Some people may not know what off-the-grid or off-grid means, so here it is --- The term off-the-grid or off-grid refers to living in a self-sufficient manner without reliance on one or more public utilities.
Off-grid living is no longer a one room log cabin in the woods. It's energy independency. You don't have to rely on utility companies, you create your own power. Today, there are more than 180,000 off-grid homes in the US.
When my siblings and I started driving, our parents made sure we all had emergency kits in our cars, and we have all continued with that habit. Now that our kids are at that stage in their lives, we make sure they also have emergency kits.
Really everyone should have some basic emergency kit in their car - they come in very handy when on road trips and even in daily life. Anything is better than nothing, and it's always good to be prepared.
Now that fall is here, we're starting to do our winter prep because snow is right around the corner... which for us means winter storms, and possibly getting stuck in the snow until we can get dug out. So I'm checking what I have stored in my SUV and restocking as needed.
Love that my Telluride has this storage compartment where I can keep everything out of the way and organized.
The black bag is for random tools and misc. items - zip ties, fire starter, knife, matches, compass, mirror, handwarmers, duct tape, etc.
The red bag is for first aid related items - band aides, gloves, tweezers, gauze, pain killers, etc.
Between the back to chairs, I have a basket full of snacks, that gets regularly refilled. (Please excuse the dirty car - we live the mountains, and it is impossible to keep a clean car!)
We finally did it! We moved our
driveway over and made a parking area that is big enough to turn a trailer
around. We have been wanting to do this for a while now, and I am so excited
that it's almost done – all we have left is to finish planting out all the dirt areas.
From the main driveway, you
were able to see down into our place, the house, the yard, the cars,
everything. In the dry summer months, when someone drove by or it got windy,
the dust would roll on down into our place. So with moving the driveway over, building
a burm across the old driveway entrance and planting it out, it will give us
that extra bit of privacy and hopefully keep the dust out.
Last fall, Tony roughed in the
new driveway and was able to get some base rock down before winter.
Then in early April Tony
started cutting down trees, this was originally to expand our wildfire
defensible space around the house {click here}, but it evolved into a much larger project... After a few of the trees came down and we picked up the mess, we walked around our driveway (new and old) and started tossing around ideas of how we wanted to get rid of the old driveway entrance, and just how everything would lay out and come together. Then Tony suggested that we could take some dirt from over here and put it over there and voila, we could have a really large parking area. I said let's do it!
A few weeks went by and then I came home to a big surprise! Tony was in the excavator and a friend was in a bulldozer and they were moving a TON of dirt! I was giddy with excitement that the driveway project was actually happening!
From the time Tony started moving dirt, it took 3 and a half days (over a week and a half time period) to complete the driveway and parking area project and since Tony was able to reuse the rock from the old driveway in the new parking area, we were able to save about $2500 because we didn't need to buy rock - I really loved that part! I could not be happier with how this project has turned out, it's even better than I anticipated. Now we just have to finish planting out all of the dirt areas.
New Parking Area
We can park cars/trucks - 6 wide, 2 deep.
Just above the row of boulders on the middle terrace, we planted some Everybearing Strawberries. I know we're taking a bit of a chance having the strawberries out in the open like that, but hopefully the deer will leave the majority of them alone and they will spread and creep around and down the boulder wall.
Everbearing Strawberries
About 6 feet behind the strawberries, is a row of Cascara trees, and right behind those are two rows of Redstem Ceanothus.
Cascara (Rhamnus purshiana)
Redstem Ceanothus (Ceanothus sanguineus)
Going up the back wall of the burm that blocks off the entrance to our old driveway, we have several rows of Redstem Ceanothus, followed by several roes of Western White Pine, one row of Rocky Mountain Maples, and two more rows of Western White Pines. On the very top we have a row of Cascara trees and below that, on the main driveway side, is a row of American Cranberries. We will be adding some more mature Vine Maples and maybe a few Noble Firs on the top to help block the view a bit more until everything else starts to grow up.
Western White Pine (Pinus monticola)
Rocky Mountain Maple (Acer glabrum)
American Cranberry (Vaccinium macrocarpon)
And finally back towards the house I built a stone retaining wall to make a flower bed where we planted some Kinnikinnick.
Kinnikinnick (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi)
Current Plant Count:
15 American Cranberries
14 Cascaras
26 Ceanothus'
50 Everbearing Strawberries
7 Kinnikinnick
15 Rocky Mountain Maples
43 Western White Pines
In addition to all of the baby plants we are putting in, we're also going to throw down more grass seed to help stabilize all of the dirt. I am so excited, I can't wait for everything to grow up.
It is Spring Break right now, and we decided to stay home to get some projects done around the property.
Every year after the snow melts away, we are left with a mess! There is a 14'-16' swath of rock that is scattered in the grass alongside the driveway from the snowplow and snowblower. There are broken branches and twigs scattered all over the place. And the grass and all the plants are matted down and just look blah. I cannot wait for everything to perk up and start greening up!
All this rock had to be racked back into the driveway.
Now that the majority of the snow has melted I wanted to take advantage of the time off and get some work done around the house. So this week I have been cleaning up and burning in between rain showers.
Burning yard debris.
Yesterday there was another break in the rain and I decided to get rid of one of the many rock piles we have scattered here and there - we have very rock ground. About a year and a half after we moved up here, Tony and I used up some of our excess rock to build a couple of rock stars {click here}. After we were done, we intended to transplant plants around the stars... but we never quite got around to it. So fast forward to yesterday and I decided to add a third star.
I printed off my original grid star design that I made (each star is 12'x12'), grabbed my gloves, a tape measure, marking spray paint, stakes, and twine. Next I measured out where my stakes needed to go, strung out my twine, and marked my lines on the ground with my marker spray paint.
Then I started to fill in my star outline with rocks. I found the best angled rocks for the star points, then made my rock outline, and lastly filled in the center.
After my star was completed, I raked around all three stars and just cleaned it up a bit because this year I AM going to plant around the stars and get that flowerbed finished!
I think it turned out pretty good. The whole project took me about 4 hours, and I already had all the supplies so it cost me nothing!
Sunday was the last
day of dry weather before the rain came, and with it more cold temperatures.
Even though we've already had a week of cold temps, Tony didn't want to
use the fireplace until we had had a good day of rain. Everything has
been too dry and the fire danger lever has been too high to take any chances.
We heat our home
with a wood stove from roughly around September until May. This ends up being one long continuous
burning season.
Having a wood burning fireplace
definitely has its ups and downs. The warm
glow of a fireplace is one of nature’s simple gifts... if you can ignore the
mess and hassle that come with their daily operation.
Though creosote inevitably
builds up over time inside the chimney and chimney cap which can become a very
serious fire hazard, by using only properly split and seasoned firewood, you
can slow the creosote accumulation. If
at all possible, try to steer clear of the slow, smoky, smoldering fires; these
tend to create creosote rather quickly.
Clean, hot burning fires are the ones that generate the least amount of
creosote.
There is no one-size-fits-all
rule when it comes to how often you should clean out your chimney. We just happen to do it at the end of every
summer, right before the cold season hits - Tony
climbs up our steep metal roof to clean out the chimney and chimney cap (which
is 34 feet up in the air) - something that we feel MUST be done before we can safely
use the fireplace.
While we were at Tony's parents' house, his dad brought out one of his 5' crosscut saws - he has a collection of them. Grandad showed the kids how to use the crosscut saw by cutting a round off of a downed tree.
Yesterday we had a break from
the wind and rain. It was in the mid-40s, that’s winter t-shirt weather up here; basically it was the perfect day to spend outside and do a little
outside spring cleaning.
We still have patches of snow here and there, but the majority of it has melted away. So yesterday I started to rake all the small
rocks that were tossed into the yard from the snow blower back onto the
driveway. One bad side effect of using
the snow blower on a gravel road are all the rocks that are tossed up to 16+
feet into the yard. There are so many
little rocks in the yard that unfortunately it doesn’t even look like I did
anything there yesterday.
We also spent a good portion of
the day picking up and burning most of the fallen and broken tree branches from
around our main driveway.Tony walked
around with a pole saw cutting off the broken branches from the trees.He got a little side tracked and started
limbing the trees up, so we had quite a pile of branches and twigs to burn.
The kids decided to take a
break from all the yardwork to sneak in some bow and arrow practice.
By the end of the day, everyone
was tired as we sat around our bonfire to roast some hot dogs and marshmallows.
All in all, it was a good productive day.
I haven’t posted in just over a
month and there’s a pretty good reason for that...
On Valentine’s Day, our
computer crashed, or rather the hard drive did.
We lost all our photos, videos and most of everything else since I only
had a very small portion of it backed up.
I was pretty upset. It was not a good day. But lessons were learned.
I was also in the middle of our
Girl Scout cookie season – yes I’m a Girl Scout troop leader to 25 amazing girls. Cookie season is already an insane whirlwind,
and without a computer it just made it that much more interesting... not it a
good way.
2 of the 5 vehicles we needed to haul our troop's 375 cases of cookies.
Caitlyn out working a cookie booth. It was cold out!
And that whirlwind of craziness was topped
off with snow, snow, a little bit of rain, and oh yeah, more snow.
Clearing off the road so we can get through.
Snow and fog.
We always keep a handsaw in our rigs so we can clear the road when needed.
Breaking trail on the county road as we head down the mountain. Have to get the kids to school some way.
Because we have gotten so much snow this winter, Tony has spent a lot of time in the tractor blowing off the driveway and part of the county road. Because he does this, we haven't had any real problems getting on and off the mountain.
Blowing off the county road...
...until we met the county plow guy!
Last Monday, while we were all in town, we got 16" of new snow. So when we tried to get home, we got stuck on the last tight corner on the driveway... well, I got stuck, then Tony got stuck trying to get me out.
Tony was going to try towing me up, but then he got stuck.
Tony and Caitlyn hiked home, while Jack and I stayed with the rigs and busted into a box of Girl Scout cookies (what else are you going to do when you're stuck in the snow?).
I managed to rock my rig back and forth enough to get unstuck, before Tony came back with the tractor and towed his truck up while Jack steered - he didn't want to put his chains on. I don't blame him, I don't like putting my chains on either, they're a pain! In fact, in order for me to put chains on, I have to be completely stuck-stuck and unable to move at all.
The last seven miles of our drive home that night only took about 2 hours or so, but we finally made it home. And Tony once again jumped into the tractor to go blow off the driveway.
Snowy sunset.
Fast forward to today, and we once again have a working computer, I just finish the final cookie season reports (YEA!!!), the last several days of rain has helped to melt out the driveway and life is calming down again... and just in time for the next round of heavy snowfall which is due to start tomorrow.
I'm ready to be snowed in again. No winter cabin fever here! Guess where I'm going to be... yup, curled up on the couch with a book!
Spotted a used book sale the other morning while running errands and I got all this for $6.50!
