When we first moved to NE Missouri, we purchased a Sun Oven brand solar oven. It came highly recommended by our friends and neighbors, and we were able to do a group purchase for a small discount. Three years later, I can say with certainty that it is one of the most useful tools on our off-grid homestead. In this post I'll share my best tips on how to bake in a solar oven so you feel empowered to give it a try! Why bake in a solar oven? Because we do not have an oven in our home, we use our solar oven year-round, as often as possible. It allows us to bake, roast, dehydrate, and heat with great ease. Even if you have a home oven, I would still recommend making or purchasing a solar … [Read more...]
Living Off-Grid with Solar Electricity
We have enjoyed our solar electric (photovoltaic) system for over a year now; long enough to have seen how it performs on a daily basis, and to note what demands we can place upon the system. The system we installed in November of 2014 is an off-grid system with a battery bank for storage. We designed the system with, and purchased it from Backwoods Solar, an Idaho company that specializes in off-grid systems. Taking into account our budget and intended use, we decided to purchase three 290 watt solar panels, eight Trojan 6V batteries, and a high quality inverter that will allow us to expand our system as needed. My husband Brian and my father-in-law started the installation, and … [Read more...]
Top Off-Grid Homesteading Posts of 2015
In anticipation of New Year's Eve, I thought I'd do a little count down of my top off-grid homesteading posts of 2015. These are the posts that have gotten the most views and comments; in other words, they have been the most useful to my readers! I hope you enjoy re-visiting these favorites! 10. Remodeling our Outdoor Kitchen I love our outdoor kitchen even more after its remodel. We moved all of the food prep to the lower level of the outdoor kitchen, and made space for our picnic table in the shade of the upper terrace. Check out the photos in this post to see how it's laid out. 9. A Day on Acorn Hill Homestead My favorite homestead bloggers joined together to each share a "day … [Read more...]
Creating Your Off-Grid Homestead
When we moved to Missouri, three years ago, we had a lot of homesteading experience, but absolutely no experience living off-grid. Sure, we loved to backpack and camp and knew we could "rough it" for a while, but the experience of living for years with no running water, no electricity, and no refrigeration while we built one piece of infrastructure at a time. Yeah, that was new. As I shared our experiences on this blog, it became clear that others were looking for more information about this kind of off-grid homestead-building experience: the kind that starts with a modest budget and a DIY approach, and adds elements as time and money become available. The outline of a book took shape, … [Read more...]
Lighting with Beeswax Candles
For well over a year, while building our tiny house, we lit our home with beeswax candles. Although our home is now equipped with solar electricity and LED lights, we still occasionally enjoy using beeswax candles for their warm glowing light and amazing scent. In the process of becoming so intimate with candlelight, and living next door to several electricity-free homesteads that also use candlelight, we've collected a few tips and tricks for lighting a home with beeswax candles. Use Tapers We found that taper candles gave off the best light. Votives, tea lights, and pillars are beautiful to behold, but we have found that the strongest, clearest light comes from a taper candle. We … [Read more...]
Living Without Running Water
For the past 5 years, our family has been living without running water. Instead, we live with what I have heard referred to as "walking water." In our case, the walking part has been quite literal - walking hundreds of gallons of water in buckets from one place to another. I admit, living without running water has been one of the bigger challenges of developing a homestead from scratch, particularly when our dreams, plans, and actions include planting hundreds of fruit trees and two large gardens, raising chickens, ducks, lambs, bees, dairy cows, and keeping a family of four clean, fed, and hydrated. Why Live Without Running Water? Honestly, when we moved to NE … [Read more...]
Remodeling our Outdoor Kitchen
Our outdoor kitchen got a bit of a facelift recently, and we've been really pleased with its improved functionality and comfort. For the past two years, the outdoor kitchen looked like this: The tarp did a great job protecting us from light rain, but the space was not big enough to both prepare meals and dine. As a result, our picnic table stood in the middle of our lawn, under a shade canopy. That worked fine, unless the sun was setting, in which case the shade was in a different location than the picnic table! Brian loves to move earth and rock. It's one of his homesteading superpowers. So he envisioned a terraced space in which we could place the picnic table and the full … [Read more...]
5 Ways to Stay Cool without Air Conditioning
I remember the hot, humid summers of my Massachusetts childhood - lying on top of the covers, with a fan blowing directly on me as I tried to sleep. We had one window unit air conditioner, but mostly we survived the heat with fans and fresh breezes. As an adult, I spent my summers either on islands (teaching marine biology), or in Oregon, where the summers are mostly hot and dry. But our Missouri summers are often unbearably hot and humid. Many people rely on their air conditioning to stay cool and comfortable. But, let's face it - paying electric bills for a summer's worth of air conditioning is pricey! And in our solar electric home, we cannot use air conditioning. How to Stay Cool … [Read more...]
Laundry on our Off-Grid Homestead
After bathing, laundry is one of the more challenging aspects of living on our off-grid homestead. Between having two kids, doing hard physical work (and sweating buckets in the summer time), and using cloth washrags for our milking routine, we generate a lot of laundry, typically between 3-4 loads per week. Because we do not have pressurized running water, we are not able to run a regular washing machine. In our early days of living on this land, we had a beautiful dream of washing clothes by hand in an Amish-style washtub. The washtubs are quite dreamy, really. You simply fill one side with your washing water and soap, and let the dirty clothes soak for a bit. Then, you … [Read more...]