One Year of Homesteading

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!

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.

For starters, I always feel a lot of imposter syndrome when I say either “homesteading” or “off-the-grid”… we don’t live there, we haven’t planted any food, we don’t have a drinkable water supply, and we rely on the resources and the grid of our home in LA. But an off-the-grid homestead is our goal, and it has only been one year. We’ll keep trying to bend our arc towards sustainability.

But let’s get to our One Year Retrospective!

What We Have:

A locked chain for the front gate

A greenhouse with bamboo floors and furniture

A compost toilet

A skoolie, with a fridge and solar power, which isn’t ours but we can use

A water catchment basin that has already caught many gallons of rainwater

Several holes (in-process foundations and dugouts)

An outdoor sink

Some firescaping and landscaping

There’s definitely a part of me that wishes we had accomplished more in our first year, but when I list everything out like that, it’s not bad! Especially considering that it was all done by hand with 2-3 people, mostly over one weekend per month. And a lot of these projects are Proof Of Concepts too; hopefully now that we’ve experimented on smaller projects, we can scale up to bigger stuff.

What Surprised Us:

Well, we weren’t expecting a global pandemic to dominate our first year of owning property! It definitely confirmed for us that a homestead is a good idea.

The compost toilet is easier than I thought… it pretty much feels like using a normal toilet, and it wasn’t difficult to build either.

The temperature variants, on the other hand, are much harder than I was expecting. We looked up weather records before purchasing, but it’s one thing to look at a number and another thing to sleep through a cold night. We also didn’t expect the temp to get up to 145F in the greenhouse during the summer… hopefully once we get some plants in there, it’ll regulate the temperature a little better.

The “wild factor” was a known unknown. We’d camped in wild places before, but we’d never built and left things in the wilderness. Rodents, for example, have chewed up the engine of the work van we bought, which means that now it’s just junk on our property. Bummer.

Products We Recommend:

The Grandio Ascent Greenhouse

Milwaukee Electric Power Tools. Vince already owned a Milwaukee drill, circular saw and jigsaw, but we’ve now purchased a Wet/Dry Vac, a String Trimmer, and a Chainsaw. We can’t say enough good things about electric power tools.

The Goal Zero Yeti Battery

PVC (AKA Grownup Tinkertoys) is a mixed bag. It was a great material for early construction projects, especially since we have a small car, but we found that it doesn’t hold up to snow loads or rogue gusts of wind very well. We still recommend it as an early building material, but be sure to shore up your joints and be prepared to rebuild a few times.

What We Learned:

You can either throw money, time, or people at a problem. We’re pretty short on all three of those things! We try to game the “time” system a bit by building as much as we can back home in LA, but now that Vince has quit his job, he hopes to have more time up north in the new year.

We’re so glad we didn’t spring for a more expensive property. As it is, we’re only barely able to pay our monthly “mortgage” and complete modest-sized projects on the property. If we’d bought a bigger or more expensive parcel of land, we might even be struggling to pay our rent here in LA.

It’s important to be patient and realistic with yourself. Remember that you’re doing your best! Focus on the things that excite you, because nothing this big is easy and it’s vital to keep that flame of enthusiasm alive.

And be patient with everyone else in your homesteading pod too. We really tried to get on the same page before we purchased land, but disagreements become much more tangible once you’re actually on the ground. Be empathetic with yourself and everyone else. We also stay organized together by sharing maps, itineraries, pictures, budgets, and diagrams on Google Drive.

Thanks for joining us on this first year of our off-the-grid homesteading adventure! Here’s a toast to a fantastic Year Two. 🥂

Have a safe and happy New Year!