Thursday, March 31, 2016

Let's Get The Gardening Started...

9:06 pm - 52 degrees - clear, calm night...

For the past two evenings, when the sun starts to set behind the mountain, I have gone inside smelling like dirt.  Actually the kids smell like dirt also.  The kids have been running around, playing, enjoying the sunshine, and somehow manage to get covered in dirt from head to toe.  While I have been busy potting plants, I am only covered in dirt up to my elbows.  I love Springtime.


Good news...I am so excited to start planting!  Not so good news...all the plants I ordered (from various locations) came at the same time.  Now I'm a tad bit overwhelmed, trying to get all 236 plants in pots or in the ground.


So far I have...
---55 of the 120 bare root strawberry plants placed 1 gallon pots.
---20 of the 75 huckleberry starts in 1 gallon pots.
---still have to find a location and plant the 4 red and 2 golden raspberry starts.
---and 35 various bulbs to plant, but need to remove the grass out of the flowerbed first.

Hopefully I will have everything in pots or in the ground by the end of the weekend.

Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Goodbye Cooler, Hello Refrigerator...

1:17 pm - 51 degrees - blue sky, scattered clouds, light breeze...

Last week, we had a life changing event... for the past 6 years we have lived without the use of a refrigerator, and last Friday, we finally pulled our refrigerator out of the storage unit and brought it home! 


You simply cannot imagine my level of excitement! 

When we first moved up here 6 years ago, our only power source was a small Honda generator – not big enough to do much of anything other than run small power tools, charge cell phones and charge our laptop.  So our 2-year-old refrigerator went, with the majority of the rest of our belongings, to the storage unit. 

In the beginning, to solve our refrigeration issue, we went to Costco and picked up an Igloo MaxCold 165 Quart cooler to use as our “fridge”.  It worked, it did what it was supposed to, and we were definitely glad to have it.  I believe that we learned how to function very well using a cooler as a fridge.


Fast forward six years, I now have a love-hate relationship with the cooler.  I obviously loved it because it was our “fridge”.  I didn’t love it because the cooler gobbled up large bags of ice just about every other day (I don’t even want to know how much money we spent on bags of ice over the past six years), and even though it is a fairly large cooler – space was definitely limited... the dislikes could on, but I’m stopping there.

Back to the exciting news!  Even though our off-grid power system isn’t 100% completed yet, we do now have enough power to run our energy efficient wide-by-side refrigerator and freezer!  We now have a freezer here too!!!  Oh, such a happy day and a complete life changer!!!


Refrigeration is one of my top four things that I have missed most while living off-grid.  I wonder what your top four things you would miss the most would be?

Mine have been an inside flushing toilet (check!), washer & dryer (check!), real refrigerator (check!), and running hot water (coming soon!).