To my mom's dismay, my adventurous spirit often leads me on solo excursions. As a science educator, I am fortunate to have a ridiculous number of days off each year, including 2.5 months in the summer! Last summer I was bouncing around Australia.
I also daydream about a thriving homestead where my food supply is completely self-sufficient and I am free of fossil fuels (obviously, that is an ideal as the manufacturing, packaging, and/or shipping of 99.999% of commercial products involves fossil fuels. (I obviously made that statistic up ... you get my point though.)
So how do I balance my wanderlust with my homesteading mentality? Why, with my Wandering Turtle! Throughout the last four years I have been quietly collecting tidbits of ideas and inspiration for my dream home. I spent a fruitless three days of looking for the price of an Ofuro (Japanese style compact tub) from an obscure South Korean company. An entire weekend disappeared into the customer reviews of tankless hot water heaters. Countless moments have been devoted to its design … every cozy 150 square feet of the off-the-grid cottage house-on-wheels I lovingly refer to as the Wandering Turtle. I want to share my journey - from picking a flatbed trailer to sinking the first nail to the first night in my home. I hope to show the world that you don’t have to sacrifice a full life in order to live with less. With rainwater catchment, gray water system, solar energy, and a homesteading mentality, I will declare my self-sufficiency.
I have been saving what I can for two years to purchase the trailer and building materials. To raise money, I have also been creating jewelry and crafts to sell at farmers markets. I have already been able to purchase stabilization jacks, a low flow tankless toilet, a sink, four windows, and a tankless on demand water heater with money I raised at the market.
You might wonder where I'm going to park this thing ... I'm pleased to say that I just found a beautiful piece of land in an orange grove. The farmer is providing me space in exchange for the care of his flock of hens. I had to relocate my hens when I moved so I am happy to have feathery fowl friends again! My hens Bodhi, Anitya, and Karuna were so dear to my heart and it was hard to have to relocate them when I "moved" to Australia (obviously I didn't stay ... I was offered my dream job just after embarking to Oz ... and the job was just two hours away from where I had lived before moving to Australia!)
So ... my plan for this blog is to share my experiences for those of you who are interested or are thinking of doing something similar. Learn from my mistakes instead of making them yourself! I'm sure I'm going to sprinkle in tidbits from all my non-Turtle adventures too :P
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