I think it is about time I wrote about real life rather than thoughts, especially considering the fact that people actually seem to be interested in how my life here really is. I have had so many funny conversations with people, their expressions of incredulity on finding out I don’t have electricity or a phone are often hard to keep from bursting out laughing at! Then I have to get ready for the inevitable question/statement “Oh my gosh you must be freezing to death over there!” and no matter how much I explain things they keep going back to “But are you REALLY warm enough?” If I weren’t I would do something about it wouldn’t I? Not having the very modern invention of commercial electricity delivered through wires to the house doesn’t render a guy completely helpless nor does it contribute to giving him an empty wallet, quite the contrary! In a small community like this anything out of the ordinary causes stories to circulate rather rapidly and the more they travel the more unlike the original truth they become, not intentionally I am sure! So here it is right from the source!

I don’t know where to start now. It isn’t all that out of the ordinary to me so I keep thinking none of this is worth writing down. I guess the best place to start is at the beginning when I moved here…

The farmstead is 20 acres with about half of that thick trees, the rest yard, buildings and a meadow. There is a good sized 2 story house with a great basement, a garage with a pit (my favorite feature) a small shop, a grain elevator, and last but not least a huge barn and silo. I am extremely thankful for the barn because the barn at Dad’s place burned down and I needed a place for the animals. This one is easily twice as big as that one was so I can store more stuff! When I decided to move here I knew I couldn’t stay in the house because it is needing a lot of repair to put it mildly. Besides, I have lived in houses that were in the process of being built/remodeled and it is miserable besides taking twice as long to get done, always messy and just no fun. So I figured it would be best to move a little building in here that I could finish off real quickly and live in for the time it took to do the house. I don’t need much room all by myself, a desk, a chair, a loft for sleeping and enough space to store the normal junk a guy collects is all I really need. I found a 16x14 wooden grain bin and decided that it would be perfect. For those who don’t know what a wood grain bin is like I’ll explain. It’s just a regular 16x14 building but is built about twice as strong as a regular building, a tight wood floor and a tall peaked roof. I had to move it which was a very easy job really. With a lot of blocks and bricks and one little 4 ton hydraulic jack I lifted the whole building up about 4 feet in the air so I could back the flatbed trailer underneath and lowered it on. I used the 32 foot flatbed trailer and pickup which hauled it nicely. It was a simple job to just drive the 3 miles to where I was going to put it, situating the trailer was a bit of a pain because of the snow and the trees which were a little bit in the way. I had my brother in law Kyle helping and I would have had a miserable time of it without his help but we got it after a bit of maneuvering. Then I just jacked the building high enough to get the trailer out from under it and when that was done I lowered it one block at a time until it was situated just how I wanted it. Simple.
I have always intended on having a guest cabin, or bunkhouse so that is what this will be someday when I move out of it into the real house, in the meantime I am working on getting things comfortable. The first thing I did was to go to town and buy insulation, I considered trying straw just to see if I could do it but decided that would take more time than I wanted and the $300 for insulation was well worth it considering how cold it gets here. Heat and cooking are provided with the old reliable wood cook stove which has served my family for about 20 years. The biggest job was I had no help getting it over here! Anyone who has attempted to move one of these things knows what a predicament I had! I ended up taking it apart as much as I could to loose as much weight as I could and then told myself “Either you pick that thing up and get it in there or you freeze. One or the other it’s your choice!” I picked it up and carried it and now I hope to NEVER move it again! Thankfully when it came time to move it across the yard Kyle was around so I had help with that part. For those of you who have no experience with a wood fired kitchen stove let me tell you that they are a marvelous invention! I think I have cooked with one more in my life than I have used a regular electric or gas stove and I like the wood variety a lot better most of the time.
After I got the heat and insulation tasks dealt with I built a loft for storing things as well as for sleeping. In a building this size, space is at a premium so I have to make the best use of it! Sleeping up in a loft has another purpose as well. Heat rises so it’s far warmer up in the loft than it is on the floor. The biggest problem I have here is that the stove was not meant to stay going all night long so it lasts about 2 hours before I have to add more wood. I am a great sleeper, never had a sleepless night in my life so I often sleep right through several of the two hour fire feeding times and wake up in the morning to a very cold house! Here is the predicament. The stove puts out a tremendous amount of heat if I let it and with this small of an area to heat it just takes a few minutes to get really warm in here! One degree per minute to be exact, and that is from a dead fire just with kindling. The converse is true as well. When the fire goes out it can get cold really fast too! Not enough thermal mass was a problem so I built a rock wall behind the stove to buffer some of the heat and it is working beautifully. I still have to get up all night long but I am glad of that because I want to train myself to be able to wake up at all hours of the night if I need to, as well as get used to needing less sleep. We train ourselves to need the amount we need and I had trained myself to “need” at least 8 hours which is ridiculous for a guy my age. So to dispel the fears of a majority of the population, yes, I am perfectly warm and comfortable! Far better than 100% of the pioneers were I am sure. I even have a chainsaw for cutting wood which I have more than I can ever use right out my door unlike the pioneers. I can’t imagine how they managed. I almost bought a propane heater which would have made my life incredibly luxurious and I would have gotten extremely lazy so I decided against it. On the mornings when I wake up and it is 10 degrees inside I may think otherwise but that is just part of denying the flesh right? Besides, snuggling up close to a propane burner just isn’t the same as sticking your feet inside of a warm oven is it? Oddly, the worst part of all of this is my newfound terror of fire! To explain that I’ll have to explain about the barn fire. To make it short, the last night I stayed over at Dad’s place I woke up at 1 in the morning because of the huge roar of the air being sucked into the barn burning, the cows and horses making a terrible racket (wonder why?) and the crackling of the flames. The inside of the house was almost bright as day with the flickering of the flames out in the barn and I rushed outside (after putting my boots on) to get the animals out because they were locked in the lean to attached to the barn as well as some in the barn itself. I got the horses and the breeding cows out as well as the bull I was renting from a neighbor but the animals going to the sale the very next day along with the sheep I had just bought the week before didn’t live. The chickens were too stupid and I couldn’t get them out. It was delightful to see how the rescued animals clung to me, the horses had to stand right next to me the whole time I watched the barn burning, which was a fantastic sight, or would have been if the other animals had not been inside and if I hadn’t had about $7,000 worth of machinery burning up inside along with the whole years supply of hay and grain! The Lord gives and the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord!
Anyway, all of that to clear up why the sight of fire, the sound of fire and the smell of fire drive me bananas now! It took about a half hour for the barn to collapse while I stood there and watched (I was the only one home at the time) but it smoldered for over a month afterward. Now, at night when the fire in the stove crackles I jump and when I shut off the lights flickering from the flames reflects off of the walls and keeps me jumping for a while before I can finally fall asleep.
Speaking of lights, that is another thing that really intrigues people when they talk to me about how I live. They get romantic ideas about candles and lamps. There is nothing romantic about it. It’s just light for goodness sakes! I use kerosene lamps, Coleman gasoline lamps and the old hurricane oil lamps. At least I use those when I am outside or when I just want to because they are nice. For about 99% of the time inside I use regular electric lights. It is easy, I can plug in whatever I like as long as it doesn’t exceed 300 watts! I bought a fairly good sized deep cycle battery and have a 300 watt inverter which gives me all the power I need and more. I have two lights that take 12 watts each (they’re fluorescent bulbs, just about like 40 watt regular bulbs) in addition to those I have my laptop which uses very little power. That’s all of the electric power I need at the moment. I really don’t even need that but it is a luxury I am willing to put up with. Now a battery doesn’t stay charged forever, not even a deep cycle. All I did was wire in a connection to the battery in the car, now whenever I go anywhere I grab the battery, put it on the floor, plug it in and charge while I drive. Almost free electricity. I have a bigger battery bank in the garage for lights and, as soon as I get a bigger inverter, power tools. For that one I just plug in to the car while I am warming it up before I go somewhere. It is a turbo diesel car so I always try to warm it up for a few minutes before driving anyway so I am not doing anything I wouldn’t ordinarily do otherwise other than the actually plugging in part. So far I have as much power as I need but I am building another charging system out of a 4 horsepower diesel engine and a 120 amp alternator so I can have big power for charging if I use a lot of power tools and am not driving the car enough. That runs on vegetable oil or used crankcase oil or hydraulic oil or whatever oil I find handy at the moment as does the car some of the time. I’ll post about that and the oil pressing another time. Oh speaking of starting the car, that is a novelty to some people that I should mention. You see, a gas car will usually start until it is about 30 below zero before problems start to occur, at least that is how cold I have started my gas car without plugging it in. But, since I moved away Dad didn’t have a car (he always used one of mine before) so since I really have no use for three cars, I sold him my gas car and now all I have are diesels, which do not start at 30 below zero! I spent about $500 at the beginning of winter to get the car really in top running condition so it will start down to about zero after which the battery won’t crank anymore, so what I do instead of using the block heater (which is useless to me here) is I park it in the garage over the pit, where I have a little wood stove installed, the chimney pointing directly at the oil pan when I have the car parked properly. All I have to do is start a fire in there a half hour before I want to go somewhere and let it smolder while I do other things, that warms the engine up better than any block heater ever has and I have heat inside to defrost the windshield immediately too! I keep a cast iron pan in the trunk so I can put some oil (from the crankcase, mixed with a little diesel from the fuel tank) in the pan and burn that under the engine in an emergency when I am away from home and my stove in the pit, so far I only used it once to try it out and it worked great.
What other things are odd that people wonder about? Oh, the refrigerator, I think that is what people like the best! It’s simple, a box full of the things ordinarily kept in a refrigerator (I eat weird, maybe it isn’t what you think of as ordinary but it’s ordinary for me) insulated to keep the heat out and placed right on the un-insulated wood floor and a little vent directly outside that I can open or close as I need to keep the temperature relatively cold. Works great as long as winter is here, when spring comes I’ll just buy a refrigerator and be normal! A freezer is easier yet, since it is always frozen outside guess where the food goes! Meat is hanging up in the barn rafters, all I have to do is go out with a saw and cut it off the old fashioned way, just like yours and my great grandparents did I am sure. My plumbing system consists of three buckets. One for cold water, one for hot water constantly on the stove and one for melting snow for drinking water. Simple and there really is no chance for a breakdown in the system or a leaky pipe. It’s simplicity itself and I like that. Restroom facilities consist of an old fashioned outhouse. I am sure nobody remembers those though I do since I grew up with one since I was 13 years old so it’s normal for me. I chop wood with an axe too, anyone familiar with that? Probably not too many people are anymore, it’s great exercise really. I think one of the biggest problems with people today is their lack of exercise, I am writing about certain health principles and I may post those someday soon so I won’t get off on the tangent of exercise since that is a major topic. I am trying to think of what else is unusual…Oh, I did put in one window since I like light during the day, and I have about 1/3rd of the floor carpeted, the area where I have my chair and desk so I can walk on a floor other than wood. The wood isn’t bad but carpet is warmer. It makes it brighter in here too since it is white. It won’t be for long I assure you!
I usually get up in the morning to a cold house and a cold wood floor so I get slippers on as fast as I can, then stand at the window to watch the sunrise because it comes up right at the end of the silo which is attached to the barn and when the rays glint off of the weathervane on the silo it is about as pretty of a picture as anyone could ask for to wake up to! That is the time I take to thank God for the new mercies he shows to me every morning and to ask that He helps me to honor Him in everything I do for the entire day, ask for guidance as to what I should spend my time on for the day and that He bless and be with certain people that I pray for every day or who is on my mind at the moment. From there I put some clothes in the oven, stir the fire up and pour a cup of yarrow or sage tea from the pot of water that is on the stove and is already hot from setting there overnight (if I have not been too lazy to wake up and feed it all night), then I put a pot of water on to boil for oatmeal while I cut bread for toast, yes I make the bread. By that time my clothes are nice and warm in the oven and it is so nice to put hot clothes on! Try it sometime and you will want to do it forever! I guess in the old days the rich guys had valets to warm their clothes, I am not a rich guy and even if I were I would still do that job myself! While the breakfast is in the making and usually during the eating of it I read the morning passages in the Bible, which are one Proverb for the day, 5 or 6 chapters in the New Testament and several in the old. After eating the almost universal breakfast of oatmeal, apple, toast with honey and tea, I decide what needs to be done for the day and go do it! Lately I have been chopping and stacking firewood because I want to have at least two months supply in case something happens and I am unable to do it. When it gets dark I come in, get the fire going again if it isn’t already, put something on for supper (only two meals a day usually, three just takes too much time and dishes)While that is cooking I usually attack the pile of books that I have here to read or I fire up the computer and type, continuing to do one or the other, eating popcorn (I love popcorn) that as you probably guessed was made in a pot on the stove, until I fall asleep in the chair, which is one reason I have so many things typed up! A few nights I do hand work like tanning the hides I get from the creatures that I shoot, I’ve got several squirrel skins drying at the moment that are destined for hat lining. They were destroying my grain elevator so I had to lower their population. Another project was to build a rocking chair which I did because I wanted one and didn’t have one and wasn’t about to go to town and spend $300 for something I could just as well build myself, or the axe handle, it broke and since it is 45 miles to town to get another one I made one instead, it works just as good as any other. Oh, I forgot another big question people have, laundry. Yes, I do it myself in a tub with a wringer. It works and that is all that counts though when I get the house done one of the first things I am going to buy is a nice washing machine! For now washing the few clothes I get dirty isn’t so bad, I string up a line in here and hang them up to dry and yes, I even iron them with my great, great, great grandmothers sadiron that supposedly came over on a ship from Ireland and was in the family for who knows how long before that. I wouldn’t part with it for hardly anything! It works great, just heat it on the stove and go to work.
I am not going to live like this forever, someday I’ll get the house done and I’ll live somewhat normally though normal for me might be abnormal for you. I don’t plan on ever getting regular electricity, not because of the cost—it’s relatively cheap—but because I just do not want it! I can make my own just as well and I don’t have to rely on some company to provide for me what I can provide for myself. The reason I am doing this is I have always wanted to, and I think that is as good of a reason as any don’t you? There are things I want to learn and things I want to get used to and I want to be comfortable with doing it if I have to in a pinch. I am enjoying almost every minute of it (except my feet hitting the cold floor on the mornings that I sleep through the fire feeding time).
I have learned a few tricks and things to make life a lot easier and more comfortable in the short time I have been here, things like the value of wool clothing, the value of slippers, how nice it is to pre warm my clothes in the oven and I remember how nice it is to take a hot rock, or better yet a bag of grain or sand, that has been heated in the oven to bed to keep your feet warm. Mom used to do that for us when I was little and now I have revived the practice! It helps on cold nights! For recreation I have a nice pond to skate on, though I never do it, hunting, which I do often, trapping, which I don’t do enough of, walking over to the church to play their (wonderful Baldwin) piano or lately I have been pruning apple trees for recreation! Not the usual time of year but I have so many of them to prune that I figured why not get started a little early?
There are many more things but this will hopefully satisfy the curious minds. I keep getting barraged with people wanting to see how it all is that I might just have to start charging a fee to get the tour and I would get rich, especially when they get their camera out, yes, people take pictures “I’ve got to show this to so and so…”. Lets see, one night in the cabin in a cot with the job of feeding the fire and a day of laundry with a tub and wringer, cooking on a wood stove and cutting firewood with an axe, I wonder how much people would pay?
In another post I’ll have to tell about what I do that is actually accomplishing something and productive other than the every day living things like cutting wood. That would be the agricultural and oil pressing end of things.
I wouldn’t usually post this much about myself on the internet but, since I have been asked and since it will be nice to be able to say when asked “Just go to my blog and it will tell you the whole story” instead of answering the same “Aren’t you freezing to death” questions over and over again. For the record, I am still typing so as of this moment I haven’t frozen to death yet, and if this is posted online I will have lived through another night so you can be reasonably sure I will be just fine!
Another common worry that I would like to dispel is, “What happens if something happens to you? You are all alone over there and nobody would find you for weeks if you got hurt in the woods or got carbon monoxide poisoning” “You really should get a phone” Here is my answer to you. If I get carbon monoxide poisoning I won’t be awake to make a phone call, please bury me down in the trees by the pond and plant a rose bush on my grave, my will is in the top drawer. If I hurt myself in the woods, like cut my leg off with the chainsaw, hack my leg with the axe or twist my ankle, that’s why I carry an emergency pack with me whenever I go out, I’ll send a smoke signal.
Regardless, I have a better protection than any cell phone could be. I can’t forget it in the house, leave the battery dead or drop it down the well like I can with a cell phone. He is always with me and I don’t have to worry about dangers as long as I am careful, if something does happen He is able to take care of it, in fact it’s probably His will isn’t it? God is always caring, He knows when the sparrows fall so I am sure He is aware of what I am doing.

Remember, watch for smoke signals!