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

foreign [Music] for 14 years we built our own house we grow our own food and we're doing a lot of learning along the way the very beginning it was Blood Sweat and Tears creating all this stream was all we could afford at the time we went from Candlelight to well where we're at now it was a complete raw build from nothing we had an opportunity to build here and we took it we have a few Acres on some shared land Community is a big thing with off-grid living if you can figure out the art of uh communicating well getting along well enough there's nothing better the Outhouse was the very first structure and attached to the Outhouse was my little workshop of very minimal tools yeah the main structures post and beam and I built the original main structure I think rough estimate a cost would be about five thousand dollars and that's including the tools it took to build it at the time so that's a lot of Salvage material I used we had no money we were salvaging from the dump There Was An Old Barn on the property we took a party nailed all that you know like that was a huge project and we built our place out of that and whatever was salvaged at the dump and whatever we could get our hands on for free you know and the structure the first season was partially built so there was still gaps and stuff in it and we'd tough it out in the wintertime we'd start the wood stove and with our snow suits on and then as it got warm we'd take them off he like that's just that's just how it was the building just kept getting buttoned together further and further as we could afford yeah so we went from Candlelight and then we finally got our first solar panel with a little Marine deep cycle battery we use that for a couple years and that ran lights and then from there you know 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 change over from a lead acid to lithium because we used to do a lot of battery maintenance the things we run off our solar panels would be fridge washer lights television computer just the basic stuff more or less what everybody else uses in the winter months we have to use the generator to supplement the solar and the generator we use is just a nice little 3000 watt TurnKey Honda generator nice and quiet during November it's typically pretty gloomy Target of December is pretty gloomy but once you get around to like January February and sometimes even March it's bright and sunny and you don't necessarily have to worry about it so much it's nice because in the winter time this room that we're sitting in heats the home pretty well with that nice solar heat that comes in here the way it was designed too is in the summertime the sun only tracks in two feet and in the winter time that sun will be beaming right across the cabin we've successfully grown all sorts of any vegetables we want in here in the wintertime these LED lights they help give us that 12 hours of extended light and yeah no it's it's pretty neat because we're very dominant gardeners all season long and then when that shuts down we're also living in our garden all winter we recently got a cook stove to replace the old little wood stove that we had making fire and having that as the main source of heat in our home that's fulfilling to me I cut wood for a living so yeah that really ties together well when you start from nothing you appreciate that much more the conveniences that you do have you know this uh the propane stove here it's a convenience instead of me waking up during the night to stock the stove I have a propane thermostat stove you can enjoy your coffee while you start your other stove the primary wood stove before we had the kids we didn't have to worry about it so much 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 gotta listen to it [Applause] the water that we use for washing bathing and for cleaning our dishes and stuff it comes from the Quarry so I have like a little Honda pump that I pump water into the reservoir up in our room and it's gravity fed into the house we put it upstairs so that it doesn't freeze in the winter we drill a hole with a nice auger and we hook up our pump and we fill up the the reservoir to heat the water I used to fill a bucket put it on the wood stove let it heat up for an hour but now I have propane on demand water heater that I have hooked up to my shower um our drinking water it comes from a well on the property our toilet is an airhead composting toilet and you just mix some peat moss in it and rotate it every time you got to use it and then we still have the Outhouse so we still use that and we love it I leave the door open and I watch the birds see [Music] on this property we raise and produce all sorts of vegetables Meats milk honey grapes for juices wines we're very rich in food we have laying birds and we buy meat birds and process them ourselves we have three big communal Gardens we plant corn and we have raspberries in there and we have potatoes and tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers and squash we grow even down to our own mushrooms here inoculate the logs it's pretty exciting to go out and pick your own Gourmet mushrooms we would like to get more into foraging we've been practicing for quite a few years is foraging you know plants identifying plants identifying mushrooms and medicinals and herbs and we want to teach other people so we'd like to hold workshops that include those things [Music] I own a tree service so that keeps us busy that's the money maker and it allowed us to build a Little Dream bed and breakfast to share an off-grid experience with people and uh we're building a little business for my daughter to Alice May's lemonade stand so she's about 10 years old and we're trying to give her an idea of uh understanding self-employment and making money as we all unfortunately need on this planet I find this this lifestyle suits me best because it seems like we're always learning something new it's just a never-ending Adventure keeps us on our toes if something breaks down we are our own Hydro we are our own construction workers and we we learned that we figured it out we bicker a bit we kick ass though yeah [Music] serves like so many times and I'm that I'm outside and I'm like just doing a normal thing and it's just not working out like my pump decides not to work and I'm like okay this is the one thing that it's making my life a little bit easier and it's not working yep she'll come burst into the door and start flying off on her problem I'll make whoa listen to my problem first because this is what's not working in my off-grid life right now it's not all glamor it's funny simple living really isn't that simple you're constantly troubleshooting things you know it's it's all a learning experience but with that learning experience comes gratitude appreciation yeah oh appreciation for the things that are like the smallest things yeah the things with just the twist of a tap and water comes out the warmth in the winter time the food on your table we've spent a lot of time farming it's experimenting doing all these things and to the point now where we're just trying to step back a little bit from those intensive things and just starting to enjoy our lives together with our children we can enjoy a lot more free time now it was 14 years Non-Stop and now there's light at the end of the tunnel it's time to sit back and even enjoy it I love all of it I love the whole circle of the off-grid experience our off -baction that we built the house that we live in we we love the satisfaction that you get from growing your own food that makes it all worthwhile subscribe to explain Alternatives and please share this video if you liked it you can also check out our playlists for more stories like this thanks for watching

Channel: Exploring Alternatives

Views: 1,935,796

Keywords: off, grid, living, lifestyle, story, documentary, micro, small, home, reclaimed, salvaged, materials, budget, low cost, cheap, shared, land, couple, family, solar, panels, lithium, batteries, generator, water, pump, system, storage, gardens, growing, food, orchards, grapes, fruit, vegetables, meat, honey, milk, self, sufficient, rustic, cabin, house, build, built, DIY, self built, interview, Exploring Alternatives, Pickalotta, Chickadilly Farm, beautiful, outhouse, composting, toilet, wood, heat, propane, work, farm, homestead, 2022, homesteading

Id: OJZ2wRakOh0

Length: 10min 36sec (636 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 22 2022