Well this is entry two and it has been far more than a week since I published my first blog. So much for my goal of publishing a weekly blog. I have thoughts tumbling around in my mind all of the time. I just have difficulty organizing them to put into a writing.

At any rate, here we are. If you have read my profile, you already know a bit about me and the life I live. As I mentioned there, my husband and I live in an off grid cabin with our critters in the midwest. But until April of 2015, we owned a mortgage on an old farmhouse on a small acreage that consumed most of our energy, our time and monetary resources. We raised our family in that house and were blessed by and thankful for God’s provision of it for many years. But the kids grew up, moved away and started families of their own. Rarely did any of them ever come home to visit and even more rarely did they ever all come home at once. As Charlie and I grew older, the house just grew bigger, emptier and more of a burden to maintain. We worked more than forty hours a week to try to keep it up. Every week just seemed like a monotonous cycle that reminded us of little hamsters on their wheel. Around and around those furry little rodents furiously run to go nowhere. We were exhausted physically, emotionally and spiritually. Our Christian joy was little more than a flicker and our prayer life was virtually non-existent. This was not how God intended for us to live. Stressed out, unfulfilled, discontented, no time or energy to study the Word, pray, or even care about anything. We were not living to glorify and honor Him. Our life had become an ever spinning hamster wheel.

And so, we began to pray, asking for guidance to change our lives for His glory and purposes. And that is when the dream, the vision if you will, began to awaken into the plan that ultimately ended up in a completely different style of living. We sold our farm house and “retired” from our five day a week jobs. We bought an RV for some travel and we converted an old farrowing house into a cabin. We live on a little less than an acre and rely on the solar and wind power with a generator for back up. We have a some chickens and a garden so we can eat. We havent looked back nor have we felt more blessed and free.
The journey is far from over. We continue to work on further simplifying our life. We take more “stuff” to Goodwill or the recycle center almost monthly. It is amazing what we are able to live without. It is not an easy transition after living 50 plus years in a modern world full of consumerism, convenience, fast food, grid supplied electricity and television. It has been a struggle to give things up. Though we have electricity, it requires constant monitoring of our system for the wind and solar input to be sure the battery bank is charged. We have a generator for back up when the elements do not supply our need. It isn’t as convenient as being tied to the grid was and we are limited in the amount of power that we can create which means we are limited in the amount we can consume. For example, I once made our bread in an electric bread maker but those little bread makers are power hogs. Bye bye bread maker! Now I do it the old fashioned way, in a bowl without an electric mixer. That’s right. I use my own two hands to knead that dough. And guess what? I enjoy it! There is something gratifying about stirring the flour, water, salt and yeast with your hands, watching it rise, punching it down and letting it rise again before baking it. When I set that fresh loaf on the table for my beloved to enjoy, I feel like the Proverbs 31 wife.

Our cabin is one room so as to minimize our need for lighting and it is heated only by a woodstove with a kerosene heater as a backup source. Someone has to get up in the middle of the night to stoke the wood stove so we can wake up to a warm room. My wonderful husband generally does this. (He deserves fresh home made bread.) Our cook stove is a small four burner rv stove and oven. Because the oven is small, it quickly heats up and uses less propane than a conventional one. Obviously I do not cook the Thanksgiving turkey for the family gatherings. But it does a fine job of baking a pie or loaf of bread. My electric crock pot is now powered by the woodstove in the winter and a hay box in the summer. (I was the Crock-Pot queen when the kids were growing up! We even made hot fudge cake in it!) We have future plans to build a rocket stove and a solar cooker to provide more cooking options in summer. With no air conditioning and high humidity, cooking is kept at a minimum during the summer. We have a freezer for food storeage and we keep frozen two liter bottles of water in it. We use a cooler for refrigeration and simply rotate the frozen water bottles to keep it cool.

These cooking and refrigeration changes have necessitated changes in our eating habits. We find ourselves eating more seasonally. The summer garden pro duces the best tasting fresh vegetables and fruits during the spring, summer and fall months as well as providing a harvest to be canned, frozen or placed into cold storeage for the winter months. Winter means more consumption of staples such as fresh made bread, beans, rice, casseroles and homemade stews or soups. Our chickens happily free range around our little acre and in return lay eggs with bright orange yolks and flavor that cannot be matched by any grocery store eggs.

We rarely plug in the television. We prefer enjoying outdoor activities as the weather permits. Aside from the gardening, we enjoy camping and hiking as often as we can in the warmer months. We especially enjoy taking the grandsons for outings. Here in the Midwest there are trails, caves and beautiful parks to provide plenty of adventures for us. During the rainy seasons or cold winters, we can use our smartphone or computer to watch Youtube and PBS. Laundry is done at the laundromat once a week. Sometimes I do it by hand in summer and hang it on the line to dry. I do enjoy using my sewing machine to sew and there are occassions when I have to run the generator to use it. Again, that all depends on the wind and solar situation. I am looking into converting one of my machines into a treadle machine.

If anyone would have suggested this life to me 30 years ago I would have been horrified at the very thought of it. I chuckle about that now. I truly enjoy our simpler life. It isn’t necessarily an easy life. We don’t expect it to be. But we are able to spend more time together. We have far less home maintenance. No utility bills and no mortgage means our income needs are less and so we do not have to maintain a traditional 40 hour work week. Vacations are no longer two week rat races. Cold winter months can now be spent in the RV visiting kids and grandkids in warmer states. More time is devoted to prayer, Bible study and looking for opportunities to serve. We have more freedom to focus on living for the One who died for us. We have more flexibility to pursue whatever He sets before us until He calls us home. We have more time to “just breathe”.