The WHY behind Our Decision to Sell it All and Hit the Road

I have been talking for months about a huge lifestyle change Todd and I are planning to adopt by selling all of our possessions (including our home),purchasing a Class A and traveling all over the United States.  Since coming out with our future goals, we have been met with several different reactions (and many questions!). 

I decided to write a post about why we decided on this lifestyle change and what keeps us motivated to continue to work toward our goal.

Freedom

I would say the number one reason for this change is freedom.   We are tired of being tied down to the house and the maintenance it requires as well as keeping jobs we don’t necessarily enjoy to help pay for said home and upkeep.  We want the freedom to do as we please, where, when and how we please.

Simplicity

We have really been focusing on trying to simplify our life as much as possible and a move into an RV would be the epitome of simplicity.  You cannot fit much into a 330 sq. ft. space and are forced to live with only what is truly needed.  The amount of stuff that we’ve accumulated over the years has taken a toll on us physically and mentally.  Having the realization that within a few years, we will be living in an RV has really helped us to consume less.  When I go out shopping with my mom (she is a browser), I find items that I like and would tend to buy.  Now, I know that what we are taking in the RV will be minimal, and there is no room (or purpose) for such tchatzkies.  We have definitely been more mindful of our purchases to ensure that the item will fit into our lifestyle.  We are looking at quality and usability over quantity for the items we are purchasing.

Adventure

Todd and I enjoy adventure.  We like to see new places, experience new things, and what could be more adventurous than traveling the United States and Canada.  We honeymooned in Alaska back in 2007 and we look forward to driving across Canada to stay in Alaska for a couple of months before coming back to the contiguous US!  We have a long list of places we would like to visit, and by making this commitment, we are hoping to witness all of these landmarks before we get too old to truly enjoy them! 

Savings

Even though I am always trying to stretch a penny, this is not the main reason we decided to live in an RV.  Moving from a 1,890 sq. ft. home to living in a 330 sq. ft. camper will require far fewer resources and therefore {theoretically} cost less than owning a home.  I have always had a dream of living a self-sufficient life and though this is not 100% possible in an RV (can you say gas guzzler?), it is one step closer to being self-sufficient.  We have plans on installing a 250W solar panel on the RV and supporting local farmers with fresh {in season} produce while on the road.  The goal is to sell our primary residence and make a “home base” for a few months every summer on the ½ acre property we own next door.  This will allow us to grow and preserve our own vegetables and to harvest all the fruits we have been attempting to establish since moving into the house 7 years ago!

I am sure there will be many challenging times between now and when we hit the road (as well as when we are on the road!)  Todd and I have never spent more than a week and a half underfoot, in tight living quarters and with two 75+ lb dogs in tow!  Even though we have been met with some doubts, we are still as excited about our adventure today as we were over six months ago when we originally talked about the possibility of selling it all and moving into an RV.  If all else fails, we will have a paid for home and RV and we can continue doing what we’ve been doing.

What are your thoughts on this adventure? 

Do you think we will actually go through with it?

Have you ever considered living in an RV?

Learning to Live Without a Dryer and Dishwasher

As a part of trying to conserve energy, I decided to try to live without the clothes dryer as well as the dishwasher.  The first day I tried to live without these two appliances, I realized how easy they made my life.  They were truly a convenience I had come to rely on.  This is what I’ve learned over the past month by going without these two appliances.

Small Loads Are Best

The very first day I washed laundry, we had 3 large loads to do.  I put in the first large load into the washing machine to realize all of the clothes would not fit on our 3 drying racks.  So…I hung some up on the fireplace mantel and dried them extremely quick in front of the fire.

With the dishes, if I wash them as I go, it is not as overwhelming.  I have been washing the dishes after breakfast, which takes about 5 minutes.  I unload those dry dishes from breakfast while making dinner in the evening. When my husband cooks, he uses all  a lot of pots and pans, and the days he cooks, I am completely overwhelmed with a stack of dishes and want to throw up my hands in defeat by loading them into the dishwasher and hit the “start” button.

Frequency Rules

With laundry, I have learned to do several (smaller) loads throughout the week instead of 2 or 3 large ones on the weekends.  By doing this, we have enough room on the drying racks to allow the clothes to dry properly within 24-48 hours. 

As I mentioned above with the dishes, I wash the dishes after every single meal to ensure I don’t get overwhelmed.

It Ain’t Pretty

In the beginning, we kept the drying racks in the family room and they were not very pretty to look at

every time we walked into the room.  It then dawned on me that we could keep the drying racks in our spare bedroom to keep them away from cute little kitten claws (we have 3 – 5 month old kittens right now) and they are out of the way.  This has been working well for us.

 

Patience is Key

I have to laugh at this because I have no patience whatsoever.  It is so easy to hit a button and 34 minutes later you have dry clothes.  Hit the “start” button on the dishwasher and 2 hours later you have clean and dry dishes.

Now, it takes anywhere from 24-48 hours for our clothes to be completely dry (I am looking forward to the warmer weather when I can hang clothes outside on the line!).  I am learning to plan ahead instead of live in survival mode when it comes to dishes and laundry.  To me, it feels better to have laundry done and put away every few days instead of 3 heaping baskets of clean laundry waiting to be put away once a week.  It takes a little more time throughout the week, but it’s done and I don’t have to worry about it.

I joke that I would like to live the “simple life” like the Amish…without all the work.  I am learning that by getting rid of just two appliances, it creates a noticeable change in work load; however, I am (surprisingly) keeping up. 

I grew up with dishwashers and clothes dryers.  This is what I am accustomed to.  It is definitely a change in mindset to willingly go without, but I am enjoying it.  Right now, I am doing this to see if we can lower our electric bill and put the savings toward our mortgage payoff; however, I would love to be able to one-day create enough electricity to power our home.  Trying to reduce our energy consumption is one step closer to being independent of energy.

Do you live without a dryer or dishwasher?

What are your tips and tricks or advice for those of us just starting out in our journey of less “convenience” appliances?

This post is linked up to:

 

 

What I Learned While Butchering Chickens

The weekend before Thanksgiving Todd and I were butchering our 4 month old roosters.    The main reason we were butchering one of them was because it had been crowing for over a week and I didn’t want the neighbors to shut down “Operation Meat Birds” we’ve taken on this year.  We decided to butcher 3 of the chickens I was pretty confident were roosters because we didn’t want to take the chance of having another one start crowing in the next few weeks.  We butchered the 3 most mature roosters leaving one to breed with the hens in the spring.

The 3 Roosters We Butchered
The Black One Was the Crower

I wasn’t sure if we would be able to butcher the chickens ourselves, but we both did just fine.

I have posted these links before, but I will post them again to anyone who wants to learn how to process some of their own flock. 

Part 1
Part 2 

I will be completely up-front and honest with you: the worst part was the first 2 minutes.  The head came off within seconds but what the video above didn’t prepare us for was the flailing of the wings that took place for over a minute.  I stood there watching in horror wondering if we did something wrong.  I will also tell you I will never be the one to cut off the chicken’s head.

After the wings stopped flapping, the rest of the process was pretty straight forward.  Dunk the chicken into water at 140-160 degrees for about 30 seconds to loosen the feathers.  Cool the chicken off in cold water, and start taking the feathers off.  This takes about 10 minutes when doing it by hand.

After removing the feathers, it is time to take the esophagus out which takes no more than 5 minutes.  After the esophogus is the removal of the innards and to cut off the feet which takes about 5-10 minutes.

Overall, it took us about 3 hours to process 3 chickens; however, we stopped for lunch in-between and took several breaks.  I would say it would take 20-30 minutes from start to finish if you were on a roll.

Two of the 3 Processed Chickens
(The yellow is because we had the water too hot when de-feathering this chicken.)

The question I always ask when we are doing something like this is: Is it worth it?

I cannot honestly answer this question with a definitive yes or no.  To save money: probably not.  To eat organically and locally: definitely!  We have not yet cooked up any of the chicken, so I couldnt tell you if there is a difference in taste.

It takes time to process the chicken, but I am happy knowing the chickens had a great life of roaming the yard eating bugs and vegetable scraps in their short 4 months here on earth. 

We will definitely be doing this again in the future; however, we will try to plan the processing in warmer weather.

It really is eye-opening to see how an animal goes from roaming around the yard to prepared for dinner.  I would recommend it for anyone interested in learning about how food is processed as well as for those looking to eat more locally. 

This post has been linked up to:

    

 

Breeding Mealworms

Just in case anyone thought otherwise, this is proof that I have gone bonkers.  I am breeding mealworms as a renewable food source for our chickens.  I was surprised when I brought it up to my husband that he didn’t even bat an eye which means only one thing: he has realized that I have done lost my mind a long time ago.

So, how did I learn about breeding mealworms?  It was from a post that I received from Jane who has a website entitled Hedgecombers.   When she posted a comment on one of my posts, I took a look at her blog and noticed an article about breeding mealworms.  After doing some research, it seems to be a pretty simple thing to do. 

I set out to purchase mealworms and start our own mealworm breeding operation.  I ended up getting them from this seller on eBay and I am extremely pleased with the purchase.

Mealworms the Day We Got Them

So, you may be wondering what you have to do to breed mealworms.  I’ll tell you.

1.)    Buy mealworms

2.)    After several weeks (up to 2 months), the mealworms turn into pupas which is like a cacoon

 

3.)    Out of the pupa (1-2 weeks later) emerges a Darkling Beetle that live up to 3 months

4.)    The beetles mate and produce eggs

5.)    The eggs hatch into mealworms

6.)    The life cycle starts all over again

Is it really that simple?  YES!

Within 3 days of owning the mealworms, pupas started to form. Once they formed, I picked them out of the area with the mealworms and put them in their own area so that when the beetles hatch, they can get busy making some eggs!  Also, please know that the Darkling Beetles don’t fly, so there are no worries of having these things flying all over the house.

I am getting a little bit ahead of myself.  This is what is needed to breed mealworms:

• A warm place (for maximum breeding, you will want the temperature to be around 76 degrees)
• Plastic tubs (I am using old tupperware containers)
• A food source (bran cereal, oats or chicken feed) of 1-3 inches in the plastic tub
• A water source (a slice of an apple, carrot or potato)

Water Source for Mealworms

Many people on YouTube use sweater boxes to start their mealworms out in, but we keep our house pretty cold and there was no way there is any one spot in our house that is 76 degrees in December, January, February or March!  Instead, we put our egg incubator that we bought when we purchased too many fertilized chicken eggs for our broody hen to work (again).  The 1,000 mealworms we purchased fit in a small plastic container inside the egg incubator.  I am pretty confident we can keep up to 5,000 mealworms within this incubator comfortably. 

The mealworms will eat through the 1-3 inches of their food source (also known as a substrate) with time.  Once they do, all you have left is what looks like sand.  I will let you in on a little secret: this is mealworm poop.  Another inside secret is that this “sand” is great fertilizer for plants.

  

Costs Involved:

Incubator (we already had)
Plastic tubs (we already had)
1,000 mealworms ($18.99)
Large container of oats ($2.19)

Total invested in mealworms:  $21.18 (not including electricity use and slices of potatoes and carrots that we always have on hand)

The only reason I decided to breed the mealworms in the winter is so that I could get some experience and to build up our supply of mealworms for the chickens.  I do not plan on feeding the mealworms to the chickens until the next generation of mealworms hatch.  I have decided otherwise. Our "operation" is producing so well, even within just 2 weeks of owning the mealworms, that we will start supplementing the chicken's food with mealworms in the next month or so!  It takes anywhere from 3-4 months for the entire life-cycle to take place.  My goal is to breed enough mealworms to keep a nice supply available to the chickens through the colder months next year when they arent able to forage for their food as well as to sell them locally to help recoop the costs.  I also plan on selling the mealworm poop as fertilizer when there is enough to sell.

As you can see, with the life cycle being 3-4 months on mealworms, I can make an endless supply of treats/protein for my chickens while keeping the cost of commercial feed to a minimum.   

The mealworms have tripled in size over the past 2 weeks!

I admit I am creeped out by these things.  The noise they make while digging through the oats is an eerie sound because I know it is 1,000 mealworms!  Ick.  To me, it’s like a bad horror movie.  But I know that this is the best possible food for our hens and a replenishable one at that, so I think it’s worth it.  Maybe with time, I will be comfortable enough with them to pick them up with my own two hands. But for now, I will continue to use tweezers thankyouverymuch!

 

Our First Year of Collecting Eggs

From Left to Right: Blondie, Latte, Mocha

July 1^st marked our first (full) year of our chickens laying eggs.  It has been a learning experience but so much fun to raise these chickens! 

Stats:

• From July 1, 2011 to December 31, 2011, our 3 chickens laid 476 eggs*
• From January 1, 2012 to July 1, 2012, our 3 chickens laid 402 eggs*
• Total Eggs Laid: 878 (73.16 dozen)
• We got our first “fart egg” in 2012 (a fart egg is a teeny-tiny egg-so cute!)
• Total spent on chickens and feed from birth to current date:  $ 140.41
• Price per dozen: $ 1.92

You may notice that the chickens have not laid as many eggs in 2012 as they did the last half of 2011.  I believe that this is due to going on a 10 day vacation and a broody hen.  There were two days in 2012 that we did not receive a single egg.

Mocha: "What YOU lookin' at?"

Even though we could buy non-organic white eggs at the grocery store for less, we enjoy having the chickens running around the back yard, eating bugs, demolishing kitchen scraps, staring at us as if we are the odd ones, and providing a source of fresh eggs every day.



Source

*This statistic does not include the eggs that were cracked or broken.  It also does not include the eggs that our neighbor collected for us while we were on vacation.  They kept the eggs as a perk for keeping an eye on our little cluckers.

Edible Landscape: Primary Residence

Last week,  I wrote about our yard and how we are trying to make it so that we can generate most of our produce from our property.  In this post, I will show you pictures of our primary residence and the steps we have taken over the last 4 years and the steps we plan on taking in upcoming years to make this land as productive as possible.

Front of the house.

This is a picture of our primary residence which is half an acre. As you can see, it is not very colorful this time of year.  I love when the leaves start to form on the trees and everything bursts with colors of spring.   We have a nice sized front yard, but the majority of our property is to the side of our home and very dense with trees. 

Picture from the edge of our property to our home.

Picture of our side property - we own to the bush in the side yard.
These are our new red raspberry patches. 

In the side yard,  a little closer to the road, there are two pear trees. We purchased these trees along with a dwarf plum at a large discount in June 2010.

Pear Trees

This is a picture of our teeny tiny back yard. We have never really done much back here, but I’ve got big plans for this area. I received 6 blueberry startings a few weeks back that are now planted in this area. I also plan on putting in blackberry bushes and strawberries in the area.   My new moto is: If it’s got sun, decent soil and room to grow, use it!

Teeny Tiny Backyard

6 Blueberries Planted!

A new addition has arrived last week that I absolutely love: our new arbor!  On this arbor, we will be planting 4 concord grape vines (on their way in the mail as I type this).  I have wanted to grow concord grapes since we moved in, but this year it is actually happening!  Concord grapes bring up great memories of my childhood when my mom, dad and I would eat bags full of concord grapes, never getting enough of them.  They aren’t as readily available here in Ohio as they were in New York and Pennsylvania, but that will (hopefully) all be changing in the next 2-3 years when we have our very own source of them in the front yard! 

Arbor

Close to our mailbox in the front yard, we planted a dwarf plum tree that we bought on clearance from Home Depot two years ago at 75% off.  We have been patiently waiting for fruit to start producing on this tree.  One reason we have this tree here in the front yard is because it is decorative, but the added bonus is that it will hopefully start producing fruit for us!

Dwarf Plum

Where are all of our vegetables going to be planted?

Next week, I will show you the other ½ acre lot we own next door.

Please feel free to link up to this post with pictures of your yard or container garden.  I’d love to see it!





This post is linked up to Homestead Revival's Barn Hop!

Edible Landscape

About a mile away from our home, there is a woman who lives on a city-like lot of less than ¼ acre.  She has very little yard, and what she does have is in the front of her house.  Last year, while I drove by her house to go into town, I noticed she had dug up rows in her front yard.  I was curious as to what she was doing.  By May, I figured it out: she planted an edible front yard of tomatoes exclusively!  Though it wasn’t the prettiest yard to look at on the street, I saw bright red tomatoes in her front yard every week when I drove past her home and I had to smile to think about what she was doing with all that produce!

As I walk around our yard, I get the feeling that we could potentially eat quite well (minus meat, dairy and grain) off our property.  We live on 1 acre of land divided up in two parcels.  I found this great diagram  from Ohio State University’s website that shows how to have an edible landscape in our zone (zone 6) even on the smallest of properties.

Over the next two weeks, I will walk you around our two parcels of property and show you how we are making it the most efficient we can in terms of growing our own fruits and vegetables. 

A picture of our property.  We own to the street at the very end of this road.

To those who would like to join me, please start getting ready to link up next week.  I would love to see how you “live off your land.” 

2012 Goals

With every New Year, I feel like I have a fresh start, and this year is no different.  This year, I am posting my goals for everyone to hold me accountable!  I will be posting updates every month as to how the goals are coming along.  This is what my personal goals look like for 2012:


Spiritual

• Daily Devotional: Read The One Year Bible (I enjoyed reading the Bible in 90 Days, but I would like to slow it down this year!)
• Find a church that is a fit for our family

Marriage

• Read one marriage book a month and put it’s teachings into practice

Health / Personal

• Eat healthfully (more fruits and vegetables, less meat, carbs and sugars)
• Create and maintain a cleaning routine
• Lose 50 lbs (that’s only a pound a week – achievable!)
• Decrease the amount of “stuff” in our home (Purge-A-Palooza 2012! - will talk about that next week)
• Volunteer at the Happy Trails Animal Sanctuary (a monthly commitment) 

Financial

• Sponsor a child in need
• When I started making my list of goals in October, as soon as I had this goal listed, a fellow blogger wrote about how she and her family sponsor a child through Compassion.  After a lot of research about the ministry, we sponsored a child 11/11/11!  It is amazing how God put everything into place!!
• It is our goal to sponsor another child, but this time, through another organization called Amazima.
• Save $5,000 toward a replacement vehicle/maintenance
• Invest 5% of our take-home income into a Roth IRA
• Sponsor a pot bellied pig at Happy Trails Animal Sanctuary

Environmental 

• Less pre-packaged food / more cooking from scratch
• Reduce use of paper towels and paper napkins replacing them with cloth
• Lower resource consumption (electric / propane / water)
• Electric use of primary residence over past 12 months=15,298 kWh
• Electric use of the house we own next door over past 12 months=6,876 kWh
• We expect this number to be drastically lower due to the fact that we are no longer heating the shed, which was our pot bellied pig and puppy’s abode last winter
• Install energy-saving power strips throughout home

Gardening & Preserving

• Grow enough tomatoes, green beans, snow peas, squash and green peppers to be used through the fall and winter 2012 and spring 2013
• Can at least 24 quarts of tomatoes (sauces, stewed tomatoes, etc)
• Freeze at least 50 pint-sized bags of vegetables
• Plant at least 3 concord grape vines

 What are your goals / aspirations / resolutions for 2012?

Frontier House: PBS Series

I recently watched Frontier House that aired on PBS back in 2002.  Frontier House is a series of 6 episodes where 3 modern-day families went back to live the life of a family in 1883 for 5 months. Back in 1883, people came from all over to claim their 160 acres of land, but only after living on their frontier for 5 years:  1 out of 3 families survived the life on the frontier.

The families that PBS chose were pretty interesting. 

• The Brooks Family: This family is an African American family, which they said were more common on the frontier back in 1883 than books portray.  At the beginning of the series, Nate and his father, Rudy were at the homestead for the first five weeks to help build the homestead.  Then Nate’s (real) fiancé, Kristen came and they got married on the homestead. Rudy left the frontier and let his new daughter-in-law resume life with her new husband on the frontier.
• The Clune Family:  This family is from Malibu, California where the father was an executive for a company and they appear to be pretty affluent.  The mother, a native of Ireland, was a stay-at-home mom and they had 3 children.  For some reason, the Clune family also brought their niece to the Frontier House.
• The Glenn Family: The Glenn family is a blended family from Tennessee.  This is the second marriage for the mother and her children are from her previous marriage.  Throughout the series, you can pretty much watch the relationship of the mother and her husband unravel – it is really sad, because the children were thriving on the frontier. 

For 5 months, these families had to help build their own cabins (except the Glenn Family who got a pre-built cabin in their scenario.)  From the very beginning, the families got a real taste of what it was like to travel to their destination and what obstacles the pioneers faced (I wont spoil it for you – you have to watch it!) As the viewer, you get to watch what day-to-day life was like for the women, children and the husbands.  It was great!

I often romanticize about living life back in the 1800’s, but after watching this series, the “simple life” was not so simple!  I would love living off the land, but I do have my limits.  Anyone interested in homesteading or learning about what life was like back in 1883, I highly recommend this educational DVD!

 

DISCLAIMER:  I was in no way compensated to provide a positive or negative review on this video.  I watched the DVD out of my own curiosity and all opinions expressed are my own.   

Dreams of Self-Sufficiency

When I speak of self-sufficiency, I am speaking generally about food and energy.  Even though I love what the No Impact Man  accomplished in his year of being “no impact,” I’m not sure our family could live that way.  None-the-less, I am striving to reduce our impact. 

I realize that being self-sufficient is not easy, but I still dream of the day that we can create enough power from the sun and wind to operate all of the modern conveniences of our home without relying on the electric company.  I also dream of the day that we can survive mainly off of the fruits and vegetables from our 1 acre of land.

These are the steps we are taking to become more self-sufficient:

1. Reducing our energy footprint
2. Buy items that will last (non-disposable items and appliances/machinery that can be fixed by my handy hubby)
3. Plant perennial fruits and vegetables (Click here for an extensive list!)
4. Expand existing garden and build new gardens to yield more produce
5. Make use of any available land to build edible perennial landscaping
6. Grow and dry our own herbs
7. “Buy it used, wear it out, make it do or do without.”

I do have my limits!  We will not be growing our own wheat/flour, raising our own meat or dairy products.  I would love to have bees for the honey (thus not needing sugar), but I will have to work on hubby for that.  I’m thankful he finally gave in to getting chickens*!

For me, becoming self-sufficient is a way of thrift and frugality along with an awareness of how we use our resources to positively affect the environment.  To become self-sufficient will not be easy nor will it happen overnight.  That being said, I have always had a desire to live this way.  It may take 3-5 years to get the garden to produce enough to sustain us throughout the Winter and Spring months. It will take even longer to make our home run efficiently and with minimal pull from our environmental resources.  Little by little, we are taking steps to reach our goals of self-sufficiency and each year, we get a little bit closer to living out our vision.

Are you striving to become self-sufficient?

What steps are you taking now to help you down the road of self-sufficiency?

*Hubby wanted nothing to do with chickens. As a child, he was pecked by chickens and absolutely despised them.  He said they were only good for one thing: eating!  Since getting our chicks in March, I find him outside holding them, and loving on them without me being around.  It’s so cute!  I am turning my suburbanite into a farmer.