14 Years Living Off-Grid in a Self-Built Cabin & Farming Tons of Food on the Land

abroad for 14

years

we

built

our own house, grew our own

food

and are learning a lot along the way. The beginning was Blood, Sweat and Tears creating this whole flow, it was all we could afford at the time we went from By Candlelight, to where we are now, it was a completely raw build from nothing. We had the opportunity to build here and we took advantage of it. We have a few acres on a shared lot. Community is a great thing with

living

off the

grid

, if possible. discover the art of communicating well and getting along, there is nothing better, the outhouse was the first structure and attached to the outhouse was my small workshop with minimal tools, yes the post and beam of the main structures and I

built

the main structure original.

I think a rough estimated cost would be about five thousand dollars and that includes the tools that were needed to build it at the time, so I used a lot of salvage material, we didn't have any money, we were salvaging from the

land

fill. There was an old barn on the property, we took a party and got everything you know, it was a big project and we built our place out of that and everything that was salvaged from the

land

fill and everything we could get for free, ya You know, and the structure from the first season was partially built, so there were still gaps and things like that and we toughed it out in the winter, we would light the wood stove and with our snowsuits on and then when it got warm, we would we took them off, he like that was just That's how it went, the building kept getting more and more attached as we could afford it, yeah, so we moved on from Candlelight and finally got our first solar panel with a small cycle marine battery deep that we used for a couple of

years

and that.

We turned on the lights and then from there we just expanded, so we bought more solar panels, we have five 320 watt panels on the roof and an Outback charge controller and we have 400 amp hour lithium batteries. We decided to switch from lead acid to lithium. Because we used to do a lot of battery maintenance, the things we use with our solar panels would be the refrigerator, the washing machine, the lights, the TV, the computer, just the basic things, more or less, what everyone else uses In the winter months, we have to use the generator to supplement the solar energy. and the generator we use is just a small 3000 watt turnkey Honda generator, nice and quiet during November, it's usually pretty gloomy.

December goal is pretty bleak, but once you like January, February and sometimes even March, it's bright and sunny and we don't necessarily have to worry about it as much, it's nice because in winter this room where we're sitting heats the house quite well with that nice solar heat coming in here, the way it was designed is in the summer too. The sun only travels two feet and in winter that sun will shine through the

cabin

. We have successfully grown all types of vegetables that we want here in winter. These LED lights help give us those 12 hours of extended light. and yeah, no, it's pretty cool because we're very dominant gardeners all season long and then when that shuts down, we live in our garden all winter too.

We recently got a stove to replace the old wood stove we were making. Fire and having it as the main source of heat in our house, that satisfies me. I cut wood for a

living

, so yeah, that really goes together well when you start from scratch, you appreciate the comforts that you have a lot more, you know this? the propane stove here is a convenience instead of me waking up during the night to refuel the stove. I have a stove with a propane thermostat. You can enjoy your coffee while you turn on your other stove. The main wood stove before we had the kids we didn't have. worry so much about it you wake up cold in the morning you wake up cold in the morning when the kids wake up cold in the morning it's hell you know you have to listen to it the water we use to wash ourselves bathe and to clean our dishes and so on It comes from the quarry so I have a small Honda pump that pumps water into the tank in our room and it is gravity fed to the house, we put it on top so it doesn't freeze in the winter we drill. a hole with a nice auger and we connected our pump and filled the tank to heat the water.

I used to fill a bucket, put it on the wood stove, let it heat for an hour, but now I have propane on demand. heater that I have hooked up to my shower, our drinking water comes from a well on the property, our toilet is a composting toilet with a hollow head and you just mix in some peat moss and rotate it every time you use it, and then we still have the outhouse, so we still use it and love it. I leave the door open and watch the birds on this property watch. We raise and produce all types of vegetables.

Meats. Milk. Honey. Grapes for juices. Wines. We are very rich in

food

. We have laying birds and we buy poultry meat and process it ourselves. We have three large community gardens. We plant corn and we have raspberries there. We have potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and pumpkins. We even grow our own mushrooms. Here we inoculate the logs, it is very exciting to go out and pick your own gourmet mushrooms. We would like to delve deeper into the search for food. We have been practicing for quite a few years. Foraging you know, plants, plant identification, mushroom identification, medicines and herbs, and we want to teach others. people, so we would like to do workshops that include those things.

I have a tree service, that keeps us busy, that's what makes money and allowed us to build a Little Dream bed and breakfast to share an off the

grid

experience with people and uh. We are building a small business for my daughter at Alice May's lemonade stand, so she is about 10 years old and we are trying to give her an idea of ​​how to understand

self

-employment and how to make money, something that unfortunately we all need in this planet. This lifestyle suits me best because it seems like we are always learning something new. It is simply an endless adventure.

Adventure keeps us on our toes if something goes wrong. We are our own Hydro. We are our own construction workers. And we learned that I figured it out, we argued a little bit, we kicked ass, although yeah, it works like so many times and I'm outside and I'm doing something normal and it just doesn't work like my pump decided not to work and I'm like, okay, this is what only thing that's making my life a little bit easier and it's not working, yeah, she'll walk in the door and start flying with her problem. I'll make you listen to my problem first because This is what's not working in my off-grid life right now, it's not all glamour, it's funny, living simple, it's really not that simple, you're constantly solving problems, you know, that's all. a learning experience, but with that learning experience comes gratitude, appreciation, yes. oh, I appreciate things that are like the smallest things, yeah, things just turn a tap and the water comes out the heat in winter the food on your table we've spent a lot of time growing it's experimenting doing all these things and even the point where now we are trying to get away from those intensive things a little and we are just starting to enjoy our lives together with our children, we can enjoy much more free time now that it was 14 years non-stop and now there is light at the end of the tunnel is time to sit back and even enjoy it I love it all I love the whole circle of the off grid experience our off the grid we built the house we live in we love the satisfaction you get from growing your own food makes it all worth it shame subscribe to explain the alternatives and share this video if you liked it.

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