About Our Homestead
Our off-grid cabin in New Mexico is 9 1/2 acres of beautiful juniper and piñon pine forest at an elevation around 7500 feet. We are not completely off the grid. We do have a land line (we are an hour from any cell signal), and internet connection--a luxury that it is hard to imagine living without! This is what the cabin looked like when we purchased it. The flowers were a little overgrown, but it does make a pretty picture. We have solar panels for our power needs with a gas generator for back-up power. There is no well water on the property, so our only source of water will be water catchment. There is no sewage system, so we are humanure composting. It is a work in progress...
Our first project was to recapture the "garage" that was starting to warp and rot away. We kept as much of the original structure as possible but added or changed out wood as was necessary for structure and stability. We decided to set a 20' storage container next to the garage and roof over it all for lots of water catchment area.
BEFORE
AFTER
Move Over Dirt, Make Room For Water
When we purchased the cabin it only had about 100 gallons of water storage. So our next project was to put in water tanks to hold all that water we are going to catch. We added three 1500 gallon tanks (we may add a fourth next year). We hired a backhoe to dig the holes for the tanks and some trenches for plumbing them, but all the fill in was done one shovel at a time. Consequently, Jim is in the best shape he has been in a long time!
 That's a lot of shovel work! |  One day with a backhoe was well worth the money |  Sherry learns how to run a backhoe--not as easy as it looks! |
|---|---|---|
 Waiting to be plumbed |  Waiting for rain... |  First rain collection before back-fill was complete |
 Tank one (furthest downstream) completed, but not catching water yet. |  Tank 2 Complete |  Tank 3 Complete |
Jim's Work of Art
While we had the backhoe, we dug an extra hole in the side of a hill to build a root cellar--we prefer to call it our wine cellar as that was the first thing we put in it. Jim really enjoys the more creative projects, and I absolutely love the finished work.
The Outhouse
The outhouse was pretty rough when we purchased the cabin. There is nothing particularly glamorous about going to the bathroom in a bucket and humanure composting, and we loved the rustic look on the outside of the outhouse, but Sherry wanted something a little more civilized on the inside. So she set to work on a project that she was able to complete on her own. We are very happy with how it turned out.
