Here's our long-over-due progress post for this new life we chose to live...
Today I want to tell you about what we have accomplished so far, and the trying times we've been going through.
I know we're only at the beginning of our off-grid homesteading journey and there will be many more trying days, but you have to take into consideration the adjustment period! We were living completely dependent of the grid in one of the biggest and more congested city of this earth... New York City. Now (for those of you who haven't been following our story), we are at the foot hills of the Catskills mountain range, on a raw piece of land that was never farmed.
The Dream:
Some 14 years ago I dreamt of a Caravan of artists, mind/body professionals and off-gridders traveling the world, spreading their knowledge and leaving behind some sort of inspiration for a more creative life, re-connected to the natural world. This was going to be a Caravan for the People!
The dream has morphed a little since then, but the essence of it is still well alive. Somewhere down the line we decided to build the same community as The People's Caravan, only this time we wanted to have a home-base... a place where we could practice what we'd preach!
Within this new version of the dream is a learning center for all ages.
This is where we are now. Our home-base is 19 acres, mostly wooded, hilly and touched by a beautiful creek.
We have started building what will become a large mash-up of all the amazing things we've come across while traveling the world. A maker space, a maditation and mindfulness space, an adventure course in the forest canopy (with a small Ewok Village), a natural jungle gym, cabins built of natural materials... the list goes on and on, It even includes an old airplane fuselage made to look like it crashed in a tree, dressed up to be a tiny home!
And of course growing our own food, finding ways to make some kind of a living off the land, with a permaculture state of mind....
There's no lack of work here, that's for sure!
Building a Bridge out of Pallets
Let's get back to our progress now that you all kind of know the Back Story:
A couple of months ago we made the move to our beloved Dream Land (credit for the name goes to our 3 year old son who keeps referring to where we live as Dream Land... I think it's brilliant!).
There were a couple posts to follow where we documented our first days, and our first week... both were very exciting for us. We were in heaven, living the dream!!!!
Since living off-grid we've grown to expect time to be much slower (or that things take much longer than expected).
We are figuring it out little by little, accepting help with open arms and learning from our mistakes... everyday we learn something new!
Frustration... Our relationship is being tested.
These last couple of weeks have been tough on us, we've been snappy towards eachother, which is unusual. We both realize it musy come from the difficulties of living off-grid on a shoe string.
As our freshwater tanks were nearing the bottom, we'd yet had to figure out how to fill them up. We set up a quick rainwater catchment system and the time had come to transfer the water into the belly of the RV (Recreational Vehicle, in other words: a caravan). I now know how we will use the 12v pump the RV came with, but we still haven't got the parts we need to build a bypass and a couple switch valves to make it work properly. I do have a system in place, and we were able to fill one of our tanks but this will not work for very long...
The heat has been brutal and the thunder storms make it almost impossible to work outside, so we work little by little... The RV came with a new but really cheap deep cycle battery, that could barely hold a charge. Once I saw our propane fridge turn off a couple times, I realized it needed a little bit of juice for the automatice on/off switch atached to the thermostat. We went ahead and bought a cheap solar sytem from a friend who had it as part of his bug out kit. He decided to bug-in if anything were to happen, so he offered it to us!
A whole 45 watts of power xomong in!!!
The refrigerator problem was solved, we could go to a festival in peace!
Building a homestead from scratch with a 3 year old has it's challenges too.
When I talk about things taking longer than expected, I mean everything takes many times longer!!!! We love him very much and also try very hard to not be working all the time. We make time to play together and take turns going out on the town where other children are.
The local library has a lot of avtivities, we also managed to finally hook up with someone we knew from the playground in Brooklyn (who is part of the big exodus happening, from cities to country!). We've also gone to a couple of alteranive schools to check them out... very pricey though, Wow!!!
A part of me wants to do homeschool or really what I would like to do is Unschool but while no other families live on this land with us, I think we'll send him to the good old government school. It's a tough choice, he could go to one of those alternative schools and be surrounded by like minded people or we teach him by example, kindness, happiness, love, play and our own alternative way of life with wich he could influence the main stream population going to public schools.... something to think about.
We have my wife's 40th birthday week coming up and setting that up has been quite the task too... but we'll get it done!!!
She wants a five day party, festival style in the forest. Friends are coming from England, Puerto Rico, California, Ohio and a couple other states on the east coast! So we picked a couple spots where one area will stay the quiet zone for all the parents and who ever else wants that. The other area will have an outdoor kitchen, a DJ booth, a dance area and a large fire pit.
We also have to build an extra compost toilet or two and an area for yoga, workshops and other mindful activities with a pretty view... still so much work and it's for the last week of July!!!
So there it is. You can see that we have about a million things on our plate! Prioritizing which side of the plate to take care of first has been my hardest challenge in this journey so far. There's a fine line between financial capital and being here to build our infrastructure... a well for example, will cost us close to $10,000. We need water, but for now we can do without running water... before winter hits this side of earth we need to figure it out! With that kind of money we could get a pretty good back-hoe/front loader to be able to work faster....
And building at least one cabin could be great, as that could be a source of income (there is quite a lot of tourism around here, all year)
So far we are loving this life! And all the work and hard times we've put into it so far haven't scared us one bit!!!
My only regret is, Why didn't start this a couple decades ago!?!
Thank you for stopping by 😁, and see you soon!
In the End, it Always works out
