Our off-grid journey living in north idaho
If you have been here a while, or if this is your first time joining me in my little space, you have gathered that we live off grid up north in the wild mountains! We came from the urban jungle of San Diego, California where my husband served 20 years in the military. We loved our beach life before we had a brood of kids, but upon our second baby we felt the mountains calling. While still tied to the military for several more years, we relocated away from the hustle of the city and bought our first large piece of land. 20 acres on top of a mountain where we could watch the sun set over the ocean every day. It was an absolute dream. We learned how to garden on a much larger scale, we learned how to milk lots of goats, butcher, can, preserve, spin wool, you name it! We grew in our knowledge and in our passion to raise our own food and be more self sustaining. Being completely off-grid started to be the next biggest goal of ours as we neared retirement. As that time got closer, my husband couldn't shake the feeling that God was calling us up north to the other side of the United States border. I was born and raised in San Diego mind you, so the idea of being somewhere so far north kind of freaked me out! However, I wasn't going to suppress my inner Laura Ingalls too much and decided, why not?!? We prayed hard on this decision, as it really was one of the hardest decisions we've ever had to make. To leave our ocean view homestead, our church family, and the place where I had spent all of my life.
After much consideration we sold our home, moved into an RV and lived on the beach for my husbands last year in the military. You can read all about our RV adventure here.
The Lord had something absolutely special in mind when He called us up north.
So special that it really blew us off our heels and was
quite possibly the hardest 3 years of our lives. The home that He provided was an off-grid home on the top of a mountain! Talk about an adventure! Not only did we not know how to do the off grid thing at all, but we also weren't use to the huge shift in weather. Going from sunny San Diego to all four seasons was quite the adjustment. And the house.
The house was quite charming, yet the amount of learning that had to take place was way more than we were expecting.
That first year we spent many nights cold because our fireplace simply was not big enough to heat the whole house, nor was the house insulated properly. We could barely turn anything on before our house would completely die of power. We spent a big chunk of that year buying more gas than I like to admit to run the generator just so we could have power. We didn't have enough solar panels to collect from the sun (when the sun was even out) and our batteries seemed older than the house itself!
We had chimney fires, fried our inverted to our batteries, were without power for about a month in November...yes our first thanksgiving was spent under as many flashlights as we could scramble together, our roof wasn't completely secured which allowed for mold growth which eventually got us sick with mold toxicity, the list goes on and on. There were so many details of that first year that were forever burned into my memory, but of course, served its purpose. It not only brought us closer together as a family, but grew our knowledge in ways that you can't necessarily learn unless you live through them.
It has been a slow process.
We didn't have a bunch of money to just throw into a new system of batteries and solar panels, or to completely renovate our home that was extremely outdated. It took time. Just like everything else, we had to learn the longer and harder way sometimes, but those lessons have never been forgotten!
Since then, we have been able to upgrade our system that actually supports a large home with many people in it. Sometimes when I think of off-grid, I do think of the little house in the big woods. A little house is much easier to run off grid. It's easier to heat, easier to charge, and of course the obvious one easier to clean! Being a larger family, we simply can't live that way. We need more space. We have more dishes, more laundry, more energy, more of everything that it takes to run a home. And because of that fact, our off-grid life may look different than a lot of other off-griders. Many off-grid families do laundry in town at the laundry mat. That was a non-negotionable for me.
We were forced to that our first year, but after much consideration, we both realized that was not sustainable for our family. At the time, I had 5 kids worth of laundry baskets to wash, and getting up and down our mountain with laundry baskets full of clothing was not something I could sustain for my own sanity.
WHAT LOOKS DIFFERENT FOR US
Even though, over the last 6 years, we have made our large off-grid home more comfortable for our large family, there are still many sacrifices that we have to make. The biggest one is timing everything around our road. Our road is not plowable in the winter, which means we are unable to drive up to our home in the winter. That has been the biggest challenge living were we live. Sometimes that means that we are hauling groceries in a sled behind our tracked vehicle, and sometimes that means that we are walking home uphill in the snow. We have to be very careful with our propane usage, as the propane truck cannot access our road once the snow falls, so we have to time it just right in order to make sure that we will make it through the winter with enough propane. And yes, there have been times where we didn't make it, which meant we were hauling our own propane tanks until spring came and the truck could get to us.
If you live in the north, you know that the sun doesn't shine every day or even every week for that matter. That means that I don't necessarily get to just do laundry whenever I want. I really need to watch the weather patterns and wash on the days that we have sun! In the winter especially, my mind is always on the fire and on our electric voltage. I haven't cooked in a crockpot in 6 years! It just takes too much power. I also got rid of my beloved food dehydrator. Again, it draws too much power for too many hours.
THE PROS OF OFF-GRID LIVING
Even though it sounds like there are so many cons to living off-grid, the pros always outweigh them! There are just certain things you can't buy when it comes to education, and not only are our kids leaning, but my husband and I are constantly learning! Is it harder? YES. Do sometimes I fantasize that I could just drive home in the winter straight up to my house, unload all the groceries and that my house was the perfect temperature from when I set the thermostat to before leaving? Absolutely yes! But it's in those times that I am thankful for what I DO have. I am thankful for how the Lord has provided a home that keeps us safe and warm and teaches my kids the art of contentment. They have learned, through disappointment at times, that we can't just hop in the car and go to town. Each trip must be methodically planned, making sure our home and animals will be ok while we are gone. And what does that create in them? It creates patience, a sense of slowness and appreciation for the simplicity of living the way we live.
I have learned to live without those things and am capable of still running a homestead and a large family without it! A lot of the times, that forces me to slow down and stay home, especially in the winter. After all, isn't that what the pioneers did? Everything was slower, things took time, and that has been the best lesson for both me and my family in this season of life.