Live Ready Now!

The kiddos in their play “house” in the woods There are some interesting things about eight people living in a tiny space that you don’t encounter when living in 1700 sq ft like we used to.  Some things are good, and others are difficult. For one thing, there is less to clean, and while most [...]

Our trailer is no longer sitting a third of the way down our lane.  But it is also STILL not in its final resting place!  This week between landscaping jobs my hubby worked on a plan to get the trailer home, and decided to try an alternative to renting a costly front-end loader.  He called a [...]

Although our trailer is STILL not moved to its final resting place (hopefully it WILL be today!), there have been definite steps of improvement on the new homestead this week.  First of all, our ability to obtain water has greatly improved.  The wonderful neighbor who helped us get the semi-truck unstuck is proving to be [...]

Schoolwork under the canopy I love hearing violin music coming out of the camper.  It’s been nearly three weeks since any piano practicing in our family, as obviously we can’t put the piano in the camper.  I never intended to live this long without the piano, but the trailer still refuses to be moved (the rented [...]

“Praise the Lord, Hallelu, I don’t care what the devil’s gonna do.  The Word and faith is my Sword and Shield; Jesus is Lord of the way I feel!”  (D. Francisco) Sometimes rejoicing is easy, but that’s not a true test of real joy.  The most important time to rejoice is when things go “wrong.” This week [...]

We absolutely love being out in the country again, this time on our own homestead!   What a life!  But it is not all roses.  This week definitely ended much easier than it began.  It started out with lots of pressure, stress, and discouraging things happening.  Last Sunday we got home from church to discover the [...]

Dinner at our temporary dining room table It’s been a week now since our move to our new homestead, and it has been a very challenging week, to say the least.  Not only did we move to a new location, but many things about the way we are living (off-grid) are new as well.  And [...]

We finally moved out to our new homestead this week!  It feels like we’re working around the clock to get things set up, which will probably continue for some time. Once again I will give a brief overview of our move and what we’re doing, through pictures. The septic system and drainage tile were installed [...]

Today (Monday) is your last chance to enter the drawing for the off-grid DVD, which ends at noon EDT.  Learn more about this give-away here!  The winner will be announced Thursday, October 20, which is the one year anniversary of this blog (sorry about the typo on Friday when I said Wednesday instead of Thursday…moving [...]

There is so much happening right now, I don’t know where to start!  So I’m doing a lot of pictures this time with notes about each one.  But first, if you haven’t read about this week’s give-away (the first we’ve ever done!), read One Year Anniversary Give-Away! and enter the drawing to receive the DVD [...]

It’s hard to believe, but next week marks the one year anniversary for this blog!  To celebrate, we’re doing our first give-away! We’ve been on a learning curve this year, with many adventures.  Now, as we prepare to move to our new off-grid homestead next week, we’re finding ourselves with many more “firsts” and new things to learn.  Sometimes [...]

We’ve been experimenting with more sustainable ways of doing laundry for several reasons. First, we want to be prepared and know how to do laundry if we ever find ourselves without modern conveniences.  This could happen living overseas in an outreach situation, or be forced upon us by natural or man-made disasters. Second, on our [...]

Today’s guest post is written by our 16 year old daughter who I will refer to as Horsequeen (later known as Evenstar).  In an earlier post I had mentioned her rabbit hutch make-over.  Here’s the whole story from her: Before we moved from our house out in the boonies six months ago we got rid [...]

In becoming more sustainable, we are trying to eliminate disposable items such as paper products.  A few months ago (where has the time gone?) I shared how we made a cloth version of a very important paper product (for ladies only) so we never need to purchase them again.  In a project with Grandma and the [...]

It’s slow going starting from scratch and building a new homestead when you’re not hiring any contractors.  Especially when Hubby needs to keep at his landscaping business so we have income in the process.  We knew it would be tough, but we still believe we will be glad in the end if we stick it [...]

Converting the hog dog pen into a rabbit hutch Since Silver Oak’s work schedule didn’t allow for time to go out and work on the new property last week we did things here in town to prepare for living there.  Our oldest daughter (16 yrs) has had a hobby for years of raising rabbits to sell at [...]

What a week!  Last Monday was Labor Day, and we sure labored!  We’d rented a small Bobcat over the long three-day weekend, and wanted to make the best use of it clearing a driveway for our new homestead.  Our friend Steve volunteered to go out with us.  His experience with construction equipment was a welcome [...]

It is hard to believe that this week we actually started work on the new homestead!  It has been our dream for years to have a place of our own to work on the land together, with Silver Oak working mostly at home with the family.  Reaching that goal takes time and we may have hardships in [...]

After our little vacation early this week we plunged right into working on plans for being self-reliant on the new homestead.  We are learning as we go, so we expect to make mistakes, but we’re trying to get as informed as possible to eliminate as many errors as we can. We have a master plan [...]

Lovely breeze, waves breaking on the sand, cicadas singing, children laughing…what a lovely setting, a great vacation for almost nothing.  Is it possible to take a nice vacation on a shoestring budget? A few months ago we carved out several days for vacation this summer, planning it after school started so others would NOT be [...]