Never Moving Fast Enough

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I’m in a hurry to get things done
I rush and rush until life’s no fun
All I really gotta do is live and die, but
I’m in a hurry and don’t know why
-Alabama, I’m In a Hurry (and Don’t Know Why)

It’s been almost a year since we moved out of our last home, and the renovation process for our new home is at 7+ months.  (Technically 9+ if you count the time trying to get permits.  And I count that time.)  I’ve been crazy busy for much of that time, but some of it, I just feel busy.  Not having a TV back in our house helps not waste time, but I still feel like time is just slipping away.

Unfortunately, I feel like our current culture is all about busy-ness and “progress.”  If someone isn’t running in a tizzy – if they’re relaxed – then we assume they have no aspirations, and they’re probably lazy.

Or maybe I’m just speaking from my own perspective, and no one else feels that way.

I’m trying to constantly step back and look at what is absolutely necessary and what is optional.  It’s absolutely necessary to eat.  If you don’t, the result is death.  It’s optional, however, to respond to texts and emails within 5 minutes.  If you don’t, the result is…  Well – nothing.  Someone might email you again.

My hope is that I’ll be able to live off grid in order to not be constantly trying to keep up with the Jonses.  If I have no required expenses (besides property taxes, grrrr) because I generate my own power, pull water from my own well, and grow all of my own food, then I don’t need a huge salary or bank account.  If you have a paid off mortgage, you can live on way less.

In trying to slow down, I’m stressed because the process is taking too long!  A year after moving out of our last house, I assumed that we’d be settled, and we’d be ready for our garden and already be grabbing eggs from our chickens.  Those things are not even close at this point (Though I do have bee hives!  But no bees yet…).  But – in light of the intention for getting off grid, I’m trying to be comfortable in the process instead of wishing for some tomorrow where all my stuff is done.  Because all my stuff will never be done.

I’m definitely not saying that I want to be at a place where I have no ambition, and that I’m going to sit on my front porch in my underwear drinking piña coladas all day – not that I won’t ever do that.  But rather than I’d like to be at a point where I can be still.  Especially because it’s in those moments that I realize that God is holding the entire world together, not me.  And that’s a good feeling.

Building is Magic

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When we first bought our house, we thought that we’d be done with renovations after about 3 months.  We gave ourselves a 6 month timeline to pad our expectations a bit – that way if 3 months rolled around and we weren’t done we would still feel like things were moving smoothly.

Well, three months went to getting permits from the county alone.  That was frustrating.

We just hit the six month mark, and we’re not quite done.  We probably have a month (or two) left.  That’s not as much frustrating as it is exhausting.

For the last three months of renovation, I’ve tried to be at the house as much as possible.  If our contractor, Alex (my uncle), was working, I wanted to be working along-side him if I could in order to save money.  Because I’m a self-employed web developer, my schedule is whatever I’d like it to be, as long as I get everything done.  So, on average I’d be at the house from 9ish-5ish; Alex would usually get there at 7 and leave at 3, so by the time I got there I’d jump in where they needed me, and I’d stay for a couple hours to clean up or complete any project that I could.  That also means, after an almost eight-hour day, I’d come back “home” and pull out my laptop, working until midnight or later.

So, yes.  Exhausting.

I’m incredibly happy (when I’m not tired and grumpy) that I’ve been working at the house, though – I feel like I’ve picked up a billion skills that a web developer would not normally have.  I’m excited to be able to apply these skills to building a chicken coop and other various things after we’re settled in.

The funny thing about building/renovating a house is that none of it is magical.

There are a lot of things in this world that seem like I’d never be able to do because there is some line between attainable and fantastic.  Anything that I can do, or know that I could do, seems to me like a fairly average skill, and anything that I have no idea how is done is ridiculous.  Building a house was one of those never-going-to-happen skills, because it’s so far out of my skillset that you must be a wizard to do it.

Funny thing, though…  When Alex would say “pull all of that drywall off” or “build that wall,” the curtain started to lift, and I could see the wizard moving the ropes.  It was so very normal.

Hard, but normal.  I’m not huge on exercise, but I’ve had more exercise in the last 3 months that I’ve had possibly in my life.

We’re at the point now where there house is completely framed, wired, and insulated, and we’re waiting on drywall.  Unfortunately (or fortunately?), I didn’t try my hand at wiring the electric or running the plumbing – though I did get to cut and put on temporary piping – so that’s still only slightly a mystery to me.  I don’t plan on running outlets so the chickens can watch Walking Dead, though, so I’m ok with that for now.

How to Live Without TV

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I won’t lie. I like television.

When I was young, my mom had a fairly strict “only one tv show a night” policy, and I’d seriously just watch the first thing that was on when I’d get home from school. Then, my brothers would watch something else, and I’d realize that THAT was the show that I really wanted to watch. But, I’d usually circumvent the rule by sitting by my dad when he watched TV later that evening. (But mom… I’m just hanging out with Daddy!)

I also played a lot of nintendo. There was another rule: we could only play nintendo on Saturdays before noon. UGH! Such a difficult, broken childhood.

As I grew up, both rules were loosened, and I could watch more than one show, and play nintendo when my parents weren’t home (the perfect babysitter!).  Incidentally, I got in trouble once when my mom went out the door, and I immediately went to the basement to play nintendo, only to find my mom yelling at me 3 minutes later. (She only went out to get the mail)

When I got to college, I was surprised at how little I cared about watching TV. There was too much to DO!

Then after college, eventually the old routine came back… You get home from a hard day’s work, and all you want to do is plop down on the couch and turn on the ol’ boob tube and zone out. Problem is, we’d start with just watching the news over dinner, and then we’d look up and we’re watching the news again at 10:30. And the evening is completely gone.

Three months ago, when we moved into our new house, we decided to move very little inside, knowing that as soon as renovations started we’d have to move it all back out.  We didn’t think it would take long to get started (we’re still waiting on permits), so my wife agreed that it’d be ok to sleep on a mattress on the floor and have only a card table and chairs as the furniture.  We also didn’t sign up for internet, since we’d probably be living somewhere else temporarily.

The internet thing is a little hard, mind you…  I’m a web developer, so I happen to need that.  Luckily I have my phone as a hot spot – but unluckily AT&T throttles me after 5GB even though my plan is unlimited.  But that’s an unrelated rant.

So – no tv, no internet (besides coffeeshops, etc).  You know what we’ve found?

We talk a lot more.

We sit outside with our three cats (that she convinced me we needed for purposes of getting rid of mice I don’t think we actually had).  We make a camp fire a couple of times a week.  We grab coffee with people.

Time actually slows down.  There have been very few days where I’ve felt like I’ve got a bazillion things to do and no time to do it…  Not because I usually waste time in front of the TV when I have a bunch of stuff to do, but because without TV I get a lot of those things done early.  We feel like it’s midnight when it’s 8:37pm.

Maybe I’m just getting really old, but I often get to bed around 10pm these days.  There’s no “one more episode of…” that I can watch, or another billion random links I need to follow.  (I do spend a lot of time playing games on my phone when I can’t sleep at 10, but I convince myself that that’s different)

We have no idea what’s going on in the entertainment world right now.  We rented a movie last night to watch on my laptop, and we didn’t know what hardly any of the Redbox titles were.  We ended up getting one that was seriously an utter waste of $1.20, and it kind of shows us that we don’t need more of it.  I don’t know who’s getting off the island, or dancing with celebrities, or getting roses, or whatever else is going on on tv.

And it’s wonderful.

We’ve decided that instead of putting the TV in the living room when we’re done with renovations, we’re going to to put it in an upstairs room.  That way, we can still watch it when we want to, but we’ll have to decide to watch it rather than let it be the default.

I think the funny thing about technology is that its original intent (whether it be a phone, tv, microwave, washing machine, etc) was to save our time.  If it takes 2 hours to prepare a good meal, and now we can do it 6 minutes, then the thought is that we have an extra 1 hour 54 minutes freed up to do something more meaningful.  But the problem is, we usually just fill that extra 1 hour 54 minutes with something that isn’t meaningful.  We keep finding ourselves new ways to be busy.  We say things like “There aren’t enough hours in the day,” but the truth is – there are!

I’m not swearing off technology – nor do I feel like we should.  But I do want to use things for their original intent: to free up time for meaningful things.

So, maybe the title suggests a 12 step program for not watching tv (step 1: don’t watch tv.  step 2: uh….), but I guess it’s really more about how to spend your life rather than just wasting it.

But I need to get back to work…  I’m only at the coffee shop for another 20 minutes…

What Country Living Looks Like

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Those are my legs right there.

I know… Pretty hot, right?

My dad, oldest brother, and nephew spent some time helping me clean up my woods a few days ago, and this is the aftermath. I texted my brother that I found a handful of ticks on me, and just wanted them to make sure they checked, too. He texted back that he already found over 100 on my nephew.

Wha???

Upon closer look on myself, I found a whole bunch more. They were the smallest ticks I’d ever seen, and I just assumed they were freckles. I’d never had this sort of reaction from ticks before, but I’d also never seen the same kind of reaction from chiggers. Kind of a cross between chiggers, ticks, and poison ivy – and man, does it itch.

This is actually not the worst my skin has ever looked in the bug bite department. I’ve still got pictures of that, but if I posted it, this site would no longer be family friendly.

I also got into a fight with a tree, and the tree won. It hit square in the face, leaving a good scrape/cut on my forehead and my nose is still sore. We had the last laugh, though. It ended up being thrown in a burn pile (which was my intention when it attacked me).

Preparation

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We were incredibly lucky to get our house and property.

(Actually, that’s not true… I don’t believe in luck – I believe whole-heartedly in the sovereignty of God. More on that later, I’m sure)

The House

Beautiful on the outside, the inside of the house is what we describe as wonky.

won·ky (wäNGkē) – adjective, informal
weird, whacked out, messed up, not working for no definable reason
(Urban Dictionary)

It was originally built without any bedrooms. Years after it was built, the previous owners’ health prevented them from going up the stairs to their loft where they slept, so they converted a garage into a bedroom. And it feels like a garage converted into a bedroom.

We obviously knew this going in, so we were totally prepared to renovate by adding bedrooms and fixing bathrooms, etc. What we were not prepared for is the process of getting the county government to approve permits for adding bedrooms.

We’ve been in the house for close to three months, and we’re still waiting on getting permits for changing our septic system to handle more bedrooms. Mind you – not the actual work, but permission from them to possibly do work. We have to have our soil tested, have duplicated soil sites the same size as the proposed septic system.

We had soil testing done well over a month ago, and the results were sent to the county, but their response was basically “meh.” They said the duplicate sites weren’t big enough. So – even though we have enough room for the septic system itself, the duplicated areas didn’t seem big enough. Then the guy said “you have seven acres, I’m sure you’ve got it.”

Then just give me the freaking permits.

I don’t get the requirements here… If I were to have an inadequate septic system, it would not affect them in any way. You and I both know that if there was an issue with my tank overflowing, I’d just dig a hole in the backyard while we fixed the problem. But I guess they’re just trying to save absolutely everyone from themselves, because it’s not fair to me to let me make my own decisions. But I digress.

After a month, the soil guys are back out today, and hopefully we’ll get that part squared away soon.

The Property

The house is nice (or – will be nice), and that’s what excited my wife when we first found it. But what gets me pumped up is the Land. (Yes – land is different than Land) I envision animals, gardens, orchards, etc, all over the place, and that means I’m happy to put up with a stressful time of renovating the house.

One unfortunate thing about our land is that it’s incredibly rocky. I don’t mean when you dig a hole, you find a handful of gravel; rather, there is a rock quarry about a mile away, and we have a natural rock patio behind the house. (As such, I realize that the soil guys have their work cut out for them)

Another unfortunate thing about our land is that the previous owners (or whoever “maintained” it for them) dumped garbage literally everywhere. There are a number of rock openings that someone deemed as landfill areas, I guess to avoid the two mile drive to the local dump. It amazes me that someone would live in such a beautiful area and treat it so poorly. I’ve got a truckload of junk that I need to haul off, and I’ve barely scratched the surface.

My dad let me borrow Big Bertha – his name for a mower/bushhog/beast that will tear through underbrush like it’s cotton candy. I’ve been on it for probably at least an hour a day for the past month, and the overgrown forest now looks like a state park. (Disregarding the landfills, of course)

You might say to yourself “Hey – I thought this guy wanted to go off grid! Why is he using machinery and gasoline to devour wonderful trees?” This is Geek Off Grid, mind you.

I love technology.

My plan for getting off the grid includes solar panels (which I already have – more on that later), Arduino projects, homemade generators and general nerdiness. More than survivalism, I want to be self-sufficient and self-sustaining. My homestead will be similar to one that you could have seen 200 years ago, but upgraded.

Homesteading 2.0

We’ve got a long way to go on both the house and property, but I’m enjoying the process. (Well – the process outside; not so much the process of getting permits)

Preface: The Mission

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So we’ve got a house and some land – big deal?

I have high hopes for the coming years, and though I’m sure things won’t work out exactly the way I’m planning them right now, getting any of them up and running is better than living on a postage stamp lot and relying on corporations and the government to get me what I need to survive.

I didn’t always have this mindset… I grew up on a crop farm and – to be perfectly honest – I avoided work when I could. (My parents will probably call me about that, saying they knew it all along) I suppose that as a kid, I just assumed that the table always had food on it, and water always came out of the faucet regardless of what I did. In recent years, after I got out into the real world/got married/got a job/etc, I started realizing just how different we live now than people did 200 years ago. What’s interesting is that folks 200 years ago didn’t live so different from folks 2000 years ago. Fashion changed, entertainment changed; but what you did to exist was the same.

In normal circumstances, in order for a human to survive, we need:

  • Clean water
  • Food
  • Shelter
  • Security

Everything else is just comfort or entertainment. If you had those things and absolutely nothing else, you might be lonely, but you’re alive.

Whether you were born in 13 AD or 1813 AD, a lot of people were farmers and/or hunters. Why? Food is somewhat important. Now, food is a thing that we put into a cart at Wal-Mart. Until maybe 100 years ago, it was incredibly common to draw your water from a well every day.

While technology have made many things easier to obtain, it is creating problems of its own. Food is riddled with genetic modifications and toxins. Water flows with chemicals and unnatural impurities.

And then there are the systems that deliver those things to us. Disasters halt delivery of goods to people who (during a disaster) need them most. Even small incidents can cause water to stop pumping from the city plant to our houses.

So, basically, after creating technology that will make our lives easier, we’ve become completely reliant on it. We promote industry to the point of poisoning our food in order to mass produce it.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not anti-corporation or against capitalism. In fact, I’m all about capitalism.

I just don’t want to be reliant on a system that will eventually break. I don’t want to keep paying for someone to do something for me that I can do myself – and that I can do better.

So, let’s go back over that list, and figure out the plan.

Clean Water

The house that we bought already has a well. Praise the Lord! One of the requirements for the house we were going to buy was that we could dig a well on the property, and having one here already sure save a ton of headaches (especially because we have pretty rocky ground). There’s even a filtration system already set up!

The only current problem is that after using the well for 27 years, about two years ago the owner connected to city water and disconnected the well pump. Well – not so much disconnected it as much as cut the pipes to pull the pump off and just place it to the side. I don’t know why they did that. So – during our upcoming renovations (more on that later), I’m planning on getting a new pump and reconnecting it. I already talked to a neighbor who is on well water, and they’ve had no problems with their water supply (one of my fears when hearing the previous owners connected to city water).

As time goes on, I’d like to add storage tanks, rain collection, and incorporate some DIY filtration.

Difficulty Level: Somewhat Easy

Food

This is the piece of the puzzle that is going to take the most work and time.

  • I’d been planning on raising chickens after watching my brother do the same for a couple of years. I’m hoping that I can learn from his mistakes and victories… The nice thing about chickens is that you get meat once, but eggs (almost) daily.
  • I want to keep some honeybee hives, which don’t necessarily bring a large quantity of food – but man-o-man I love honey. And I’d love to eventually convert my consumption of sugar to wonderful backyard honey. I have family that also make maple syrup, so at some point I figure I’ll tap into their knowledge. (And yes, I did mean to use that horrible pun)
  • We’ve already planted some fruit trees, and I’m on my way to Tractor Supply right after I post this to get some fertilizer. (My cherry tree leaves aren’t looking too good – most have already fallen off, and the remaining are yellowed, which google tells me that means they need some iron and nitrogen)
  • I didn’t think I’d be much of a gardener (again – as a kid I avoided it at all costs). However, I got a handful of plants (from my aunt’s greenhouse) when we first moved in, and to my surprise, I’ve really enjoyed …gardening…them… We don’t have a working kitchen yet, but I’m doing everything I can to keep pulling ripe tomatoes and peppers off the plants. I’m freezing them for now, hoping that they will be useful in the end. I keep moving them around, because we currently don’t have a lot of sunny spots on our property (mostly trees).
  • Eventually, I’d like to raise other animals. Holly’s not too keen on the thought of raising pigs, but I’m hoping I’ll wear her down. Man cannot live without bacon, right? The thoughts of goats, sheep, etc are definitely in the mix, but I haven’t thought that far ahead.
  • Fortunately, my wife’s mom owns a cattle farm – so we have access to natural, grass-fed beef. The way God intended a steak to be raised.
  • I need to figure out how to make my own reese’s cups…

Difficulty Level: Hard

Shelter

As long as I keep paying my mortgage payment, we should be good there.

Difficulty Level: Done

Security

I very much appreciate our second amendment (and Thank God that America’s founders had the foresight to write it down, because there sure are a bunch of people in the government who oppose it now), but I still need to get my carry permit. If the crap hits the fan, I’ll be focusing on security a lot more, but for now I’m focusing on the other things above.

Difficulty Level: Easy

So – there’s the plan as it stands now. This blog is chronicling my journey of a fully on-the-grid American to a fully off-the-grid survivalist. I’ll try to take pictures!

Preface: The Beginning

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I’m not yet off grid. But I definitely want to be. The majority of these first posts will be more about what I’m hoping to accomplish over the years, rather than what I’ve accomplished or am accomplishing.

I’ve been dreaming out loud for a few years about “when we have some land,” and all the projects that would ensue. For the past five years, my wife and I lived in a subdivision with about a fourth of an acre, and for three years before that we lived in an apartment complex. Over time, my dreams felt heavy – like they were too unrealistic.

To be fair – I have a lot of unrealistic dreams. There’ve been a number of times that I’d email my wife with a question like “airfare to Europe is only $xxx right now – we could totally sell everything and live there for a couple of years…” or “what do think about both of us quitting our jobs and starting an interpretive dance company…”

Well – not interpretive dance, but you get the idea.

I was using her as a sounding board, but she was always afraid that I was determined for all of these random things to come to fruition. So, over the years, I’ve learned that I need to ease into ideas and let her process them. So, many of my ideas don’t even get to that stage; they end up on a notepad and never come to the surface again. Probably a good thing.

Around the middle of 2012, I started talking a lot more about “when we have some land.” Both of us grew up on farms so it’s been a dream that we share – and it didn’t produce the panic attacks that she associated with some of my other ideas. I would randomly look for homes with acreage, more or less just to see the kind of property that would be available when we eventually escaped from suburbia.

I found one in October or so – a foreclosure that was not yet on the market. I showed Holly and, to my surprise, she loved it.

We took a Sunday drive to the property, peered through the windows (it was unoccupied), walked the land, and even had a conversation with a friendly neighbor. We could absolutely see ourselves (and our future children) living there.

We definitely didn’t want to have two mortgages (we’re followers of Dave Ramsey’s plan), so before we knew it, we were frantically getting our house ready to sell. We finally got around to all the things that we said we’d do – fixing this, painting that, replacing the doo-hicky. We called my friend Jerry at Award Realty (if you’re looking for a real estate agent in middle TN, I can’t recommend him enough), and he told us we were ready to put it on the market.

Boom. The dream was happening.

Our house went on the market in December, and Jerry told us it would take a while, since the market is slow in the winter, but would pick up by April.

What? April? But… That house! It could be gone by April!

We prayed a lot that we’d sell our house quick, and that the foreclosure would come on the market soon after – if it was the Lord’s will that we get that house.

Well, the foreclosure came on the market in February.
Our house had not sold.
We were freaking out.

We justified to ourselves making an offer, but we set a limit that was well under the market value for the house. Again praying that God would basically make it obvious that He did (or didn’t) want us in the house.

After an emotional week, we did not get the house. Which is a good thing, because our house didn’t sell until the beginning of April. (It sold! Yes!!)

The closing date rolled around, and we were homeless.

We had friends who needed dog sitters for about a month an a half total, so we packed everything we owned into a storage unit, and hopped around between houses. We had no idea where we were going to end up, but we were prepared to jump on buying some property (while trying not to get too emotionally connected to anything).

On the day of the closing on our last home, I found a house and almost 7 acres for auction, so Holly and I drove by soon after. We had Jerry contact the auctioneer and got us in to the house before the auction, and he gave us a renovation plan (because it was… unique) were we to get it. He agreed to continue to act as our realtor, even though actions generally aren’t done through realtors, because we felt much better with him walking us through the process. (and because he had done a TON of work for us, and didn’t want to just skip out on paying him)

Long story short, we bought the house at auction with Jerry at our side – for under what we’d agreed we’d be willing to spend on it. After a whole of bunch of headaches with trying to secure a loan (because we wanted to roll a construction loan in with it at the start, and we only had 30 days), we closed on the home 2 days before our friend returned from Sweden and we no longer had a dog to dog sit!

Thus, the dream begins.