Reminiscing and a blog update
Each autumn as the weather turns cool and the days get shorter, I think back on our first year living off-grid, eight years ago this month, PB and I had a final trailer full of the last of our possessions sitting in the driveway, we had closed down the last of our life in the city (Irving Texas), PB had shut down his one man business, I had quit both of my jobs, the house was nearly empty. PB had brought several loads of our stuff out to the property some 500 miles to the west, most of it was sitting under tarps to keep the weather and (hopefully) the critters from ruining it.
We were waiting for a break in the weather, that fall into winter seemed more wet and icy than usual. As it got closer to Thanksgiving, we chose to stay in town to spend one final holiday with our families. Again we waited for the weather to clear so we could leave. In the middle of the trailer of our belongings we had a large wire container with food, I worried about the can goods freezing so we placed a small space heater under the tarp, it worked well enough, our food made it just fine.
We finally got a break in the weather on December 21, the sun was shining, it was above freezing, the roads were dry, so we decided to make a run for it. As we were walking through the house one final time to make sure we hadn’t forgotten anything, we heard a loud crash, turned out it was PB’s son coming home for lunch. He made a left turn in front of a car that was going way too fast down that road, but since he had pulled in front of her, it was technically his fault.
Fortunately no one was injured, the vehicles however were not so lucky. As a result, our start time went from morning until after 3pm, we couldn’t risk staying another night, the weather could turn on us again and we wanted to get to our new off-grid home. PB drove a truck pulling the trailer, I drove his service van pulling the VW bug, everything was loaded down to the max.
It took us 12 hours to drive the 500 miles, stopping only for fuel, bathroom breaks and to adjust the loads as needed. When we arrived at the property, it was COLD, I found out the temps that night got down to 14 degrees F, and it was blowing a gale all night long. We hiked up to the box PB had build that would become our SkyCastle, climbed the ladder into the house and hung on while the wind threatened to knock the place down.
Well, I didn’t wait, I was too tired, I crawled into the tent that was inside the …
