Don't make it a blog. Make a dating site. If Farmers Only can make someone some money ****s In A Bucket should do well also.

Shouldn't you be dating 20 somethings who will be more flexible about the cabin living thing?

Yeah, the girl I've been hanging out with lately is 26.

Tiny Home, Big Love
Off-Grid Connections
Homesteading Heartthrobs

I'm sure sites like OKC or Match have branding overlays they could just turn this out in a week.

Bold: More details needed.

Underlined: I would have thought that once you're open to dating a woman with kids there are plenty of options? It feels like it would be the guys who are looking for some sort of special unicorn that never married by mid-thirties, but doesn't other issues like mental health problems or entitlement stuff going on, who struggle?

...but what the hell do I know?

I'm mid 30s F, and I really think that lots of women my age would be fine with it once he has running water and flushing toilet. I can't see it being hugely different for 20-somethings (wrt to acceptance of the lifestyle.)

fyp

And truer words were never spoken.

It's a boring story. More than me, I think it was just an emotional subject but I definitely was too aggressive with some of my opinions. I apologized midway through, one of those conversations that turned into a debate into an argument.

She was great -- not so much into politics as policy, extremely smart and gets stuff done. But, even if the date had gone swimmingly we definitely seemed like we're in different places.

I'm typically attracted to strong, type A women. Which works out because many times they're looking for someone chill. Not to generalize ... but the flip side, sometimes I'm sure I come off like a lazy stoner. I think a lot depends on what you're open to. Some people have a definite idea of what they imagine their partner will be like.

Nah, he's right. Unless you mean "more options" means number of gals. But most of them in that situation are mostly looking for a provider, even if they can't admit it to themselves. They might pretend to be okay with ****ing a bucket, but are really thinking it's only temporary "until they can talk some sense into him", because they don't want their kids ****ing in a bucket.

Bitter guys who call their exes psycho are so hot. El Sapo, you should definitely let these two teach you how to live.

I live in a cabin and when I'm done with this post I have to go change a bucket. ... I don't to call anyone wack.

Gotta make the place pretty .... my brother and sister-in-law are coming over for dinner tonight. They're both chefs, so it's always fun to cook for them. I used to go into overkill when people would come over (back in my running-water apartment days). Moving out here, you could do that but it would be awful to clean up. I cook much simpler now.

Flank steak and rice and beans. But if I keep the beans and rice separate, I'm counting it as two things. Also, some pan con tomate, basically grilled garlic bread rubbed with tomato and then some basil and maybe mozz.

Couple from the inside. It's a small space, but it's home.





BTW, Steadman's "Vintage Savage Journey" is for sale. PM if you're serious.

I'm sure the pictures will look strange to people. But after years of living in apartments, downsizing, moving, downsizig ... this is basically like the inside of my brain. This is the stuff that has survived. It's surreal, for me, to look at sometimes.

I'm married. Same chick. Long time.

I do have single friends with some sick stories, though.

not strange at all imo, crowded I guess, but nothing about that screams "guy who will end up on the news"

last picture is the least cabiny thing ever imo, looks like an mid-upperclass middle aged gentleman's study iyam.

just saw the typewriter, what's that all about?

Typing untraceable manifestos

It sounds as if you were really into the woman you dated for a year, why things didn't work out? please feel free to completely ignore this question.

I use the typewriter for a bunch of things. Some of the writing/art/mixed media/zines, and I actually enjoy writing letters to people. I also keep a journal. The typewriter is awesome - probably 60 years old, still works pretty well, the V sticks. I dig the sound. Dragged it all around the country a few years back, I'd be camping in a state park pounding away on it.

I wish more people still sent letters. It's basically a lost art.

Yeah, we were a good match in many ways. We'd drink good wine and get high and babble about politics. Spent a great weekend at Turning Stone. Did a lot of hiking, eating, exploring the area ... A really nice mix of hippy and urban, if that makes any sense.

She has kids, and after about a year I think it hit that "is this serious" point for her. (Unfortunately, I already thought we were pretty serious, so that came as a shock). And she just didn't feel she had time to commit, felt stretched too thin. ... Yeah, it was definitely a bummer.

But she did swear it wasn't because I made her **** in a bucket. Though I suspect it didn't help.

Upthread you mentioned the Amanda Palmer book. Haven't read it, but here's a TED Talk she gives which I assume is on the same subject. The part where she mentions being a street performer in NYC, I can't be sure if it was her, but I *think* she made my day once. Or it could be my rock solid Brian Williams-esque memory.

Any clue how much it would cost you to get a well / septic dug?

How much energy do you use on a regular basis?

Last winter, I'm guessing you were pretty well stocked for the long haul even though you didn't get buried. What did your pantry look like, how much water did you have, what other preparations were necessary?

ETA: Just rewatched the TED talk. Easily one of the best I've seen. Highly recommended.

That's awesome. Her TED Talk is really good.

I don't know. ... The realtor told me the neighbor's well is very shallow, so presumably that would cut the costs.

But it's not just the well. What infrastructure does it connect with? I'd *love* to have a hand-pump well on the property. But when you get into septic, where do I put the bathroom? Suddenly I gotta build a house to fit in a bathroom.

I can absolutely see, maybe five years from now, using the same company to build a bigger cabin -- with on-grid power and a septic system. The property is definitely big enough, and if I can execute this financial plan of mine for that long I'd have no debt, some cash and the credit to go at it in a more traditional manner.

One of my favorite topics. ... And I don't really know.

Solar hasn't worked out as well as I had hoped. Something to do with the trees, I suspect. So I run the generator pretty frequently. Some days not at all, but let's say I average two hours a day.

I can get about 7 hours on a tank of gas (.55 gallons), so I guess I'm using ... maybe .2 gallons a day to produce energy.

Two things I'd like to experiment with: wind power and biofuel. Wind is pretty well known but I feel like I should be able to use all this wood to generate power. There are devices that sit on your wood stove, and use the difference in temperature on differing sides of an element, to generate power. But they're not particularly efficient and don't produce much energy.

I envision building a mini power plant. If you could construct a device that looked more or less like a wood stove, but which generated electricity, that would be an enormous seller with the off-grid set.

At any given point I could go a week or so. It's easy to store dried food. Right now I've got about 20 gallons of water on hand but I don't maintain a certain level.

My road is not a seasonal road, so it is plowed. I have to maintain the 300 feet down to the road, but that's not much. Point being: I think if I stay on top of it, I'm unlikely to get snowed in.

The big winter prep is really heating.

I use a stove more or less identical to this one.

When I was trying to decide on a wood stove, I did a fair bit of research. There are a ton of wood stove models and manufacturers, but as you get smaller the options decrease.

Some of the small wood stoves are ridiculously expensive. I didn't have much money. ... It's commonly known as a Vogelzang boxwood stove. It isn't airtight and controlling it is basically impossible. Because it's not airtight, the flue control does very little.

But, I see this as a plus: The stove runs all-out and then off. So I rarely have to worry about leaving it "on," when I leave, for instance. Also, that way of burning can be very efficient, creating blasts of really hot air. Obviously that's tough to control and be comfortable in, but when I add more thermal mass to the stove it should work well, storing the heat and using less wood. I hope, anyway. That's the theory.

If you google Vogelzang and read some of the wood-stove forums (they exist), people HATE this stove. They call it a death trap, and some pros say they won't install them.

If you wanted to use this to heat some kind of a traditional home, I can see where they're coming from. But my deal out here is entirely different and it suits my needs perfectly.

The next big winter-prep is taking apart the stove and chimney setup, and seeing how the 1st winter impacted it. This is a photo from last year, when I bought the stove and was basically trying to figure out how to install it.

Do you have the solar set up? Do your batteries often get fully charged?

Used solar panels are very cheap. I'd give you a couple if you were close. There's a hippie who makes stuff for Burning Man who has called me a few times over the years asking if I had any and I gave him one once. He called out of the blue, so he must just call solar companies.

Oh right ... you're an installer? I cover that industry.

The GoalZero panls just aren't very big ... 30 watts each. I had them mounted on a tree out by the field, and they got pretty good light -- but line losses from 65 feet was big.

And then I accidentally chopped one of the 30-foot lines while cutting wood, and so now they're just kind of sitting on the deck as I debate what to do.

I like that GoalZero's stuff is plug-and-play, but if I could go back and do it again I don't know if I'd buy this setup again.

If you know anyone nearby you should ask. I would give you a 270 watt panel that's sitting in my garage. If your line losses are really high, get more wire. You can run wires in parallel if you splice them correctly. Generally have you your longest runs at your highest voltage, so if you have 65' at 24V and then a few feet at 120v or something like that, move your batteries and inverter closer to the panels if possible.

Another question: I recall you saying that you barely looked at the property before buying. Is there anything, now that you've been there for a while, that you wish you would've looked for? Like a creek or flatter land or backing up to national forest or anything simple that most people probably overlook when they're buying?

Interesting stuff about the well / septic system. I didn't even think about all the other stuff involved. You've basically got to know exactly where you want to build and settle, and there's no going back once you've got the holes dug. It's a big decision.

The energy issue seems to be the biggest one -- how to sustain a relatively normal lifestyle without grid power. Internet can be gotten over airwaves, poop can be composted or septic installed, wells can be dug, food can be grown, jobs can be remote, but electricity can't just suddenly flash out of the sky into your Tesla battery pack (or can it? paging Elon...). My thoughts on the matter haven't gone far beyond, "It'd be so cool to make my own mini-nuclear powerplant!" Solar does seem so hit-or-miss. I wonder about windmills... I think if there's one off-the-grid way to supply your own power, this to be the most practical, right? Though I'd never really considered biofuels. Isn't there some thing where you can grow algae?

Seems like every time I've ever stayed in a cabin with a woodburning stove it always gets waaay too hot and I've got to open up a door in the dead of winter just so I can breathe. It seems like it's going to take up half your cabin, too!

Thanks for all the great answers!

Normally if you have a well you put an electric pump on it. In your situation you could put a storage tank near your house, elevated a bit so you get some pressure. If you had more solar you could power the pump during the day and fill up the tank, so you only need a tank big enough to handle overnight needs.

You could also use a windmill like this, but they are expensive.