How did we end up here?

For almost 5 years, I and my partner-in-adventure, J, have wanted to live “off-grid.” We pored through scores of books, read article after article about [urban] homesteading, composting, raising chickens, companion planting, using herbs medicinally, etc., etc., ad infinitum. During this time, J was working full-time while I finished my undergrad degree. It was important for both of us that I get a degree, even if I didn’t use it right away. 

We decided pretty early on that we wanted to live in the Pacific Northwest. Homesteading requires water and good access to lots of it! Also, we are both desert rats and we craved to be somewhere green and wet. Portland, OR was our first choice because we are as weird as it takes to live there. We also started saving money, because moving is expensive! Especially an out-of-state move. We also wanted to make sure we had enough money saved up so that we didn’t have to worry about getting jobs right away.

Making the move right after I graduated made the most sense, so we started telling our friends that we were leaving at the end of the summer. For me, at least, the more people we told, the more I was able to convince myself that, yes, we are really moving! We had been in the same place for so many years that it almost seemed impossible that we would leave. I graduated in May and this is how I spent my summer:

May - relax after 5 years of school!

June- get a job nannying, start looking for housing/jobs from Spokane to Seattle to Portland to Ashland.

July -  put in 2 months notice on the house we were renting! Start honing in on housing in Portland area. Get creative! Look for tiny homes for rent, RVs for rent, communal living situations, work trade offers, “cabin-sitting”, etc. The most difficult part of this was finding a place that would accommodate me, J, 2 cats, and a fish! 

August - We started talking to a woman in the Portland area who had an RV for rent on her small permaculture farm. She also had the option for someone to come put down a yurt or another RV in a back meadow. After much research, J and I found an economically feasible yurt and decided to buy it. The fellow at Light Feet Yurts who makes them uses salvaged lumber and upcycled billboard canvas. The feeling was pretty great. We were homeowners! Whatever happened, we would always have a giant tent to put over our heads. Plans fell through with the Portland woman, and after expanding our search again, all signs led to the Olympic Peninsula. We quickly found 3 or 4 landowners who were looking for someone to come put down a yurt and provide a work-trade for rent. We made plans with all of them to meet up at the beginning of September and J and I crossed our fingers that one of them would work out! 

So we got rid of half of our junk, packed the rest away, said our goodbyes to our dear friends, and drove a U-haul to Washington! The drive took 3 days, as we had to drive out of our way through CA to pick up the yurt. Traveling with the cats was not as terrible as I thought it would be; I’ll probably do a post on traveling with cats later.

So we spent a few nights in Tacoma as we met all the landowners and made a decision. It was a difficult decision, because I had set my heart on one of the other places we were looking at, but when we got to this place and met S and his wife, Ji, we knew that this was where the Universe had been guiding us. The land is gorgeous, S is a knowledgable and skilled craftsman who has all the tools we will ever need, and most important of all, J and I are able to provide service to S and Ji that they desperately need, more than any of the others. 

We plan to remain friends with the others we met and create a good network of like-minded people.  We would also like to engage in farmsteading/homesteading with an out-of-box, Blue Ocean approach to make it more sustainable as a comtemporary lifestyle:

So that’s the beginning of the story, how we came to be where we are now. Soon I’ll post about how we built the floor for the yurt, how cooking meals is different, how your whole routine changes! I hope you learn something from reading this blog, or at least are inspired to live a little more the way you want to.