Weird April

Hi friends! So April has been weird. I mean, of course the whole past year has been weird, being a sentient creature is weird, anything existing in the universe is weird, but for our particular microcosm, April has been especially weird. I just started a new job so I’ve been living alone in our apartment in LA while Vince, his mom, and his brother Morey have been living off the grid on our homestead all month.

So Vince and his mom and brother recorded this episode up on the property, hanging out in our greenhouse. It was great to hear Vince’s voice, because I miss him, but it was also interesting to hear about what they’ve been up to and what it’s been like living off the grid for this long.

Morey is thrilled to be back on the property… the only other time he’s been there was March of last year, when he helped us build our greenhouse right before before the world shut down. This time, he drove out from Chicago in a used Ford Ranger he bought especially for this occasion. As construction workers (of a sort—Morey works in custom concrete and Vince works in greywater), both he and Vince kept working all through the pandemic, so they’re really enjoying their time off.

And speaking of working in construction, they both say one thing they really appreciate about building for yourself instead of for a client is having more control over that classic balance of time/money/quality. We don’t have a lot of money, but with this long month on the property, they can focus on quality because they finally have the time.

They’ve been processing a lot of wood from fallen trees on our land, sealing with teak oil instead of stains to cut down on our VOC (volatile organic compound) impact. Morey reports that our local manzanitas and blue oaks both take teak oil really well.

But our homestead is far from complete, so they’re also discovering some pros and cons to living for that many weeks off the grid. The biggest pro is knowing that everything is run on solar power… Morey says his favorite thing right now is saying that he’s been “cutting wood with the sun.” Other pros include sleeping better and enjoying the quiet, but cons include not being able to stay in regular communication with the outside world because we still don’t really have reliable cell service and not being able to take a hot shower.

So to that end, one of their first big projects was building a shower! Morey built the structure with a fallen tree limb and Vince ran 150 feet of tubing up a hill to provide water pressure. And, of course, the shower pan drains into a bucket so they can reuse that water for gardening. There’s still a lot of work to do to regulate the temperature, but it’s a working shower! Hurrah.

They’ve also been putting the finishing touches on the yurt platform while we wait for the yurt itself to be fabricated, including completing the trapdoor for our under-yurt pantry. Hopefully our yurt will be ready in a few weeks and I can be there for the final step of the process. It’s hard to not be there during wildflower season, but if I can’t be there when our yurt goes up, I’ll be pretty bummed. But if this past year has taught me anything, it’s that I gotta roll with the punches, so we’ll see.

Thanks for joining us! Here’s to weird April growing into wonderful May.