The usual things happened this week, for this time of year; the leaves changed, the nights got longer the mornings cooler, and deer and mice and coyotes and bear hunters returned to the ecosystem.
I guess one thing was totally new, and kind of surprisingly exciting this week though – after being completely off grid for almost a decade, we are thinking we might get connected to electricity.
Nothing happened, and there’s no single reason for it. But while idly contemplating the various expensive and onerous options for stand-alone propane refrigerators, i wondered … why not get electricity? It wasn’t urgent – our current set up is working fine, and quite superior to anything we’ve had before here. But … it got me thinking of the reasons we started off grid and have remained that way. And for the first time, when I faced the notion, I didn’t find it repellent. In fact, it was intriguing.
So when Kristin woke up that morning, I asked her what she’d think about getting connected to power. At first she was hesitant – not believing I wasn’t going to change my mind. But it seemed clear that she liked the idea. We’re no longer worried that we’ll financially sink into the abyss on the meager income of a tiny farm, and we feel well and truly disentangled from the mainstream way of being that society had taught us was the one True Way.
What matters most to us both about our lifestyle and living arrangements is the ability to live and work on the farm together, as a family. When we started, that meant us and our dogs – now that has expanded to include one son and soon, another – as well as Kristin’s parents, who are deeply and wonderfully intertwined in our lives here. We don’t want to have city jobs, daycare, life times spent with people we do not love, doing things we don’t enjoy. We want to make our living from this land, in every sense of the phrase. To spend our own lives here, and to create the foundation for the lives of our children.
And having electricity not only wouldn’t hinder any of that at all, and would actually make it easier to do it better. Winters would be less of a dreadful pain, we’ll be able to grow and store more crops in more ways. We’d still be living as close to the ground as we can, with wood heat, composting outhouse, low income & low expenses – we’d keep our solar power set-up minimizing our costs and reliance on the grid.
I dunno; it’s been less than 24 hours since this game-changing notion emerged, and we are only just beginning to unravel the implications & the possibilities. It wouldn’t be interesting. And Interesting is our jam. …
Inside Box 16
We couldn’t close the boxes this week no matter how well we Tetrised the contents.
- Spaghetti Squash – sure, you can make it a spaghetti substitute but adding tomato sauce makes it kind of watery and meh in our experience. Split in half, gut the seeds, bake in oven until the flesh pulls out with fork in strings. Great with butter or Parmesan cheese.
- Tomatoes – you are likely familiar.
- Peppers – all sweet other than the dark green Poblanos (which have heat in their seeds if you don’t remove them
- Ground cherries
- Broccoli
- Kohlrabi
- Red Onions
- Daikon radish – a powerhouse in kimchi, but also delicious sliced in a salad or stir fry.
- Lettuce – a red head and a green head
- Swiss Chard – dang it’s pretty
- Zucchini
… or maybe not. We will see…