Let me Introduce Myself and Our Plan

Hello Everyone!

After 2 months of jumping through hoops, shaking hands and even a few tears, we have finally purchased 21.5 acres right outside of town. The property is considered to be completely off the grid. FINALLY! We closed last Friday and have immediately begun construction to make the property as efficient and self-reliant as possible before winter sets in. It's a lofty goal to get this place set up in time, but we're hoping to at least have a reliable power source, water source and the beginnings of our garden and/or greenhouse before the first snow hits the ground. (I hear that can range from mid-October to December but that snow is inevitable...)

The purpose of the blog: to provide a public outlet that shows how realistic and easy (or difficult) it really is to transition from living completely on the grid to living completely off the grid. I will be blogging about pretty much everything from my personal discoveries to the construction projects on the property. I will post ideas, resources, photos, recipes, music, pretty much anything and everything that I learn as we navigate this adventure. And I'm hoping that by doing that, maybe I can encourage a few of your to personally embrace the green movement, whether it be something as simple as seeking out your local recycling center or something as impressive as purchasing an electric car.

In my opinion, renewable resources are the wave of the future, one way or the other. So I am merely attempting to illustrate and give a real life example of how two people determined to make a difference, really can, even if it's only in their everyday lives.

My initial entries will probably be pretty sporadic as we still don't have reliable Internet at the property. In saying that, I urge all of you to be active members of this blog community and comment, share ideas and your opinions. That said, I do ask that you leave the negative, personal stuff out. This is going to be very difficult, there's no denying that, but it's an experience that I would really like to share with whomever is interested in an uninhibited, positive manner. And ask that in making your comments, you keep the positiveness flowing. i.e. Be Nice or Go Home!

Okay, now on to the general plan for the property. What we did was purchase this acreage that already had a minimal solar power system in place, 2 cabins, a creek, a pond, and tons of potential. We are upgrading the solar power system ASAP, but currently we have a 5 watt solar panel set up, which has proved to be more than enough to provide us with enough power to charge our cell phones, my laptop and most importantly, keep the ipod player going. We also have a 700 watt inverter and an older battery bank. All of this will eventually be recycled to the smaller cabin.

Tomorrow we will be meeting with a consultant who will advise where to place our new, larger solar panels and how to set up our solar power system to also be compatible with a micro-hydro power system. We are choosing to do both solar and micro-hydro for a number of reasons, with the primary reason being that we will eventually be running appliances off of this power system and will need a large amount of power available. Another reason is that we are currently storing power for the second cabin at the primary cabin. And yet another reason is why not? Why not utilize both the sun and the creek? The creek runs 9 months of the year and the sun, well it's out all year round though the amount of time varies with the seasons.

Currently, we are also working on the beginnings of our garden. The flat ground in front of the main house is in the process of being terraced out (into 2 terraces) that will be supported by a rock wall.

We are building this ourselves. The rocks are free; they are located on family property. The labor is also free; it's us and we can't pay ourselves, well not yet anyway. So total cost will come down to the gas to drive out and pick up the rocks, and food/water that I had to purchase to keep everyone hydrated, full and as happy as possible.

The pictures show the progress we made on the wall in a morning.
Starting at the far left, you can see how we cleared the brush, put the dirt
down and began the base of the first level terrace for the wall.


Once we finish putting up the walls, we will put down dirt, followed by peat moss, manure and several other materials that are high in nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. We will then plant Rye grass; once it's grown we will use a rototiller in the garden soil, add some compost and cover the area with either tarp or burlap to allow the soil to continue to "stew" until we are ready to plant starters in the spring. (Any suggestions for the best method to "protect" our soil from winter?)

All that said, we also going to try and get a greenhouse structure up before winter. This will not be started until we complete the terraces for the outdoor garden, but we have picked out a basic structure. Our design is based off of a solar green house; the north facing wall is a solid wall and the south facing wall is your "absorbing" wall. Our north facing wall will be recycled cinder blocks (possibly filled with Styrofoam) and the south facing wall will be glass. We chose a solar green house because of how severe the winter's in the mountains of Idaho can be (though I wouldn't know...yet...).

For right now, that's all I've got. But I'll be back.
Peace.