Light on the Homestead

This is my Hubby’s first post on the website! Thanks, Babe!

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Being off grid and out in the country means having to provide for many needs that would traditionally be met by urbanized infrastructure. One of the things that all of the adults keep in pocket every day and night, is a good flashlight. The lights we carry are not super bright, but they balance intensity and portability well. Turn to Amazon, eBay, or any one of the many outdoor gear websites and you’ll run across the crop of lights that are not your dad’s 1990’s maglite.

LED technology and lithium (sometimes rechargeable) batteries have made today’s flashlights light, compact, bright, and long lasting. The lights that I bought for the Mrs, and Princess Girl is the Olight i3. It is a AAA powered flashlight blasting out 120 lumens and barely larger than the battery itself, making it easy to have on you at all times either on a keychain, a necklace, or in a jean 5th pocket.

The Wife was initially skeptical of carrying a flashlight around the homestead, but

late-night-egg-check-barely-see-the-flashlight-in-right-hand

Late night egg check. You can barely make out the super small Olight i3 in her right hand.

she has grown to find it an indispensable tool for everyday use. From finding her way to the trailer from the car at night, to peering into the cabinets to find a pan for lunchtime. The small size makes it easy to grip in her lips for both hands free, and the pocket clip allows for it to be clipped to the brim of a cap to act as a headlamp. I made sure to power it off of an Energizer Lithium AAA battery. This gives it better temperature resistance, longer runtime and slightly lighter weight.

There are certainly many types of lights to choose from, my recommendation for a basic light would be a single AAA or AA type, with a light output around the 100 lumen mark. Olight, 4Sevens, Thrunight, Nitecore, Surefire, Fenix, Streamlight are all companies putting out great lights.

maglite-2aa-led-hf-cheapie-3aaa-led-olight-s20r-energizer-headlamp1

Maglite 2AA LED, HarborFreight cheapie 3AAA LED, Olight S20R, Energizer headlamp

Maglite has stepped up their game as well with a line of LED bulb lights. Even the “giveaway” type LED flashlights (like from HarborFreight) that run off of a trio of AAA batteries have their place: small, light, bright, and so cheap to the point of being nearly disposable.

My rechargeable light (Olight S20R) is larger and more expensive than the i3, but it has features that make the greater size and weight worth it. Its rechargeable 18650 battery can be juiced up at my desk while I’m at work, on a snazzy magnetic charging base no less. It can put out enough light to illuminate the hillside, or little enough to peer under the theater seat without disturbing other patrons. It can get a bit tiring in a mouth grip or heavy attached to a hat brim, but its versatility makes up for these factors.

easy-to-find-the-dark-red-olight-i3-connected-to-victorinox-cadet-nd-maglite-solitaire-led

Olight i3 in red makes finding in the dark a little easier, small size pairs easily with a Victorinox Cadet to round out a front pocket light/blade EDC combo. The blue Maglite Solitaire LED also runs on a single AAA, and is easily found at just about any kind of store.

For working tasks I highly recommend having a headlamp in addition to a pocket flashlight. A light specifically made to wear on the head is much more comfortable, and one designed to provide a flood of light rather than a spot beam makes working with your hands easier.

While we have many flashlights hanging out around the homestead, nothing beats having one in your pockets, right at your fingertips ready at a moment’s notice.

Permits!!!

Eggs!!!

A time for everything

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A friend of ours was looking to re-home his chickens and rabbits.

So, who did he call to see if we wanted to take them? Why, us, of course! And it just so happened that THIS week is the week we needed to take them.

Despite the fact that we did not have a chicken coop. At. All.

And our rabbit hutch is in disrepair.

But did we let that deter us? Not a chance!

If you follow us on Facebook, you’ve probably seen the progress we made on a chicken coop.

First we gathered materials.

We’re pretty excited that so far, we have not had to buy a single thing to put together our chicken coop. Most of the wood is reclaimed wood from a friend’s old play house and some shelves we demolished which we found on freecycle. A few 2×4’s are “new”, as in, never been used, but we’ve had them hanging around for a while. We’ll eventually need to put a bit of money into it for roofing and paint, but it won’t cost us very much. We feel so blessed.

Over the course of a few days, I worked to get a coop up enough that the chickens would at least have a place to sleep.

My “office” for a few days. How blessed am I?!

Making sure things are level and plumb.

Putting on the floor.

My co-workers for the day. Lot of help they are!

Getting closer. This is what the coop looked like when we brought the chickens home on Tuesday at 2pm.

Nailing on the roof.

It took everyone to work to finish the coop before sundown.

It’s not finished, but it will work for a few days to get us through till we have time to work some more on it.

Time to bring in the chickens.

Flower girl wanted to help, of course.

Happy in their new home.

Happy in their new home.

They’ll free-range till we can get a run built for them.

And the rabbits are living in a little box trailer we have till we can get their hutch repaired.

This is April. She actually belonged to us several years ago till we gave her to our friend, who gave her back to us. She is the most docile of the group. The other 4 are her offspring, several generations removed. She is no longer a breeder since she’s so old, but she’s so sweet we’re not sure if we want to cull her or not.

Sharing their meal.

And that’s our new adventure. I’ve had fun over the last couple of days trying to figure out what breeds of chickens we have. Eventually we want to get into breeding them, and doing so selectively. But for now, it’s enough that we have chickens again.

And the rabbits. Yes. That is three females and two males all running around in a box trailer together. Yes, that means babies in about a month. But the deed was done before we got home. They had all gotten out of their cages and were running around in the trailer with the chickens. Figured that since the deed was already done, it wouldn’t hurt for them to live in colony until we can get their hutch repaired. That’s our project for this weekend. And in just a month, we’re gonna have babies. Lots of cute, cuddly, fluffy baby bunnies. Just in time for Christmas.

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!

Water, water everywhere…

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…and hopefully safe to drink!

The well is in!

O. M. Goodness, we are so excited!

If you follow us on facebook, you’ve probably been keeping up with our well journey, but if not, here’s a quick recap. It took them three days of drilling and several more days of prepping the well, having to go down 461 feet, but we hit good pressure water. The water down there is flowing at about 60-70 gallons per minute, and the well head (how high up the pipe the water is being forced by the pressure) is at about 230. So half the pipe is filled with water. This is a very good thing.

Drilling in action

They put the pump in the well last week and I didn’t even know it. So I didn’t have the generator and storage tank down there for them. So they came back today to hook everything up.

So. Very. Exciting!

That’s water from our well!!!

WAAATERRRRRR!!!!!

So, since we’re not set up to run water to our house, (because, you know, it doesn’t exist yet), we are just going to pump water into our 250 gallon storage tank to use as needed. Also, we’ll be able to run a hose from the well directly to the trailers to fill tanks and barrels. That will be so nice.

Of course, all of that is providing we can drink the water and don’t need to do anything extra to it. We have to flush the whole system for a while, then send some samples in to the state lab to have it tested. So far it looks and smells very clean. We’re hoping and praying that it is drinkable as-is. That would just be absolutely amazing. And of not, if it has some high mineral we have to filter out, we can deal with that, too.

Our set up

So right now the pump is controlled by the breaker, which is powered by the generator. When the pump is on, it fills the tank, or alternatively can be diverted to a garden hose.

We are working on getting gravel delivered over the next couple of days, then we will begin constructing a shed around the pump and tank, etc. The Pump House will hold the well pump, holding tank, generator, and probably the laundry washing machine, too, for now. This shed will provide the insulation to keep the tank from freezing. Although, we learned today that our water is actually a bit on the warm side. Not sure if that’s because it just naturally stays that warm that far under the ground, or what, but today when we were flushing the well, the water was decidedly warmer than the ambient temperature outside as the sun was setting. But then, it IS November. At any rate, the fact that the water is not frigid will help keep the tank from freezing as easily. That’s our hope, anyway, as the overnight temps are supposed to drop into the 20’s this week. Brrrrr.

So that’s it for now, folks. It’s a monumentous day. And a huge step forward.

We have WATER!

How do we…take showers

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We are a family of 5 (while our godson is living with us) living in an off-grid camping trailer while we build our house.

And we ripped the shower and toilet out of the trailer long before we ever started living in it.

So, how do we de-stinkify ourselves when the need arises? (And believe me, living all together in 280 square feet, the need arises quite frequently!)

However, in reality, we all take fewer full showers than most people do. Being that we have to haul in our own water, we try to conserve as much as possible. The girls and I only wash our hair once a week, and the water always gets turned off while soaping up. And in between those several full showers a week are the “rinse offs”. This is where we basically only wash off the truly stinky parts. You know, those areas you’d hit with a quick sponge bath.

When we lived here two years ago for those few idyllic months, we mainly took sponge baths and went to my mom’s house when a full shower was needed.

But we knew that couldn’t last for too long, so when we moved back to the homestead this summer, we knew we needed something more permanent. And yes, there’s always Pajii’s trailer, but we don’t want to constantly be using his water and power or crowding his space every time we need to clean up. Not to mention how tiny those trailer showers are!

So Hubby built us a shower room constructed from 2×4’s and plywood.

This 4×4 mini-shed makes a very spacious and wonderful shower. We use a 20 amp hour, 12 volt battery connected to an RV water pump which sits on top of one of our 50 gallon barrels of water.

A 100 watt solar panel is hooked to the battery to keep it topped up. The pump brings water through a propane powered instant hot water heater.

Right now, we only have the ability to turn the water on and off while inside the shower, not adjust the temperature. So showering can be quite the adventure depending on how warm the ambient air is as well as how warm the water inside the barrel has gotten. If you’re taking a shower mid-afternoon on a warm day, you’d better turn that puppy waaaay down before you get in there. 😀 We have plans to rig it up so we can adjust the temperature from inside. But we’ve had a few, more pressing projects.

And speaking of the inside…

The reason we have a shower curtain in there is so we can hang our clothes and towel on the hooks and close the curtain around them so they don’t get wet.

There is no floor built into the shower. Rather, we placed pavers on the ground inside so the water can drain easily.

So far, the whole system has worked almost seamlessly. Once the temps drop, we will need to do something to keep things from freezing, but for now, and probably at least another month or so, we’ll be fine.

And hopefully we’ll have the well in by then and can move our whole base of operations down to the house pad (we’re still camped out on the upper pad about a quarter mile away from where the house is going to go.)

Oh, and the latest news on the well is that the drilling company has a broken rig, putting them further behind schedule and they’ll contact is when they can get us back on the schedule. *Sigh*

But it will happen when it happens. There’s nothing we can do about it, so why stress over it? God has his reasons. In the mean time, we’re keeping busy.

So anyway, now you know how we get clean here on the homestead.

Adding on and making room

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We have an addition to the family. At least for a few months. Meet our godson, Raven Boy.

He’s 13 years old, can drive a vehicle, is great with electronics and tools, and is a ginormous help around the homestead. He and his family visited for the summer, and when his family went home, it was decided that he would stay here with us for a while to help out with building the house and other projects.

So, as I looked around our trailer, I realized we didn’t have enough room for another full sized person to sit anywhere when we’re hanging out inside. (He has a separate “bedroom”in our extra trailer that we use as storage.) And with winter approaching, spending all our time outside isn’t going to be an option for too much longer.

So, Hubby and I had a talk, and figured out that with a little bit of rearranging in the living room, we could build a bench to comfortably seat another person or two. And it wouldn’t take up any more space than was currently being used.

I forgot to get a before picture with all our stuff there, but here’s the area cleared out. We had Scooter’s kennel, a couple of file boxes, and the toy chest in this corner.

We cleared out and cleaned the floor. Then started building the frame for the bench. This is where Raven Boy really shined. He already knows so much about using tools, etc that he cut all the wood for the bench, as well as helped put it all together.

Once the frame was together, and the door in for Scooter’s cubby, we covered most of it in plywood.

The left side was left open and put on hinges so that we can lift it out of the way and still deploy our couch into a bed. It was Raven Boy who came up with the design for that section.

We also left the top plywood unattached on the right side in order to easily access the area underneath for storage (and to be able to clean out the dog cubby when needed).

We bought pillows and pillowcases as the cushions for the bench. And we downsized Flower Girl’s toys to fit in a small tote and put the rest of them and the family heirloom toy chest into the storage unit.

I plan on painting the bench and sewing up the ends of the pillow cases so they look a bit more like cushions.

Overall, though, I’m very pleased with it. And since the weather has cooled off considerably recently, it’s been nice that the five of us can sit comfortably in our living room. We can also go over to Pagee’s (now spelled Pajii) trailer to watch a movie or something.

And Pajii put the full dinette back in his trailer after Bachan passed away, and all 6 of us can sit around the dining table when the weather (or yellowjackets) is not conducive to eating outside.

So that’s one more thing checked off our list of things to do to in order to live comfortably in the trailers for the winter. Next up is heat! Pajii’s trailer has a working furnace. Ours does not. We have several ideas of how not to freeze over the winter. I’ll keep you up to date on what we come up with.

How do we…wash clothes

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After a busy day of taking the portable septic tank to be dumped, filling up 4 barrels of water, and doing 4 loads of laundry, I got to thinking that you all might be interested in how we do some basic things here on the homestead. Such as wash laundry. And take showers. And use the toilet.

We live in a camping trailer, yes, but that trailer doesn’t have running water and is not hooked up to septic. In fact, it no longer even has a bathroom.

The former bathroom

And even when it did, we never used it. Would you if you had to move the entire outdoor living area just to take your trailer out to dump the septic tank and take on fresh water every week or so?

Yeah, us neither.

So, we have an outhouse of sorts, an enclosed outdoor shower, and we even have laundry capabilities, right here on the homestead.

Over the next several days, I’m going to be doing some posts on how we do these mundane, yet necessary tasks.

And since today has mostly been about doing laundry, we’ll start with that.

So, how do we wash laundry? Well, I suppose we could take our laundry to the laundromat. Probably most people would do that and most people probably think that’s what we do. But we’re not most people. I don’t want to spend several hours each week sitting in a laundromat (the nearest of which is all the way in town).

Ain’t nobody got time for that!

Disclaimer: Pagee takes his laundry to said laundromat. So obviosly he has time for that. 😉

Not too long ago, we acquired a washing machine for free. It now sits beside our shed, with two 55 gallon barrels of water next to it.

The first time I used it, I had to manually fill it with 5 gallon totes. That thing uses upwards of 15 gallons of water for the wash and rinse cycles – each! That’s 25-30 gallons of water per load! And it’s not that old of a washer. No wonder everyone is going to HE washers!

Anyway, we have to run the generator to run the washer, so it’s a noisy process. But I don’t have to leave the homestead to do laundry. Which means other stuff gets done while the laundry is washing. And that’s a big deal, folks!

So here’s what our set up looks like.

(The tent in the background belongs to some friends who are visiting. 🙂 )

We use the generator (sitting behind the water barrels) to run the washer. The water pump we took out of our trailer is hooked up to a battery.

This type of pump is nice because when there is full pressure in the line, it stops pumping. When the pressure drops (ie when you open a faucet, or the washing machine opens it’s valve) the pump automatically kicks on. Pretty sweet.

Anyway, when we get ready to wash, we make sure the barrel has enough water, hook up the pump to the battery, turn on the genny, plug in the washer, and then use as normal.

As shown above, the wash water is diverted by a hose and goes to a couple trees. It looks redneck, but it works.

Note: if your drain pipe is lower than the water outlet on the machine, like if the hose is just laying on the ground, all that water you’re pumping into the washer will just drain right out of the hose. Don’t ask me how I know this. :-\

When we’re not washing, we put the hose and table away. So far, we haven’t had any real rain this summer, so we haven’t had to worry about the washer being out in the wet. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, I guess.

And, of course, our dryer is completely solar powered. 😀

And that’s how we do laundry here on the homestead.

Off grid cold storage

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No, this isn’t one of those posts that tell you how we keep our food cold with no electricity.

We like the convenience of a refrigerator. And fridges run on electricity. Or propane, such as the one in our trailer that crapped out on us several weeks ago.

We looked into buying a new one for the trailer and were staggered by the prices. It just didn’t seem like the best deal to spend that much money on a new fridge for an old trailer, especially since we’ll only be in the trailer until the house is built (ie, less than a year). We also looked into buying used, and while the prices were better, they were still fairly high, and the selection was minimal.

So instead, we decided to beef up our battery bank and solar panels and get an inverter so we can run a regular fridge on electricity. Yes, just as expensive (or moreso) than a brand new fridge. BUT, the solar generator system will be usable for other things on the homestead later down the road, rather than just a fridge to sit in an unused trailer once the house is built.

Hubby’s work happened to have a small fridge sitting around, not being used. So they gave it to us.

It ain’t pretty, and it’s not terribly efficient, but it works. And even though it’s not very efficient, it’s small, so the power draw is fairly small as well.

So now we have four 100watt solar panels on the roof of our trailer. We have a battery box containing three 100amp hour batteries. We have a 1 kilowatt inverter. And we have a charge controller capable of handling the power coming in from the solar panels.

And if you know what all that means, you know more than I do!

I’m just so excited to have more fridge space again. And to not have to bug dad every time we want a cheese stick or something. But I’m also thankful that for the last several weeks, we were able to keep our cold foods in his fridge, rather than an ice chest.

But then again, if we were having to buy ice every other day in this heat, maybe The Hubs would have gotten the system put together faster. Hmmmm…

Oh well, it’s done now, Hubs learned a ton about the whole process, and even I learned a little along the way.

And we again have a working fridge. 😀

UPDATE: since our fridge sits outside in the hot air rather than inside in a cool house, Hubby decided it needed more insulation.

Thus our robo-fridge!

Keeps our food cold AND looks…well, I guess it looks..ummm, OK, it looks kinda dumb. But it works! And that’s all that matters. 🙂

Maridy

“I lift up my eyes to the hills, where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.” Psalm 121

End of an Era

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If you can call just over two years an era, August 4th marked the end of it.

Mom/Bachan went home to be with our Lord that day.

For those of you who haven’t followed along since the beginning, Bachan is our kids’ name for Hubby’s mom who’s declining health was the reason we dropped everything and moved to Portland, OR on July 12, 2014.

We spent nearly two years in the Portland area helping care for Mom. You can read all about our time there, which I called our Portland Interlude.

On May 20th, 2016, we brought Mom and Dad back with us to Nevada. Mom got to spend just over two months enjoying the blue skies and bright sun here in the high desert.

But the disease eventually won out and her body just couldn’t fight any more and she passed peacefully in her sleep on August 4th.

We were so very blessed to get to spend two years with her. She was such an amazing, godly woman. I hope that should I ever face the challenges she did, I handle them with the grace and strength she showed.

Mom and Dad getting to enjoy the sunrise together for the first time in forever.

So now we move forward, with a hole in our hearts that her presence used to fill, but also with a profound gratitude that she’s no longer in pain and a firm knowledge that she’s home in heaven. The future looks a little different than it did a couple weeks ago. And sadness still lingers. But, for the most part, the joy outweighs the sorrow and we are doing well.

Maridy

“I lift up my eyes to the hills, where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.” Psalm 121

Castle Rock Homestead

Off-grid homesteading in the high desert of Northern Nevada.

Light on the Homestead

Permits!!!

Eggs!!!

A time for everything

Water, water everywhere…

How do we…take showers

Adding on and making room

How do we…wash clothes

Off grid cold storage

End of an Era

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