Slow

Off grid living should be re-named Patient Living, as you spend a great deal of time waiting.  You can be frustrated by this (I regularly am) or you can accept it and develop the fine art of waiting.

Waiting for the hot water to boil on the stove so we can wash, waiting for the batteries to charge up so we can watch an episode of Doctor Who, or just waiting for the weather to improve so you can leave the caravan without getting soaked to the skin and covered in mud.

If you're clever, you can fill these waiting gaps with other actviites.  Whilst you wait for the bath water to warm, you can clean the bathroom walls and floors and light a candle so that the bath feels extra nice.  

If you are waiting for the solar powers to charge up the batteries you can go outside and chop wood, walk a dog or four, draw a nice doctor who inspired picture or haul water if the tank is low.

Impatience is most likely to strike the younger members of our family, but it does strike me from time to time, and so I fill it with a sneaky bit of knitting or crochet, and then the waiting seems more bareable.

Sometimes you get so involved in the waiting that you forget that you're waiting...

When winter comes to visit

A blurry photo taken by me on behalf of my eldest, she really wanted me to capture the colours but we were moving at speed.  Still, I like it, it depicts the cold.

Yesterday we had our first real frost.

I knew it was cold before I even opened my eyes as my face was numb.  I hadn't banked the fire up properly and I think it must have gone out in the early hours, and being a simple metal shell, the static just got icy cold.

It was so still outside.  The grass in the fields was stiff and crunched appealingly under foot.

But at the time I didn't really take very long to appreciate it, because the gas ha stopped working (no cooking) and the flue and burner had got so cold it too was refusing to light without coercion.

We got there in the end, but by the time we were warm and fed, the ice had started to melt.  The kids did get to enjoy it though, and there was the usual excitement that frozen water brings.  

Kindly neighbours stopped in to make sure we were safe, and to discuss why the gas had stopped working.  The Mr came up with a theory involving a frozen valve, and we've taken precautions to stop this happening again by putting some protection where needed.

We've also been thinking about the batteries that are currently off the ground but under the static.  Too many hard frosts will upset them, so thoughts are turning to protecting them from the cold as well.

When we installed the wood burner we gave ourselves a pat on the back.  I was heard to say that an indoor loo and a woodburner were all we needed to face the winter, and I'm starting to realise that this is naive of me.

We are at risk of getting caught out.  Although the image of chopping wood with an axe from the woodland is charming, it takes too long and we are currently very time poor.  So, as an early Christmas present, the Mr has bought himself a chainsaw.  This is hardly the Eco dream, but it will last twenty five years, and will give us time to do other jobs.

And there are plenty of those!