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!

When is an Eco house not an Eco house?

I had big dreams when we got this place.

Actually, I had big dreams before we got this place.  I wanted to live gently on this planet of ours, in a Zero waste, carbon neutral bubble of happiness.  It would be a house made from recycled everything and we would be pioneers in this buynowpaywithtearslater world that we currently live in.

But I am coming round to Kermits way of thinking.  It is most certainly not easy being green.

Put aside that most everyone thinks we are bonkers for giving up a normal life to live in a field, and so therefore greet everything with a certain amount of prejudice/ trepidation, there is also that delightful inner voice to contend with.

Take grey water for instance.  You would think that wanting to dispose of waste water in an environmentally sound manner would be welcomed but the architect we are working with explained to me - very patiently - that, actually, councils like expensive chemical treatment solutions that nearly clean your waste completely and then pump it into a nearby water source.  It was the "chemical" and "nearly" that put me off.  

When I - equally as patiently - explained that we will have an indoor composting loo, I was asked to provide design details.  Apparently saying the shit goes down the back and the pee section is at the front is not good enough.  I need to draw a diagram.  I kid you not. 

Now, I like our architect.  I didn't actually want an architect but the council pushed us and so we had to seek advice.  They are on good terms with the authorities and know their stuff in terms of legalities, so in this respect I feel we are in good hands. They are also experienced in offgrid houses, although I suspect they apply this term to houses supplying their own electrics and water, not to the extremes that we are trying to do.

We spent an evening designing the house we would like.  It isn't a grand design by any stretch, but it is practical, sympathetic with the landscape and ecologically sound, but it might be out of our budget and experience comfort zone.

So we are at a crossroads, where budgets bad ethics meet.

I realise that this is my second moany post in a row, so I better sort myself out.

Things aren't always great when it rains

I hate prolonged rain.  I hate it because it produces mud, and even with twenty tonnes of hardcore laid out, we still get mud.

It makes crossing from Big Field to Middle Field a slippy, slidey affair.  There is always a good chance that you will lose your footing, and jar your spine or end up sitting on the floor.  And it isn't a nice floor, it's a squelching floor with the added sensory experience of smelling of cow crap...because let's not forget that a few months ago cattle grazed here, and each time it rains a little more of their excrement gets washed down the hill.

Mud makes getting in and out of the caravan annoying.  You have to take muddy wellies off, and most likely, you have to use your hands to pull them off, and, most likely, that mud will end up on your hands.  If you're a Small, you will solve this predicament by wiping your hands down the sides of the wall, or on someone else's coat.  

Rain is good for filling waterbuts and keeping the green, green but oh...I hate mud.

Every time there is a rainstorm, I make a note of somewhere else we need to lay a path, and then I wonder if really what I should have bought was a level Tarmac car park rather than a squelchy hillside with added poop.

So, although I am sunshine and rainbows most of the time, when it has rained for more than two days I'm afraid I become the foreteller of doom, and a teeny tiny voice in my head whispers that I am

Not cut out for this offgrid life, and I should just scuttle off back to normality.  I mean, if a bit of rain can knock me down....what will a whiner like me do when it snows??

Where we live

This is the view from further up the lane, looking back at our static, and home.

I've taken the picture from this angle because it hides the mess and tat that is very visible close up.

It's not much, but it's home.

North wind

Or to more accurate, West North West Wind.

We had a weather warning issued, so we spent most of yesterday running around making sure everything that could be secured, was.

The storm arrived in the early hours of this morning, and is the most bizarre weather event I can remember.  This storm bounces from sunny sky with brisk breezes to dark menacing skies and gales that threaten to rip off the field shelter roof.

We've been yoyo-ing back and fourth with every change, but we are a bit bored of that now, so I'm only going out if I hear a really Big Bang or ripping sound.

I am just really pleased that we have an indoor loo now.  No more midnight treks to the outdoor one.  It was installed just in time.

This picture was taken a few days ago, from the dip by the Wee Burn.

How you know it's autumn

There are the obvious things, like beautiful leaves in glorious shades of red, gold and orange.

There are mushrooms and fungi springing up overnight on old wood.

And there are rain clouds that burst unexpectedly and without warning, that empty out over a few days, and flow with serious intent over the banks of the Wee Burn, meaning you wake up one day to find your path has gone, and your waterhole has been filled to the brim with rocks and stones.

Even the pup looks confused about the geographical changes that occured overnight.

So now we are left to scratch our heads and work out exactly how to source our water.

The upside to the rainstorm was a replenishing of the waterbuts.  So whilst stream water is currently out of bounds due to the sheer viciousness of the torrent and no safe access point, we do have an alternative supply to see us through.

I also have the bonus of more beautiful rocks and stones to play with.  I'm

Thinking of a spiral mosaic.  I just need to make sure I create it higher up so it doesn't get washed away in the next storm.