Taking it all in..

Finally after a week of living in our new home, we had a weekend off. And decent weather too. He stepped out on the porch with his coffee calling back into the house.. 'quick, bring your camera'. There were several eagles hanging out on the frozen river. It's the first morning we've had yet to just hang out on the front porch and enjoy simply existing in our new place. It seemed as though the local wildlife was celebrating.

We all were. The first day of the year with double digit temperatures that weren't in the negative. The sun even came out for a while to warm our bones. Standing in front of the house in the middle of the road, I still have a hard time believing that this place is my home. I get to build here, to grow.

I had my chance to see what was hiding under the snow, and there's much more space for gardening than I thought. I'm not sure yet what I want to grow or how to lay it out, but I do know that both sunflowers and leafy greens are a must. I'll need to start slowly accumulating gardening tools of my own so that I can get started prepping the land. There's lots of bramble to be cleared and debris to be raked up.

For us, aspects of regular life are a huge part of the adventure. Having housing stability is a newish thing. We have both been essentially floating for a long time. To have a place to nest and garden and enjoy the basic comforts of having our own home is still taking some getting used to. Things that most people in the western world take for granted are true blessings to us.

That said, the compromises that need be made for living partly off-grid aren't a huge inconvenience as we're used to having to make do, it's kind of like cabin camping with Netflix. I'm still in shock that we were able to get the Internet, and as the weather is still quite chilly, we're very grateful to be able to curl up to a movie in the evening, even if the only screen we have is my little laptop. So what if we have to boil water to do dishes and limit showers to five minutes. Who cares if we have to travel half an hour to the nearest grocery store. We are home.



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