The power of perspective

I find that my happiness has much more to do with my perspective than what is actually happening around me.  Since I have had a hard time expressing this to people, I thought I would just go through a day in our lives right now in two ways.  First, I’m going to think of everything from the perspective that most people seem to project when we talk about camping full time.  Then, I will go through the same day’s events from the perspective that we have come to.  You judge for yourself.

4:00AM – Wake up.  Have to go to the bathroom.  Curse the fact that the bathroom is 75 feet away in a shed.  Find cap light, put on shoes and stumble out.  Stumble back.  Put up cap light.  Go back to sleep.

6:15AM – Alarm goes off.  It’s daylight already, so no need to get the headlamp.  Curse the lack of running water that makes me take my toothbrush and toothpaste outside to brush my teeth.  Get ready for work.  Wake up the kids.

6:45AM Go to work.

6:00PM Get home from work.  Stop at the end of the drive to get the mail.  Reminisce about having a 50 foot paved walk to the mailbox and back instead of an eighth mile long dusty driveway.

6:30PM – Eat dinner from the camp stove.  Have to lug the stove out of the shed, fill it up and pack it away again to make room on the table.  Try to swish flies off of the food while we eat. 

7:00PM – Wash dishes in the dishtubs on the ground because there’s no running water for a tap.  Water jug has to be refilled halfway through.  Water is heavy.  And it splashes.  Dream of having a real kitchen sink again.  Did I mention the flies?

8:00PM – Round kids up for bed.  Have to turn the RV couch and table into beds requiring much parental officiating of the transformation. 

9:00PM – Kids in bed but still talking to each other.  I long for the time when they had walls between them at bedtime.  Firmly and repeatedly tell the kids to go to sleep.

9:30PM – Repeat firm order to the kids to go to sleep.

10:00PM – kids finally asleep.  Talk to Jeremy for a bit.  Using headlamp, change into PJ’s, make another trip to the shed bathroom (curse the lack of indoor plumbing), brush teeth outside again, and go to bed.  It’s hot.  Roll around trying to find a cool spot and finally fade off to sleep with vague lists of things to do floating around in my mind.

Now for the alternate telling of the same day.

4:00AM – Wake up.  Have to go to the bathroom.  Realize that it has cooled off a lot and is really pretty pleasant.  Slip on shoes, grab headlamp and go outside.  The east horizon is slightly grey – the dawn is coming and the birds are already singing.  The stars are still visible though.  I see Caseopea and remember finding it with the kids last week.  I smile and wander on to the shed.  When I walk out to go back to the RV, I see the whole sky open in front of me with the stars and the beginning of dawn coming.  I breath deep and smile.  I climb back in bed and go back to sleep.

6:15AM – Alarm goes off.  It’s light outside now – that hazy light grey that lets you see but isn’t bright yet.  The birds are singing.  I grab the toothbrushes and step into a new day.  I notice as I brush that there are clouds in the sky this morning.  They’re lit by the new sun and make interesting wispy patterns in the sky.  How did I not notice them when we lived in town?  Get dressed and wake the kids up. 

6:45AM Go to work.  I wave to Jacob and Daisy on my way down the driveway.  Its good to see him enjoying the walks and the time to explore outside on his own.

6:00PM Get home from work.  Stop at the end of the drive to get the mail.  Remember having to do the same growing up.  Think of the view of the pond from the front porch back then and smile.  Get the mail and drive up the driveway.  Get out of the car and hear only nature sounds and the kids.  No cars, no alarms, no sirens.  Just birds, the wind and the crickets.  Home again.

6:30PM – Eat dinner from the camp stove.  It’s mostly from the garden and is delicious.  Mastering the camp stove took a couple of tries but now we can cook on it as well as the old stove.  The table makes a convenient kitchen until its time to eat.  We talk while dinner cooks and enjoy the peace.  The sky is blue and the breeze is nice.  Did you know we made over 9kwH of power today?  Laugh at the kids as they swat flies after dinner.  They’re having a blast.

7:00PM –Wash dishes.  There’s a trick to it, but its not bad.  I do miss a real sink, but there aren’t many dishes and it goes quickly.  While I wash, I think about all the plans we have for the farm and how beautiful it will be one day.

8:00PM – Round kids up for bed.  They play and fuss as they convert their beds.  I listen for the signs of a real fight but mostly let them have fun with it.  These are memories they will share for the rest of their lives (“Do you remember when I had to sleep on the table in the RV? Yeah, wasn’t that crazy?”). 

9:00PM – Kids in bed but still talking to each other.  I long for the time when they had walls between them at bedtime.  Remind myself that these will be good memories for them.  Firmly and repeatedly tell the kids to go to sleep.

9:30PM – Repeat firm order to the kids to go to sleep while sitting in the dark outside.  The stars are out and the moon.   It is a serene ending to the day to sit under the enormous Kansas sky and just be.  We dream of what we’ll do tomorrow and the next day and mostly just enjoy the time.  The crickets are so loud its almost deafening but after a while it becomes a wonderful background music to the evening.  The coyotes start calling.  There are more of them this evening but they never come very close.  We laugh as Daisy barks at them from the RV.  Yeah, you get ‘em girl. 

10:00PM – kids finally asleep.  We stay up and talk for a bit.  Using my headlamp, I change into PJ’s.  The last trip to the shed for the evening reminds me of the one in the dark this morning.  It is less quiet – the evening animals are still calling – but the sky is just as large and the stars just as bright.  Its hot.  I say a quick thank you that we have power in the RV and the fan moves the air around well.  It makes it reasonable.  I listen to the crickets and fall asleep dreaming of what the farm is going to be one day.

Maybe this will help those who don’t understand why we would do something like this.  Maybe it won’t.  I hope you enjoyed this little look at how your perspective can really change your life, or at least how it has changed mine.  

Let there be light!

Ok, so I'm a few days late in getting this moment of celebration posted here, but we now have a fully functioning solar power system!  It went live on Monday and has been functioning beautifully since.  We have now regained use of an actual refrigerator and freezer and we can use normal outlets again.  We discovered that our battery bank is undersized for our solar panels, so we are losing a fair chunk of their production each day once the batteries are full.  At some point in the future, we will likely upgrade the batteries to higher amp hour ones to correct that, but for the moment we're doing fine.

A working light in the RV

We also met with the contractor, John Schmidt, who will be doing our driveway, water line, septic system and the foundation for the cabin.  He dropped off this beauty yesterday and we should start seeing some things changing at the farm over the next week or so.  Exciting times are here!

The big equipment has arrived

Almost have power...

We're getting really close to having electricity at the farm.  In fact, we do have 2 workings outlets now that are connected to our battery bank.  However, because the solar panels are not yet wired and charging the batteries, we can only use a small amount of electricity at a time.  It has been nice to have a real light bulb in the evening though.

Look!  It lights up!

We now have 6 of 9 solar panels mounted on the frame.  We have a very busy weekend coming up with lots of visitors (all good) so we'll see if we can get the rest of it wired by Monday.  We're getting very close!

6 Panels on the frame.  3 more to go.

Salsa and wiring weekend

You know, sometimes you have a weekend where it feels like it was a week long.  This was one of those because of all that we did with the time.  It started on Friday afternoon when we hung the inverter up in the shed.  We were then invited to an impromptu gathering of friends on another farm near us that was tons of fun.

Inverter hung up in the shed and ready to wire

Then on Saturday we started the day cleaning up the garden a bit.  It has gotten completely overrun by weeds.  When you look at it from a distance, it looks very green, lush and jungle like but up close you see that almost none of it is actual food.  The kids and I spent about 3 hours working on it and managed to weed and mulch 4 beds and mow all the aisles.  It made a tremendous difference in the overall look of the place.

The jungle before we started

The (slightly tamed) jungle when we finished

2 beds that we actually finished

In the afternoon, our friends Doug and Bayliss came over for a while.  Doug helped us mount the breaker box and wire our first 2 circuits which was a huge help since we had never done any wiring before. 

You can see the yellow wires on the right going to 2 new plugs

On Sunday, Jacob and I made a quick run to town for groceries and additional school supplies while Jeremy and Catherine wired the batteries together.  A delicious Mediterranean style lunch followed and then a well deserved family nap time.  Ahhhh, Sunday afternoon…

Of course, this is us that we’re talking about so we didn’t take the rest of the day off or anything.  :D  After we got up and around, Catherine and I picked about 15 quarts of tomatoes, a dozen green peppers, a dozen jalapenos and a bunch of onions and potatoes from the garden.  It’s time to make salsa!  This round of salsa making was quite the adventure.  We started out using the camp stove to peel the tomatoes.  It worked great and we had a little over 2 gallons of tomatoes peeled and ready to puree.  Catherine was my helper putting the tomatoes in the boiling water and then fishing them into the bowl of cooler water while I peeled as fast as I could.

Fresh tomatoes, peppers, cabbage, onions and potatoes from the garden

Catherine and I peeling 9 quarts of tomatoes

Then we started up the generator and tried out our new food processor.  It works like a champ but the container is a little finicky to get on and off the base.  Not a big deal – we’ll figure out the trick.  Anyway, into the food processor went the green peppers, onions and jalapenos along with all the tomatoes.  There was so much that we had to mix it all up in a dish tub!  It was delicious though.

Then came the real adventure - we decided to try canning the salsa over a fire.  This was made slightly more interesting by the fact that it was now getting dark (thank goodness for headlamps!).  We managed to sterilize the jars, cook the salsa and get it all into the canner.  We discovered when we took the jars out and let them cool that we must not have had the canner at boiling for the entire time because 5 of the jars didn’t seal out of 17.  Those we will re-can today.  All told, we made right around 10 quarts of salsa to enjoy over the next year or so.

Firelight through the jars waiting to be filled.  The 2 pots in the background are

the canner and the pot of salsa.

It felt tremendously good to be canning again.  I know that many people think of canning as “slaving over a hot stove” but there is just no greater joy to me than knowing that my family will eat wonderful food from our garden all year.  That and canned food is so beautiful!

Finished salsa this morning before being put away.

So that was our crazy weekend!  I hope yours was as good as ours!

On the road again...more lumber!

We made another trip to Colorado to pick up finished lumber and move logs to a new miller out there. We left Thursday and came back on Sunday and what happened in between was not at all what we expected.

First, the new miller, Joel, is amish and a truly wonderful person.  He also help break many of our stereotypes of how the amish live (in a good way).  While his family doesn't use electricity like a modern family, they do have 3 solar panels set up so that they can run an electric well pump, a refrigerator and some lights in the barn.  He uses a diesel sawmill (all hydraulic - its a really nice mill) and has a diesel skid steer to move logs and lumber around.  He carries a cell phone and seems thoroughly versed in all things modern life.  In the end, we felt like we'd found a kindred spirit after visiting with him.  His family of 4 is living in a cabin about the size of the one we're building.  They have chickens and can produce from their garden.  His primary goal is to stay on the farm with his family and we can certainly relate to that.  We look forward to getting to know him better.

Jeremy with one of the 8 loads of logs we hauled.

Jeremy, Joel and Caleb (the little one) in front of the logs we moved Friday

This was physically the easiest trip we've made so far because there was a skid steer with forks at both ends of the trip and Joel is only about 10 miles from Jeremy's grandparents.  We were able to make 7 trips on Friday and 1 on Saturday (Joel wasn't available for most of the day) for a total of about 60 logs moved this trip.  I have to say, Joel clearly has some time in on that skid steer!  He picked logs off the trailer like a pro.  After he was done unloading the last load, he loaded the finished lumber for us.  He had it banded and blocked such that he could pick it up in 2 bundles and place it in the bed of the trailer.  That was WAY easier than loading it by hand like we had been at the other miller. 

Joel unloading the trailer like a pro.

We took the finished wood up to Jeremy's grandparents and his grandpa loaded the two 25 foot long 7x10's that will form the continuous top plates for the cabin.  The finished load looked something like this:

Kids, wood and mountains as we set out for home.

On Saturday, since we weren't moving logs we took the kids around in downtown Westcliff.  It was a pleasant walk around and there are several interesting things to see in the little town.  The day was beautiful and we greatly appreciated the day of almost vacation.  We also got to visit with old friends who were there for the summer.  The weather was beautiful and the scenery can't be beat!

We also got to celebrate Jeremy's grandfather Ott's 86th birthday with him while we were there.  You'd never know the man was 86 by how he gets around!  I took some video of him loading the trailer (it took about 6 minutes for him to load it each time) but it's too large to upload on the blog.  Just know that he's an amazing person (both of Jeremy's grandparents are) and we couldn't have done any of this without him.

The trip back was uneventful until we got to Chapman, KS.  Somewhere around there our passenger rear tire on the trailer blew out.  We discovered that the fender on that side had gotten bent forward somehow and had rubbed the tire away.  We limped to Junction City in hopes of finding someplace open at 6:00 on Sunday to fix it but had no luck.

Very dead wheel...

A couple of very nice people at the Walmart tire center let us park it right under their security cameras as they were closing up.  We then came home, unpacked and went to bed.  Jeremy and the kids will be buying a new tire and rim and making the return trip to Junction City this morning.  Hopefully, all the wood is still on the trailer when they get there and no new craziness will happen.

A Note about Camping Full Time

We have started getting a lot of questions and interesting looks when we explain that our family of 4 is now camping full time without running water or electricity.  It seems that there is a widespread opinion that this must be misery and we will have no end of bad anecdotes to share.  I’m afraid we’ll have to disappoint on that count.  Here are a few of the things we’ve experienced as we move through our second full week living at the farm.

Last night we enjoyed home cooked (and grown) potatoes and cabbage cooked in (home canned) chicken stock with fresh tomatoes.  This was accomplished with very little fuss on a camp stove that we are becoming very adept at using.  Man was it delicious!  While we ate sitting outside around our patio table (that is larger than our old dining room table I might add and the chairs are more comfortable) we were treated to a glorious double rainbow in the Eastern sky.  I can’t remember seeing a rainbow as brilliant as the lower of the two.  It had rained for most of the day so the air was cool but the sun decided to peak out for most of our meal.  I wouldn’t have noticed any of that living in town.

You can see the lower rainbow in this picture clearly

Home cooked cabbage and tomatoes.  Yum!

There are 2 pairs of cardinals and a pair of yellow orioles living in the locust grove.  We get to watch them swoop at each other as they come and go.  There are countless other birds on the farm that pop in and out of our space as we go about our daily life.  It has given Catherine the inspiration to become a bird watcher so she is now cataloging all the different birds she sees. 

As I make my semi-regular middle of the night voyage to the composting toilet in the shed, I often see the most amazing moonlit views around the farm.  We are near the crest of the hill with the trees on the other side dimly visible.  There are no sounds except the occasional insect or owl and the wind in the trees.  It is almost like we are the only people on earth.  When the moon was near full, we could see almost as well as in the daytime making for a stunningly serene and quiet view of the world.  Somehow everything looks a little bit magical when seen in the silver light of the moon.

One day last week I had to walk down to my car at the bottom of the hill before work in the morning.  As I wandered down the driveway enjoying the early morning fresh smell of dewy grass and a light breeze, I realized that I was following a coyote.  He was trotting through the north field on my right, completely oblivious to the fact that I was there.  He moved with the simple grace of an animal that has often come through this field and is on his way to a familiar spot.  We listen to the coyotes call every evening at twilight.  It has become an expected ritual that tells us the day is over and it’s time for bed.

Do all of these things mean that there is no downside to long term camping?  Of course not.  We all miss some of the luxuries of life like a hot shower (camp showers are just not as convenient although we all get clean) and a real refrigerator.  On the whole though, the experience has been far more pleasant that we expected and I really don’t have any complaints.  Soon, the solar panels will be up and wired and then we’ll regain many of our lost comforts (although not the shower).  The kids, in particular, are looking forward to the return of electronic entertainment.  I hope that being able to turn on the lights again won’t make us forget the moonlight or stop looking for the birds though.  We might have to turn them off again to remind ourselves to enjoy where we are.  That is the key to happiness, wherever we may be.

We have mail!

We have achieved another milestone - we have a mailbox!  Thanks to some help from our friend Matt, we also have holes to set the posts for our solar array.  We'll work on setting the posts and getting the rest of the stand up over the next few days.