Cold Turkey

Home Sweet Home

They say that the best way to start off grid living is to go cold turkey.  It makes me think of an elimination diet for my brain.  I've always been an environmentally concious hippie, but being of the millennial generation has trained me to use the tools of today.  Besides my sacred library arsenal and the saviours of the Cork County Library, all of the farm and homesteading research is done online.  Between work, social networking, blogging, skyping with family and friends and winding down watching a television programme, my life happened behind a screen.  Even work in the garden involved music playing from my phone and taking photos of the cute things my ducks do.  Suddenly, a neighbor had a caravan for sale.  It's a little one room caravan, it came with cooking appliances that presumably worked but hadn't been used in years.  Ireland has spoiled me with furnished rentals maintained by good landlords.  When I looked inside the caravan, I saw vast possibility.  I saw myself waking up on my land.  What do you really need other than that?

The answer: not much.

My little hob

With the help of my friend, Jerome, the caravan's hob, grill and mini fridge are operating off of a gas drum.  I live with a few changes of clothes, enough food for the next couple of days, and my sweet little dog.  I wake up and start my day by making coffee in my French press.  I find this to be an important step in my morning.  If you've used a French press, you know that there's a certain way to brew.  Coffee first, pour water evenly over the grounds, and wait.  The next step is the most centering part of my day. While lightly pushing the knob down from the top, the plunger pushes the coffee grounds to the bottom.  If done slowly and perfectly even, you shouldn't get any grounds pushing through the screen.  It's a moment of quiet intention to be even tempered and present in each moment.

The hand-powered coffee grinder

Speaking of coffee.  The most delightful part of living in a space the size of a shoebox, is the smells.  I've realized how fragrant my life is.  Every time I interact in the space of the caravan, it fills with the scent of whatever I'm doing.  Grinding coffee fills the air with acidic sweetness of fermented beans.  Only a half a stick of incense drowns the caravan in beautiful smoky rose.  Cooking food is like being in a taste amplifier.  Our sense of smell is channelled through our nose and processes smells in the olfactory complex, where tastes are also interpreted into signals.  Salty ham, sweet butter melting on toast, sausage and mushrooms letting their moisture and transforming on the cast iron.

It all sounds very poetic, but it really is.  The cuckoo is heard regularly throughout the day.  They're very illusive birds so we may never know where they're staying, but they will move on soon.  For now, they play and call in our skies.

Being a magical place does help, to wean yourself off of the only kind of life you've ever lived.  But it's not without it's challenges.  Cleanliness is interesting here.  There's a hose nozzle on the other side of the driveway, about 20 feet from the caravan.  I use a big dish tub and keep everything clean.  With the counter serving 15 different purposes, keeping everything tidy is essential.  It comes with the gift of going out into the sunshine, stretching your legs and get you excited to go get some work done.  As I wash the dishes I look down from the garden thinking about the tasks I'm dying to tackle.

We're never too busy for some mid-afternoon bird watching from bed!

Every trip off farm takes a lot of forethought.  Laundry, milk bottles to refill, electronics to charge, shopping lists, With nearly every moment off-farm consumed with chores, it's all preparation for a blissful experience in my caravan.  It's the time I can enjoy my farm, while I'm working on it, without a care in the world.