Unexpectedly Unplugged: Off-Grid Living in our Homemade Home, Pt.1

{I thought I’d take a bit of a break this weekend from preaching the traditional foods gospel to expose a more personal piece of life from from my little corner of the blogosphere. It’s still relevant to what we’re all about in our butter-believing, real-fooding lives (promise!), so I hope you’ll stay tuned!}

Being introduced to the world of real, traditional food has brought with it some fairly significant lifestyle changes. The daily rituals of soaking various grains, the hoarding of glass jars to use for fermentation and making dairy products, the eating of animal organs and other foods unfamiliar to my palate… But these anomalous new habits in my life have unexpectedly managed to coincide with taking natural living a major step further — ditching reliance on the power company.

My pre-husband (I can’t stand the word “fiancé”) and I made a big move a couple months ago from a fairly normal rental cottage in the suburbia of our island home of Oahu, to a 2 acre plot of off-grid, overgrown agricultural land on the north shore. Now, before anyone starts applauding our valiant efforts to rescue Mother Nature from the evils of imported fossil fuels, you should know that we didn’t actively seek out such hippified living.

We had been aching to move back to the slow-paced country shores up north for a while, and when the opportunity came for us to lease a portion of our friend’s newly acquired property, we carefully considered what that would entail.

The acreage was a… not-so-blank canvas. There were brush and trees and head-high grass overgrown everywhere other than our friend the landlord’s modest little dwelling consisting primarily of a circular yurt, an outdoor bathroom complete with compostable toilet (incredibly, not as gross as it sounds), a small structure for the kitchen, and a large shipping container to house the many batteries and solar panels needed to provide energy to the place. We would need to construct something similar.

In exchange for us building another little solar-run home on the property, half the land was ours to lease for two years. Pre-husband being a contractor by trade, constructing such a home was well within our reach. After our then-current landlord decided to raise the already exorbitantly-high rent on us, we decided to dive in head first into country living powered by the tropical sun.

With time not exactly on our side after we gave our notice, we had to make a few changes to what we had envisioned being the plan for setting up life on the solar home front. Rather than fully constructing our own digs from scratch, we were blessed to be able to barter PH’s carpentry skills for an already-existing (but quite unfinished) little cottage from a neighbor, which we then had to move by truck and trailer onto the property, and subsequently lift up onto 3 foot stilts! We also managed to acquire a shipping container that we had thought would end up being more of a garage, but with the cottage being only about 200 square feet, the big steel box became our bedroom for the time being.

“Country living” was more or less country camping for quite a while! We had no running water for about a week, no appliances such as a refrigerator (hello, cooler and daily trips to the store for ice bags!) or full-time electricity to power them for another couple weeks, and no TOILET for about 3 1/2! Needless to say, there were a few bumps in the road in getting everything set up. The toilet, for example, had to be shipped in from the mainland and reportedly “missed the boat,” literally, several times.

We washed dishes off the deck with a hose.

We dined by the light of numerous tiki torches.

We laundered clothes with a bucket and a hole-y plunger! (inspired by this ingenious dude’s YouTube video).

Bit-by-bit, with each hardware store visit, and each new piece installed, we slowly transitioned to a living space more resonant to normal human functioning. A (cold) shower to use in the bathroom, a sink to brush our teeth in, a light fixture to illuminate the room with a mere flick of a switch — such luxuries were appreciated like never before.

Being without a kitchen, however, was the hardest part of all for me, a new and eager explorer of traditional foods. There was but a tiny empty room needing to be filled with cabinets, counter tops, a sink, refrigerator, and oven range — never mind the various optional gadgets and small appliances I would be yearning for such as a dehydrator, juicer, and grain mill.

Without even the basics though, was I stuck? How was I to begin replacing processed bread products with whole, homemade sourdough? How could I prepare nutrient-dense bone broths and stocks needing to be slowly simmered over a stove? How was I to sprout my seeds and nuts? Keep real dairy products on hand? Brew fermented drinks? Cook practically anything in Nourishing Traditions?

Well, turns out there are more than a few things most ANYONE can do — camping in the Hawaiian countryside or not! Next in this series, I’ll share the baby steps I began taking toward a healing, healthful diet (sans kitchen!), and how our happy little campsite is coming along… (it now even has indoor plumbing!)

 

{This post is participating in Monday Mania at The Healthy Home Economist as well as Simple Lives Thursday!}

{1st photo credit}