Keeping our promise

We promised to be more diligent in our blog posting. So let's start with a bit of an update.

Over the long weekend (Labour Day in Canada and the U.S.) we planned to process our 21 meat chickens (we still have our 11 layers).

    

       Layers purchased from a local in April

Our meat chickens are all grown up

In preparation we wanted to pick up another freezer specifically for chickens. We have a 7 cubic foot one now but found it is well used and we could not have cleared enough space for adding in the processed chickens.  After a bit of online research Tricia found that a 5 cubic foot would be a good size for the amount of birds we do yearly. Did you know that a cubic foot holds approximately 7 gallons and the average chicken is about the equivalent to 1 gallon? We found that our local Canadian Tire had one available but also that Best Buy had one cheaper with free delivery. Well that seemed like a no brainer.

We ordered it online late on Wednesday evening only to find that it had an anticipated delivery date of Tuesday the 5th (after the long weekend). We asked around and found a couple of people who could "hold' the chickens in their freezer for the weekend. Imagine our surprise when the freezer appeared on Friday! Love when the Universe conspires to meet our needs. We were thrilled as we could process and freeze them ourselves without running around to put them into the freezers of our generous friends.


To prepare the new freezer we put a 5 gallon bucket filled with water in to freeze and hold some space while we finished the birds up over 3 days. Although the energy rating on this new freezer was such that we felt it would work with our system, the weather, read lack of sunshine, this time of year meant running the generator. We kind of expected that as the empty freezer would be grabbing a lot of power to get and keep cold.

     Everything is finished and

     the freezer is now packed

This additional draw on our batteries has caused Tricia's interest in the workings of a solar system to be peaked. She really didn't have any interest in 'knowing' how things worked previously. To that end she has delved deep into what Ed calls his 'bible' on the subject The Renewable Energy Handbook: The Updated Comprehensive Guide to Renewable Energy and Independent Living by William H. Kemp

You can expect some future posts on what she finds of interest.







Share with us your own chicken dreams and nightmares.
Are you off grid or just living vicariously through us?

Comments are what keeps a blogger motivated so even an "oh this is boring" comment is productive.

Besides Tricia gets lonely with just Ed and the dogs day after day...

5 Years In the Making

How our off grid journey has evolved

It has been well over a year since updating our blog. Things have changed and sharing simply wasn't a priority.

Thinking back on how this journey was expected to go and how it has gone felt like failure. There have been many conversations discussing different possibilities. Talks with people who had taken similar leaps and found them equally difficult were encouraging.

But money has become a real issue. How we thought that we could possibly survive the remainder of our lives on so little was our biggest error. Now in debt and with a limited income the build has become impossible. It feels like complaining and may come across as such. But more so it feels like the shame of failure. It is very risky to share failure but if risks are not taken and vulnerability shown, real joy cannot be experienced. Thanks Brene Brown for that insight.

For this reason this post is being written.

It was wonderful having time and money for the first couple of years, then the money slowly disappeared and although we had some of the materials needed for the build the lack of locally available materials and weather made the first summer a wash. The materials we had prepared that first year were not able to be used the second summer and without the equipment we hired the first year we could not make further use of them. Although we were optimistic that we could recover, once again the lack of local materials along with the physical labour needed to make what we did have on hand workable become a hurdle we could not overcome. The joys of being closer to 60 than 50.

Our plans now are to slowly build onto and add to the structures we already have on hand. A room and roof added to the trailer, another greenhouse, a sauna and a couple of additional storage buildings. This will take time and require working for additional money (all suggestions/ideas welcome)  but we are comfortable with this prospect. These things will make living off grid here, in the bush of Northern Ontario, a life we can be comfortable in for the remainder of our years. As our dear friend Cam Mather said 'Doing it from this magic place always made it worthwhile'. We hope you will continue to follow along for the ride. Tricia is promising to do more sharing here as she has more social media time available having given up Facebook.

Living in the bush in isolation is not easy. Moving to a community where you know no one is not easy. Being in our fifties (Tricia will celebrate 60 on November 19th) and working on the life of our dreams is not easy. But without the attempt we would have drowned in the life we were living and that simply was not an option. What are you committed to struggling through?

If you have read this far we are very grateful. While we have shared our struggles in this post it seems appropriate to also share that in order to supplement our income we have a distributorship with Young Living Essential Oils. We have been members for over 7 years and have found so many benefits with having these oils in our home as well as sharing them with friends and family. Tricia will begin to post more about how we are using essential oils as our first line of defence in staying  healthy. Most recently we have used them with great success with our 13 year old Tono, a Husky, Wolf, Akita mix, to help out with his stiffness and hair loss. You can purchase online, worldwide through the Young Living website,. Using our id of 1284131 when finalizing your purchase will be helping us financially, should you have that interest. If you are interested in purchasing essential oils or have questions we would be thrilled to help you out. You can reach us through our Facebook page, leaving a comment here or email us directly using northerndirtbags at gmail dot com. Your support of our blog and any help with our income is always greatly appreciated.

Now it's time to attack the never ending to do list and keep our dreams alive.

Edited to add - Hitting PUBLISH on this post was extremely difficult. TB