The Homestead

Temporary Shelter

While we plan and build our homestead we've taken up residence in a travel trailer - it may be small, but its off the grid.

The Land

We looked around at land here in Apache County Arizona for several months. We're happy to announce that our beloved friends Troy & Phaedra have agreed to sell us a few acres of land from their spread. It's lovely land with spectacular views right next to the land we've been living on for the past year. We are so grateful to be able to settle in this place.

The Plan

The evolving and unfolding plan of our homestead.

The House

We are planning to build an off grid solar powered house that is affordable and can be built in phases. We are exploring concepts of energy efficent home design, as well as various construction methods. Our house will be the most important structure on the homestead and we want to minimize its power requirements as much as possible.

Greenhouse

Before beginning the construction of our house we decided to get some hands on experience by designing and building a passive solar greenhouse.

Barn

We've built our first barn. It's passive solar design is intended to keep our egg laying chickens and breeding rabbits comfortable throughout the seasons. We already have plans to expand the barn for goats, pig and more space for storing animal feed.

Gardens

Producing our own food is one of our primary goals. We've located the first garden on our property between the greenhouse and barn. We plan to focus on gardening in raised beds, as well as experiment with winter growing and seed saving.

Livestock

We'd been living on our land for less than a year when we decided it was time to get our farm rolling with our first flock of chickens. At present we have two types of livestock on our farm: egg laying chickens and breeding rabbits.

Communications

We literally live "way out in the middle of nowhere". We're lucky to have any communications with the outside world at all! Many of our neighbors have no form of home communications at all.

Energy

The greatest obstacle to sustainable living is our dependency upon energy and our culturally reinforced wastefulness. We're exploring a variety of alternatives to our many energy needs -- most importantly simplicity and conservation. We are currently living off the grid and rely on a solar power system for all of our energy needs.

Food Storage

Methods and principals of food storage and preservation.

Waste Management

How we'll deal with the many types of waste products that our homestead will produce including animal waste, human waste, trash, food scraps, gray water, etc. We intend to to reuse or transform as much waste as we can.