What does our life look like living off-grid in northern New Mexico? Well, as a Midwesterner by birth, I would say it’s Amish-adjacent. We do a lot more manual labor building up our homesite than most people do back in Ohio. We also had to source our water, harvest electricity, switch to a compost toilet, and reduce our waste because there is no water, sewer, electric, or trash service here. We actually have to apply with the county to get a formal street address, ha! If we want to have something, we have to build it, source it, or otherwise make it happen. It’s not just a built in expectation. You might think that is annoying, but it actually gives us the opportunity to think through what works best for us, instead of conforming to an already established system. That is by far one of the biggest perks about living out here on unrestricted lands.

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Presently, we have a 1600 gallon water cistern we pay $200 to have filled (for now, we will eventually harvest rain and snow). We connect the cistern to the camper tank by hose and refill the on board tank as needed. We will eventually set up a full water management system so that when we collect rain and snow water it will filter through the necessary things in order to be safe and potable.

We also removed our traditional toilet and built a compost toilet so that we aren’t managing sewage (black water, in camper-speak) and our humanure can become a helpful byproduct for future gardening instead of being flushed away in clean water, to a sewage treatment plant that pumps chemicals into it and then dumps it back into the environment, gross!&nbsp;

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With our compost system, each time a bucket is nearly full, we add to it all of our kitchen scraps, yes all of them even meats, bones, and dairy. My other <a href="https://casualweirdness.life/humanure-on-our-off-grid-property/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">post talking about our composting toilet </a>makes reference to our guide on this process. When four buckets are full, about every 12-14 days, they all get added into the heap and covered with materials to assist the decomposition and creation of luscious fertilizer. So, our trash can sees no food waste and that greatly reduces its quantity and smell factor.&nbsp;

Presently, the only things going into our trashcan are diapers and plastics, which we cannot wait to completely eliminate. In order to reduce our waste we have to make adjustments in how we buy things and approach the kitchen because that’s where the bulk of trash really comes from in homes. We are avoiding buying plastics as much as possible, we are trying to use bulk stores to refill our pantry instead of buying new containers, and we are avoiding single use items or things that are individually packaged. What it comes down to is this: If we want it badly enough, we need to figure out how to make it for ourselves. That barrier helps it become clear what we can live without and what we aren’t willing to give for now at least- it could change!&nbsp;

So far we are making our own oat milk, cliff bars, bread (not as often as I would like, but we have kitchen space issues), veggie stock or chicken stock (again, not as much as we would like), baked goods, and I’m gearing up to get really invested in homemade tortillas and homemade crackers, so that will be fun! Once we are fully homesteading, we will be canning a lot more and eating more produce and likely pulling back on meat quite a bit. We do want to raise chickens for eggs, goats for cheese, and maybe even some sheep for cheese, meat, and fiber (I’m a crochet nerd who also dreams of spinning yarn and weaving it… it’s coming, give me time. I already literally read the book on it.)

We are currently collecting glass (and plastic) jars to repurpose in the house, wine and beer bottles to build bottle walls, and cans to build our patio walls. Paper products are on standby at the moment and are being gathered in a bin either for recycling or burning (we haven’t decided yet). The trash we do accumulate, currently about one garbage can full per month, is being collected to deliver to the local garbage center for disposal at a rate of $5.25 for up to 220lbs of waste. It isn’t perfect, I want less than that, but 1 can per month isn’t bad for us just starting out, right?&nbsp;

That just leaves sorting out electricity, obviously we are rocking the solar. Here the sun shines most of the time and the UV index is high. We currently don’t require a lot of solar support, we have a 250 watt panel that keeps our camper battery charged with enough overflow to keep our two portable <a href="https://www.jackery.com/products/explorer-1000-portable-power-station?variant=31523358769239" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jackery</a> units charged. We then use those to charge laptops, iPads, switches, phones, also to use the toaster, immersion blender, and vacuum occasionally. That being said, our propane/ electric refrigerator just died this week and we will be replacing it with an electric one, which means we will have greater electric needs, not much greater, but greater. Also, we have aspirations to build a house on this property and the house will eventually involve a combo washer-dryer, and you know… kitchen gadgetry for homesteading. Knowing that, we are planning for the future and we are going to set up a 2000 watt system on the roof of our outdoor patio space that we are building.&nbsp;

Apart from resolving those systems and making some lifestyle adjustments to support them, the only other thing that’s not ‘mainstream’ in our lifestyle right now is the way we do our laundry- by hand, in a plastic tub, with ecofriendly biodegradable soap, which we pour directly into our homemade filter for grey water. Nothing toxic ever goes down the drain, and we run a line out to a filtration tank we built into the ground which feeds into a small garden. Nothing is wasted! Then we just line dry the clothes and things carry on from there. I haven’t taken the time to actually assess how much water we use in our laundry process, but I imagine it’s a lot less than a standard machine, and it isn’t just going down the drain when it’s dirtied, it’s feeding our garden! Definitely better and less wasteful, even if we somehow use the same amount of water as a machine.

So, things are different here, but not in a way that makes life substantially harder, and it certainly isn’t worse. Who’s going to complain about fresh baked bread and sun dried clothing? Things move slower and we have less on-demand, but we get more satisfaction knowing that the way we do things is healthier for us and for the environment. We are no longer paying into a municipal system that is wasteful and transactional. We are using the natural resources provided to us from the earth. We are transforming what would otherwise be considered waste into useful byproducts that facilitate other aspects of our lifestyle here. It’s much more natural in so many ways, not only natural resources, but natural processes that respect the natural cycle of life instead of working against it.&nbsp;

So often we have people tell us that they admire our choices, but they couldn’t do it. Yes, you can. You just have to change the way you think about your resources. It’s not a one to one exchange to turn off electricity and turn on solar. You have to think about how you’re using that energy and make decisions that allow you to use it effectively. What we are doing is much more common around the world, and throughout history, than the traditional American lifestyle today. It’s a cliche that money doesn’t buy happiness, but I think it’s deeper than that. The way we treat people and things in our life as disposable, the way we pay for conveniences instead of handling things ourselves, all of those are trade-offs for self-reliance, confidence, and great satisfaction that creates opportunities for true happiness in our day-to-day lives. We chip away at opportunities for joy by clinging to the concept of outsourcing responsibilities.&nbsp;

People always seem to think they need more time, but they just need to make the time they have more rewarding. This lifestyle has opened up the possibility to invest my lifetime by caring about the way we live and the experience we have of living instead of hustling to afford a lifestyle focused on consuming things. People are expected to use a washing machine to wash their clothes because it saves them time - it gives them time to do something else. But, people spend so much time hustling that they are either too tired to use that time or they don’t know what to do with it - they have lost track of the things they care about by forfeiting all of their attention to being “productive”. To me it seems like people forfeit their own desires, passions, or potentially valuable experiences that create a sense of a meaningful life in order to be a part of a system that exploits their drive in order to create a system of transactions that they can never get what they truly want from. We all want to live good, meaningful, long lives. All of us. So why do so many people spend their time making a living instead of building a life?

So, here we are, living off grid, and enjoying our lives, feeling good about the way we live. Yes, I wash my laundry by hand and it takes more time than it would in a machine, but I am not wasting precious water, I am caring for my clothes gently,&nbsp; and I am giving myself the gift of washing laundry while surrounded by a beautiful panorama of mountains in the fresh air and sunlight. My experience of washing laundry, like my experience of getting (making) milk, and getting (baking) bread are infinitely more valuable than turning on a machine and staring at my phone or shopping in a grocery store.&nbsp;

Making a Life Off-grid

Water

Sewer

Garbage

Recycling

Electricity

A Different Approach

Sweat Not Debt