little guy happy and safe! Although there were a few times of turning around to find a hammer or box of nails in his little hands, having him play around Grayson's work was actually not an issue. Now that I know that the spiders and snakes are all deeply sleeping for the winter, and that the wild cats are far from the house, the fear of Ozark wild life has also been dismissed. I have actually found being down here to be even less worrisome for me than at home,  as here I have an extra three sets of eyes to keep tabs on him throughout the day!

Zeke helping Grandma navigate the mountains

I expected to find a lot of hillbillies and strange mountain folk...
This expectation rang true, as we've certainly encountered a number of...colorful...individuals. I was surprised to find, however, just how friendly everyone is down here! It's common and almost expected that at the checkout of any store the workers will strike up friendly conversation with you. It seems the term "stranger" around these parts is far less daunting than up north, and any stranger at the market or restaurant can quickly become an acquaintance. A few nights ago we enjoyed a small town gathering for a bluegrass concert. One gentleman was sitting by himself up against a wall and commented to me in a low southern drawl, "You fixin' to have a baby?" I'm not actually sure if it was a question or declaration, but his wording made me chuckle. Grayson and I stood and talked with him for a few minutes. It surprised me because, up north, it's almost taboo to mention a pregnant women's expanding mid section just in case the culprit isn't actually a growing baby inside of her. This gentleman was quick to acknowledge and congratulate us on our expectation of a new son.

I expected to not get a whole lot done...

Zeke enjoying his new swing

I've been doing some database entry work for one of my mom's clients, and hoped to be able to log a lot of work hours while down here. However, my expectations of productivity at home are usually a bit idealistic, so I came down knowing that here as well I may be a little less productive than desired. I imagined that I'd be too distracted by chasing Zeke, or too inhibited by lack of electricity to get much done. However, as mentioned above, both electricity supply and Zeke's safety have not been issues. Now, I have to say that this realization may be skewed from my own perspective. Perhaps dad and mom are actually getting a lot less done, having a curly-headed, rambunctious one and a half year old distracting their attention from work. However, I find the extra sets of eyes and arms a great help to my getting my work done! Much in thanks to a grandma "getting in time" with her grandson while she can, and Zeke being quite entertained by himself with things such as trash bins, canning lids, and fabric remnants--I've actually logged quite a lot of work hours! Along with work productivity, I've also been able to spend some quality time reading, thinking, and praying, things I had really hoped for during this trip.

I expected to be a bit on edge...

I suppose this expectation could be the summation of many others already listed. The idea of chasing and protecting a toddler, being cold at all hours, and fretting over no water or electricity is not quite my idea of relaxation. However, as all of my other false notions of this trip were stripped away, I actually found myself able to relax! We do enjoy quite a few jaunts into town (I'd go a bit stir crazy without these ventures), but even just sitting at the house over my cup of coffee in the morning, or reading a few more chapters in my book, or simply watching the dozens of birds enjoying mom's handful of bird feeders in the yard have made this trip one of much rest and relaxation.

It took a few baths, but Zeke warmed up to his bath bucket!

I expected to be thankful despite of circumstances...

Don’t get me wrong, I was excited about coming and especially having this time with my parents. However, my apprehension at the foreboding camp-like experience held back some of my anticipation. I realize that many of these expectations I have listed were negative expectations. It's not at all that I wasn't looking forward to our trip, I just enjoy my comfort and the convenience of living in a home with water and electricity. As much as I enjoy adventure and traveling, I also find security in the consistency of life we've set up back home. This expectation was blown away, however, as even in our first days of being here I found myself filled with immense gratitude of simply being here. There is real blessing in living this simple life. There is a healthy pace to life around here, one which allows distraction and invites discovery. Time slows down here, and for that I am very thankful. Instead of having to seek out things to be thankful for, I am bombarded with them. This is a very precious time that I know that we will look back on with gratitude. Although I know Zeke is a little young to remember much, if any, of this trip, I know it is shaping him, and I am very thankful for this time he has in such a wonderful place and with his grandparents. Instead of being thankful despite the circumstances, I am thankful because of the circumstances.

Our trip thus far has been full of discovery, adventure, beautiful surroundings, great conversation and fellowship, a chance to slow down and process life, some productivity, and an all-around fantastic time! I know when it comes time to leave, I'll be excited to return to our life with some new perspectives and to really get started with our new year. However, I know I will also be quite upset to be leaving such a wonderful place, and of course to part from my parents for another few months until the new baby is born.

Oh, and one more expectation I had proven false? My parents may not be quite as crazy as I expected ;)

Company’s Coming!

“Company’s coming!” are two words that stir up a flurry of activity no matter where you live.  It is amazing how much the utterance of that simple phrase can effect your vision. 'Vision' You may ask. Yes, once those words have slipped out, or even just been thought, you suddenly see a myriad of things that need to be done around the house that just the minute before had been invisible. And why is it referred to as a ‘flurry’ of activity when a snow flurry is defined as a ‘brief instance of light snow’. Our preparations since we returned home after our Christmas adventure have been anything but brief and light. I think a ‘blizzard of activity’ would be more apropos in our case.

While I have started writing this blog entry while in the midst of our preparations, I am not going to post this until after our guests arrive as I will be including photos of our guest room that I do not want them to see before their arrival. Now I will cover the Five Ws and One H that journalism classes teach are needed to complete factual stories:

WHO Is Coming To Visit?
Our youngest daughter’s family will be our first official house guests. The mice and other critters we occasional heard scurrying around in the attic when we first moved in do not count, they were residents before us, not our guests. Our visitors will include our daughter, son-in-law, toddler grandson and grandson-on-the-way.

WHY Are They Coming?
Besides coming for a nice long visit (about a month) to enjoy the beautiful Ozarks, we plan on putting our son-in-law to work! He is a roofer by trade, and while the roof is one part of the house that does not need work (we think), we will be taking advantage of his carpentry skills for deck repairs as well as dry wall repairs. You may recall that the house had been foreclosed on and vandalized before we bought the property. In fact, the bank selling the property felt the house was in such bad shape they sold the property for the land value alone and the house was considered as having ‘no value’ due to the lack of wiring, heat, water, etc.

Dry wall nails sticking out of studs currently
provide lots of convenient hooks.
(clothes drying rack, wood carrying tote,
lantern and oven mitt for the fireplace.

I must admit that I think I am going to miss the gaping holes in the dry wall in all the rooms for some odd reason. Maybe it’s because they lend personality to the house, albeit it the personality you would associate with an eccentric, homeless person – rough around the edges but lovable in their own way. I am also going to miss all the protruding nail heads in the bare studs where the dry wall was ripped away as they gave us convenient hooks in almost every room. However, I am also very much looking forward to breaking out all those cans of ‘Oops’ paint I have been collecting to give all the rooms a fresh coat of paint once they have all their walls restored. In fact, I just made one more such purchase this week. Although I probably already have enough paint to cover every wall in the house twice over if I were not particular about which color went where, I found a 5 gallon container on the Oops shelf at Lowes that was marked down from $133 to $25. The selling point for me was that it is close to the color that is currently in the living room that I decided I really like. The living room is fairly long and will take 2-3 gallons so now I do not have to get creative trying to figure out which gallons I have on hand to mix-and-match in the living room.

WHEN Do They Arrive?
They will be arriving on January 5th and staying for about a month, assuming off-grid life works for their young family. Part of our preparations have included adding to our off-grid ‘amenities’ to encourage a long visit, such as heat in the guest bedroom!

WHAT Will We Be Doing While They Are Here?
Besides the work projects around the house and property, we want to introduce them to our new life as well as the beautiful part of the country we now live in.  And most important are family time and playing with our adorable grandson.

We have been making a mental list of various things we want to do, events we want to attend and places to go to, but there will be more details on that in future blogs as the activities unfold. Unfortunately, we will probably not get to show our grandson some of our favorite wildlife, such as armadillos and roadrunners, as we have not seen any since late fall. We have had a plethora (another of my favorite words) of birds at the feeders we put out this winter, so hopefully he will enjoy watching them as well as the antics of the squirrels that also come to visit around the feeders.

The guest room awaits.

WHERE Will They Be Staying?
In our newly decorated guest room. While it will not be complete when they arrive as the walls will not be painted until after our son-in-law repairs the dry wall, it does look much better from when we first moved in. You may remember pictures of me tearing up the hideously filthy carpet last spring. Well, after the necessary sanitation work to make the house odor free, the two spare bedrooms have been left untouched except to be used for storage for other household projects. But the the guest room is now inhabitable and hopefully comfortable for their stay.

HOW  Are We Preparing For Our Guests?
Here is a list of some of our most recent projects:

1. Building a toddler proof enclosure around ‘Reggie’ (the wood stove). Since the wood burning stove is not situated up against a wall, but is actually 3-4 feet away from the closest wall and sits at an angle rather than parallel to any of the living room walls, this was a bit of a challenge. We looked at various gate/fence systems designed for child safety and none of them really met the need. So, we strolled around Lowe’s looking for a solution. We found pre-made deck railings in 6 foot lengths and an adjustable ‘baby gate’. We created an enclosure by attaching angle brackets to the bottom of the railing pieces and screwing them into the recently painted living room floor with decking screws. We left a 4-5 foot opening in the enclosure at the front of the wood burner which is where the adjustable baby gate is attached. Both the left and right edge of the gate have hooks that slide into eyehooks we screwed into the railing posts, so that the gate can be totally removed.  So, until they arrive we can access the stove to add wood without opening the gate each time and we will also be able to do this when our grandson is napping and throughout the night to make ‘feeding the stove’ easier when the protection is not needed. Then later, the entire enclosure is removable until it is needed again in the future.

2. Baby-proofing the rest of the house. We decided it would be easiest to cordon off the laundry/work room with a baby gate. As most of the dangerous to babys stuff is already in that room, we can make the rest of the house safe by moving any other items deemed unsafe to that room a well. Plus, we can install the gate so that there is a few inches of clearance between the floor and the bottom of the gate so the cats can have access to their litter box which is also in that room. It will also give the cats a place to escape to should they for some reason tire of our grandson’s or his dog’s attentions. We also picked up a supply of child-proof drawer latches for various kitchen and bathroom cabinets. I am sure that there will be a couple quick responses to a few missed items soon after our guests arrive, like the oil lantern I just noticed we have sitting on the end table by the sofa. Although we do not need to use the lanterns that we started our off-grid life with, we still use them on occasion for ambiance.

3. Adding another hot water feature in the bathroom. You may recall that Alan installed a hot water heater shower system several months ago as the weather was turning colder and was making room temperature showers an ‘adventure’. Since our grandson takes baths rather than showers, and we thought there would possibly be other needs for hot water where we didn’t want to wait for the time it would take to heat it on the stove, Alan modified the shower’s hot water system to have another option. Besides sending hot water to the shower head, we can now pump water from the storage bottle through the water heater and back into the storage bottle. By cycling the water in this manner we can heat the entire storage bottle of water (about 3 gallons) fairly quickly.

4. Setting up the guest room. The first project on the list for this was painting the ceiling. This was the room I had determined was used by the daughter of the previous owners and the ceiling had a ‘lovely’ hand painted bright yellow sun that covered almost the entire ceiling and then was surrounded with various names that looked like they were added using a black Sharpie marker. After Alan took down the old, dirty light fixture, I pulled out yet another gallon of my ‘Oops’ paints. Fortunately I had one in a light cream color that would work for ceiling paint. I was not looking forward to finding out how many coats it was going to take to cover up our rendition of the Sistine Chapel. Let me tell you that I quickly became a believer in high quality paint brands! The one I was using was ‘Behr’ brand and when I opened the can I was surprised at how thick it was, and when I started rolling it onto the ceiling it covered the ‘artwork’ on just one coat – even the black Sharpie signatures.

After the ceiling came the floor. Yet another Oops paint, this time a gray floor and porch paint followed by polyurethane (unfortunately not from the Oops shelf but still worth the price for the nice smooth and glossy finish).

This propane tank feeds the heaters in the two guest rooms.

While I was working on the painting, Alan was adding optional heat sources to both of the spare room. We had brought a wall mounted propane heater designed for in-home use from our home up north and had purchased another one down here. The two spare rooms are side by side and share a closet which is situated between them and runs the length of the rooms. We will probably put a wall in the closet so you can not walk from one room to the other through the closet. It will probably be best to do this before both guest rooms are in use to give our guests a bit of privacy from each other! Anyway, Alan mounted a 40 pound propane tank on the exterior of the house right outside of where the shared closet is located. He then mounted a heater in each room on the exterior wall and near the closet so that he could use the one propane tank for both heaters.  We are building up quite a collection of propane tanks, which makes it convenient when one runs out when we are in the middle of using it. We can simply replace the empty one with one we are not currently using, such as the 20 pound tank for the grill, as a temporary replacement until we get the empty one refilled.

Back to the guest room projects, next came wiring in the overhead light and outlets. We added a ceiling light that turns on and off at a wall switch and made one of the outlets in the room ‘live’ (all 12V of course). After that there was a previously purchased cabinet that needed to be built, a newly purchased crib to be built and the bed to assemble. Throw in a few useful decorating items and voilà the room is ready for guests, as long as they don’t mind some missing drywall.

So, I have answered the journalistic  5 Ws and a H, which leads to one more W: WHICH aspects of our off-grid life will not be what our first house guests are expecting? I am leaving the answer to that for a guest blog from my daughter which I have asked her to write sometime during their visit. I am just wondering if they are expectations are higher or lower than the reality they will find.

They have arrived!