The Grid Is For Squares artwork

The Grid Is For Squares

38 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 2 years ago - ★★★★★ - 1 rating

Meet Vince and Amy, a couple of Californians with a dream of creating their own off-the-grid homestead. Join us as we chat about our triumphs and our struggles, give advice, and together we can find out if this crazy idea is more than a pipe dream.

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Episodes

It’s a Dry Heat

September 04, 2021 16:45

Well, there’s no new episode of the podcast, but I recently got back from a trip up to our homestead so I thought maybe a blog post would be better than nothing. But first things first. Are you doing ok? Are any of us doing ok? I know I’m not. The possibility of returning to normal was so bright and tantalizing for a precious handful of weeks and now here we are again… isolated, nervous, and still profoundly not normal. It’s been long enough now that I can feel my old friendships, my old s...

The End of A Season

June 22, 2021 21:26 - 14 minutes - 20 MB

Hey friends! We come to you today with news… we’re officially taking a wee break from The Grid Is For Squares. Over the course of 36 episodes, we went from getting the idea for a homestead to buying 10 acres to building a greenhouse to building a yurt, and we thought that right now might be a reasonable time to call the end of Season 1. It’s good timing in a few ways, actually, because although the main reason I’m putting a pause on the show is because I’m INSANELY STRESSED AND EXHAUSTED AL...

We Have A Yurt!

June 08, 2021 15:00 - 32 minutes - 45.2 MB

It’s been a long time in the making, but it’s finally here! We have a yurt! It’s been months of excavation and building the platform and installing the flooring and waiting for the yurt company to fabricate the thing, and now we finally have a yurt. A few days prior, Vince and his mom and brother rented a UHaul and drove up to Grass Valley CA to pick up our finished yurt— or at least, the pieces of our finished yurt. It was on us to actually put it together on site. Which, as you can imagin...

The Miscreant Zone

May 25, 2021 14:31 - 27 minutes - 38 MB

Well, we have another “Grid Is For Squares Unplugged” this week… a little shorter than other episodes in the past. But Vince and I have been so busy lately and I know everyone understands. We’re doing our best. The podcast I was recently hired to produce professionally, The Suburban Women Problem, cracked Apple Podcasts’ Top 200 in its first week, which has been a strange and interesting and extremely stressful ride. But SWP is a political podcast with high-level guests like Chasten Buttigi...

Rain and Pudgy Pies

May 11, 2021 15:00 - 32 minutes - 44 MB

I’m not going to lie to you, friends. I really did not want to edit this episode of The Grid Is For Squares. I’ve been working 60 hours a week at my new job, which is creating and editing a podcast, so the last thing I wanted to do was edit another podcast in my “free time.” But I’m glad I did, for a few reasons. One, I haven’t seen Vince much this spring and it’s always nice to hear his voice. Two, our power was out in Glendale when we recorded, and it came back on while we were recording,...

Weird April

April 27, 2021 13:49 - 43 minutes - 59.4 MB

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 particularly 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, hangi...

Flashback

March 30, 2021 15:15 - 37 minutes - 52.1 MB

Hi friends! We're currently in an exciting and busy moment... I just got a new job, Vince's brother Morey is coming out to live on the property for a month, so instead of developing some new content, we thought we'd pop back to our very first episode (recorded in 2019) so see how far we've come. We'll be back in a few weeks (maybe our usual 2, maybe 3 or 4) but we WILL be back... we'll have a yurt by then and lots of stories about our spring blooming. ❤️

Take Me To Skool: An Interview

March 16, 2021 17:36 - 38 minutes - 53 MB

Today marks the 30th episode of The Grid Is For Squares! It’s hard to believe we’ve been at this since January of 2020. And, perhaps accordingly, the format of today’s episode is a little different than usual… we have an interview! Earlier this month, our friends Mike and Amber joined us up on our property to work on their skoolie. So I thought I’d take that opportunity to interview Mike about his experience converting a school bus into a home. If you like The Grid Is For Squares, please l...

A Necessary Evil

March 02, 2021 15:42 - 40 minutes - 55.7 MB

Hi friends, welcome to another episode of The Grid Is For Squares! Today, we’re discussing something that we hate but something that’s an unfortunate reality in building an off-the-grid homestead: money. It’s so hard not to stress about money, and not just during the pandemic but generally in this late-capitalist hellscape where GoFundMe is apparently a health plan. We’re hoping to be self-sufficient and communal eventually but, ironically, that won’t be possible until we’ve built a lot more...

We Built A Yurt Platform!

February 16, 2021 18:09 - 39 minutes - 54 MB

Hey friends! Today we have exciting news to report... we built the platform for our 16-foot yurt! It was a serious construction project that began months ago when I first had the dream to build a yurt, then through the past few months as we dug out dozens of cubic feet of dirt by hand as we prepared our building site, but last week we finally built the platform for our yurt. Tune in to hear how we did it, how much it cost, how long it took, and our myriad adventures in off-grid construction.

Adventures in Time and Space

February 02, 2021 18:54 - 34 minutes - 47.5 MB

Welcome to another episode of The Grid Is For Squares! I don’t want this podcast to turn into a summary of our to-do list, cause that would be boring, so it’s important to me that when we don’t have a major breakthrough to report, we focus on a theme. So today’s theme is… time and space! Which, granted, covers everything in existence. But it’s also a way of framing our property, our projects, and the different ways we approach the world. In today’s episode, Vince uses a bunyip and SketchU...

Vince Goes Feral

January 19, 2021 17:47 - 34 minutes - 48 MB

Here in LA basically everyone has coronavirus, so we’re hunkering down, staying indoors, and taking long trips up to our 10-acre property. In our previous episode, we talked about the in-floor heating system we built in our greenhouse. But we accomplished a lot more than just in-floor heating while we were up there over New Year’s. I only went up for 4 days, but Vince stayed up there for 10 full days. He went feral! We talk about digging (always more digging) and finishing the post holes f...

In-Floor Heating, Off The Grid

January 05, 2021 19:04 - 41 minutes - 56.8 MB

Today’s exciting news is that we finally finished our in-floor heating project… and it worked! We knew from the get-go that electric heating wouldn’t be an option; the average space heater runs on 1500 watts, which means that our giant Yeti 3000 battery could only run one for 2 hours. Another solution was needed. The simple version of our in-floor heating system is: a 12-volt circulating pump (which plugs into our Yeti battery) is immersed in a one-gallon steel reservoir, which pumps hot w...

One Year of Homesteading

December 22, 2020 17:51 - 43 minutes - 60.1 MB

Welcome to the last episode of 2020! We’ve had our ten-acre property for a little more than a year now (we spent our first night there on Thanksgiving 2019), but as we come to the end of December, we thought we should take a moment to reflect back on what we’ve built, what we’ve learned, and what we recommend. And here's a toast to an awesome Year Two on our homestead!

We Built A Sink!

December 08, 2020 17:34 - 37 minutes - 51.8 MB

Today, we’re jumping back to our week on the property in early November. We only covered half of it in the last episode because there was a lot to discuss! This week, we talk about Thanksgiving, digging, building a rock staircase, and building a sink! We also discuss how hard it can be to collaborate with someone you love, and how bickering is often inevitable but we have to keep being patient with ourselves and each other. There's still so much to do, but incremental progress is still prog...

Hail Yeah!

November 24, 2020 22:59 - 40 minutes - 56.2 MB

Well, it’s been a hot minute, but we finally have a new episode of The Grid Is For Squares to share with you all! We missed you. We went up to the property on the Saturday after the election and a big rain storm followed us north the entire drive. In other places, that might be seen as a bad omen, but for Californians there is nothing more blessed than the first rain of the year. The fires are out! We can breathe the air again! And, if you remember from our previous episode, the last time w...

We Can Dig It

October 27, 2020 16:17 - 37 minutes - 52.1 MB

On today’s episode we chat about our latest trip up to the property, which was all about DIGGING! We dug a rain catchment basin and started grading the yurt site... we probably moved a total of 3 cubic yards (81 cubic feet) over 2 days. Whew. Finally, in the spirit of spooooooky season, we spotted a couple of California Tarantulas on our property! They’re a little creepy (to me anyway) but they’re truly docile and harmless. Vince even let one walk on his arm. Tarantulas usually live in burr...

Bus Acquired!

October 13, 2020 16:10 - 32 minutes - 44 MB

Or maybe it should be AQIred, since we also spend a lot of time talking about AQI in this episode. In any case, the exciting news of the day is that the skoolie is now officially on our property! Meanwhile, here in California, everything is still on fire. A fun new thing for 2020 is compulsively checking the AQI, or Air Quality Index. Breathe safe out there, friends. P.S. This will make sense once you listen to the episode, but a group of turkey vultures is apparently called a “committee” o...

Yurts So Good

September 29, 2020 15:28 - 37 minutes - 51.7 MB

Hey friends. We’ve been struggling a little lately… between the pandemic, wildfire smoke making the air toxic, and the election, things have been feeling pretty bleak. It’s not easy trying to live our lives and create our homestead with all of that happening in the background, but like everyone else, we muddle through. It’s all any of us can do. So today we’re talking about something that makes us happy: yurts! We’ve wanted to put a yurt on our property for a while now, and although we’re st...

Where There’s Smoke

September 15, 2020 16:41 - 38 minutes - 52.3 MB

Today’s episode is about the current disaster that everyone’s talking about… the West Coast is on fire. It’s affecting us here in Los Angeles, with dangerous air quality from the Bobcat Fire, and the huge Creek Fire is filling our property with wildfire smoke up in Mariposa too. But let’s talk about our latest property visit for a moment. Over Labor Day weekend, we went up to Mariposa with our skoolie friend and got a lot done. On the second day of our visit, though, everything changed when...

Sand in a Sauna

September 01, 2020 16:50 - 36 minutes - 50.6 MB

It feels like about a million years since our last episode, but (checks notes) nope, still just 2 weeks. Today’s big story is that we recently went up to the property to finish (well, “finish”) the greenhouse! It was very hot. And very dirty. And since we were moving all that sand and creating a lot of dust, we wore our cloth Covid masks for most of the day. But the greenhouse now has a real floor! No more nighttime crawly critters! It would almost be a proper indoor space… you know, if onl...

A Week of In Betweens

August 18, 2020 16:58 - 37 minutes - 50.9 MB

Thanks for tuning in to The Grid Is For Squares today! This week I tried a new microphone setup which ultimately was a step backwards for our sound quality, but next episode we’ll be back to our old soundscape. Thanks for your patience as I tweak our process here. Today’s episode finds us in a bit of an “in-between” zone. Vince went back to Joshua Tree to help some more with the skoolie, I called the Mariposa County Building Department about permits, and plans for our yurt are starting to co...

A Skoolie in the Desert

August 04, 2020 15:29 - 37 minutes - 52.1 MB

We recently went to Joshua Tree to help our friends work on their skoolie! If you’re not in the lingo, a “skoolie” is a school bus that’s essentially been turned into an RV. But our assistance is coming from more than the simple goodness of our hearts. Our friends will soon be moving overseas for a year and plan to park their skoolie on our 10 acres while they’re gone! Their bus will have solar panels and battery storage, a potable water system including a shower and a washing machine, a com...

Vince’s Vampire Weekend

July 21, 2020 17:27 - 39 minutes - 54.1 MB

Over the 4th of July, Vince headed north to work on the property. It was 100 degrees in Mariposa that weekend (and even hotter in our greenhouse), so I was happy to stay at home with the dog in Glendale while Vince kicked ass under a bright full moon.

So Fire

July 07, 2020 17:28 - 38 minutes - 52.7 MB

We talked about water in our last episode, so this time we thought we’d talk about fire! 🔥 As we’ve mentioned in the past, wildfires are a serious reality here in California and as we go on, we’ll have to think very seriously about firescaping. Vince says the idea of property matured for him during the 2017 NorCal wildfires that displaced his mom. He realized that if Napa California, one of the richest and most developed areas in the world, can be destroyed by wildfires… then nowhere is saf...

Water, Water… Not Exactly Everywhere

June 23, 2020 17:57 - 40 minutes - 55.5 MB

Today we’re posting an episode that we recorded back in mid-May, but that doesn’t mean we’ve moved on from talking about social justice. Let’s all keep marching, and donating, and pressuring our elected officials. Onto today’s topic… water! We talk about what Vince has learned from his years working in greywater and how we want to apply those lessons to our property. Water is life!

Use A Tool, Don’t Be A Tool

June 09, 2020 17:24 - 38 minutes - 53.5 MB

Black Lives Matter

June 02, 2020 16:20

Hi friends, Today, there won’t be a new episode of The Grid Is For Squares. Because today isn’t about us. It’s not about our voices. Instead, I want to take this moment to amplify some black voices. Check out these videos and podcasts, stay safe out there, and keep your mind focused on justice. Dear America, From A Black Guy We Need To Talk Code Switch What A Day Hear To Slay The Daily Social Distancing Show Minority Korner

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

May 19, 2020 17:12 - 38 minutes - 52.3 MB

It’s our 10th episode! 🎉 Time is always weird, but it’s been especially weird in the last few months, so it’s hard to gauge whether it “feels” like 10 episodes. But if you’ve been listening to the show, we’d super-duper appreciate it if you’d leave a rating or review. Thanks very much, friends! The biggest project we’ve been working on lately hasn’t been something on the property… it’s been about moving Vince’s mom out of her house in Napa so we can save enough money to make actual progress ...

A Day In The Life

May 05, 2020 16:30 - 38 minutes - 53.1 MB

It’s been a little over 6 months now since we purchased our 10 acres of undeveloped land. So on this episode of The Grid Is For Squares, we talk about what a typical day of homesteading looks like. We battle daily with rain, cold, heat, poison oak, mice, time, and space, but we persevere. And damnit, we enjoy it.

We Built A Compost Toilet!

April 21, 2020 17:36 - 27 minutes - 38.2 MB

If you’re planning to spend more than 24 hours outside, you need to account for 2 essential things: 1) a place to sleep, and 2) a place to poop. Sanitation is the backbone of modern civilization. No cholera here, folks. We don’t have a septic system or sewer connection yet on our property, so a composting outhouse was the one of the very first things we built. In its simplest form, a compost toilet is just a 5-gallon bucket and some sawdust. But our outhouse has been an evolving project and...

Life Is In Tents

April 07, 2020 16:50 - 33 minutes - 45.4 MB

Today is a very special episode on 2 counts... 1) we welcome our very first guest onto the show, Vince's mom Judy, who has been part of this journey from the beginning. And 2), we recorded directly from our property for the very first time! I forced everyone to pile into our tent and record from there. You know, because of acoustics. I'm a very professional producer. I record in tents.

A Greenhouse in the Time of Coronavirus

March 24, 2020 16:56 - 36 minutes - 49.5 MB

We discuss the virus (of course) but then we get to a brighter subject: building a greenhouse on our land!

We Broke Ground!

March 10, 2020 15:14 - 25 minutes - 35.5 MB

This week, we discuss breaking ground on our first structure: a dugout. Like pioneer families of old, we are digging into a hill to create an insulated space. But digging isn’t as easy as it sounds… we are laden with boulders. Rich with rocks. And we’re talking, like, 500-pound chunks of granite here. We also get real about our mental health and how it’s affected our property journey. Spoiler alert: we’re screwed up, and probably so are you, but we muddled ahead with our dreams anyway. Excel...

We Slept in the Snow!

February 25, 2020 16:15 - 38 minutes - 53.6 MB

We finally spent a night on our new property--3 of them, in fact--but Mother Nature wasn't about to make it easy on us. It snowed! Hear about our PVC tent and compost toilet, our debate over the value of suffering, some minor catastrophic structural failure, and the first improvements we've made on our vacant 10-acre property. Oh, and also, we discovered that the dirt is full of gold. GOOOOOLD!

We Bought A Property!

February 11, 2020 16:53 - 31 minutes - 43.1 MB

Big news... we did it! After 3 years of searching for our dream property, we now officially own 10 acres of beautiful vacant land outside of Yosemite! But first, we had to get our hearts broken. Hear about our successes and failures, our giant boulders and our Very Grownup Documents, and the kinky shit that notaries are into.

The Great Search

January 28, 2020 16:55 - 30 minutes - 42.1 MB

In today's episode, Vince and Amy discuss the enormous project of searching for vacant land to purchase. Hear all about Zillow searches, deal-breakers, future neighbor lawsuits, and tilting the Earth at our leisure as if we are gods.

More Than A Pipe Dream

January 10, 2020 19:20 - 28 minutes - 39 MB