Off On Our Own. Ted Carns
containers catching most all of the rainwater runoff from the roofs and there are hoses running everywhere to transfer and store it in larger cisterns. I also might need to head down the mountain to fill up the drinking water jugs from one of two springs we use.
One difference between most people and us is our approach to water. We are totally water conscious (electricity conscious as well). Our awareness and concern for water is about as heightened as you can get. Our mind is on it through its entire cycle from collection, filtration, tap, drain and effluent dispersion.
There’s no “pipe to nowhere” here. The gray water is filtered and released perhaps as clean as it came in and the one-gallon toilet flush feeds a methane digester whose effluent trickles down through an aggregate filter that might make a state-approved sand mound seem like child’s play. In our lifestyle you just don’t leave the water running, like you just don’t leave a light turned on for no reason.
I usually do the laundry during the day when the sun is high or the wind is blowing hard. In the evening Kathy hangs it in what we call the “Maytag room.” That’s the room that faces down the mountain. It has its own wood stove. We store everything out there that can withstand freeze-thaw cycles because we only heat it in the winter when we need to dry our clothes. In the past week we have transferred all primary recycling operations to this room from the shed out back.
Kathy and I split the dishwashing duties too. We try to ace the kitchen out at night, but often space it out because we’re either too damn tired or have a good movie to watch. I often face some part of that task in the morning, like putting the dishes away or taking the plastic wrap off the drying racks we hang it on after washing. The hot water tap at the kitchen is only connected to the system that’s heated by the wood stove that we heat the house with. In the summer you simply take a big teakettle down to the sunroom and draw from the solar hot water system.
At any rate, I look for small jobs to complete and that gives me the strength, swift-kick momentum and productive mindset I need to face the bigger, more involved projects. Right now I’m building a new chicken coop, hauling woodchips in the dump truck from the piles down below and stripping out clean aluminum to take to the scrap yard. I try to schedule some time to help my dad on his old Jeep. I’ve volunteered to do all the new body mounts for the new fiberglass body he got to replace the old rusted-out steel one.
I remember once asking a buddy how he was and what he’d been up to. He said, “Just looking for things to do to fill my days.” I know I had a shocked look on my face. I think it’s called cognitive dissonance when a concept just won’t register.
An important part of my day is cartoon time. I’m currently addicted to “Word Girl.” Past addictions included “Jonny Quest,” “Jackie Chan,” and “The Monkey King.” Unless I’m really, really involved with something I drop everything at 4:25 pm and head to our 20-inch flat screen. By the way, at this very moment there’s a fat jib jab (gray squirrel) at the window about 11 inches from me. You should watch the dogs when I whisper those two words: jib jab. Bethany howls like a coon dog on a scent.
Our days are in essence like everybody else’s days, but to others it’s kinda like how we view a foreign culture. The lives of the country folk on the south coast of Crete or the rolling hillsides of Italy looked to me like lives of simple, heavenly bliss, but they face challenge, success, defeat and dysfunction like everybody else. The magic I think I see in their lives is their norm, but it’s my dreamy-eyed, romantic projection that’s partly a mirage.
I did my best to solidify that mirage into being for our lives here and found it can be done but not sustained. We’re all haunted inwardly by a fundamental sense of incompleteness that can easily fester into misery if we let it. Making an external change can numb or cover up drabness and normalcy for a time but you can’t stay high on vacation forever. The low always creeps back in to re-establish balance and regain its influential status. Best to make it a friend, not a foe.
However! Grabbing a towel at 3 am to go out and sit in the hot tub under a bright star-lit sky is a sizable dose of heaven on earth. It knocks that bland creeper down a few pegs. Our life is one of extremes in both directions. Almost like controlled induced psychosis. All I did was I refused to be told how to live. I see right through peer pressure and TV commercials like they’re transparent ghosts. In admitting the “monkey-see monkey-do” aspect of myself I relaxed my hand in the cookie jar and was able to draw it back out into freedom of movement. And at this very moment the two frogs in the sunroom must wholeheartedly agree because they’re having one of the loudest, most enthusiastic conversations I ever heard them have. That’s our life in a nutshell. This book is a pecan pie.
The entrance to our garden
4
TIME, MONEY AND MY JEWELED CAPE
“Quite a bit of what really goes on here is unbelievable.”
I don’t deal with money that much. I have the equivalent of a Ph.D. in the art of salvage and most of my construction economy revolves around the huge personal hardware store I’ve collected over the years. I buy a 5-gallon bucket of nuts and bolts at the flea market for
Most of my inventory of tools and materials was built through flea market purchases for half pennies on the dollar. If my interests can’t evolve around what I have on stock and with what I can do with my own two hands, chances are it’ll never get done or I’m just not interested. What most people would call my “junk” is really my palette.
A lot of people know me as a generous workaholic who constantly barters for things and rebuilds what most people throw away. My big old Oliver 66 row cropper, a tractor I converted to run on wood smoke, was just given to me by some kind friends. (I’ve got a lot to say about wood gasification later on.)
My wife brags that I can fix anything, but in my mind I feel like I can’t fix anything. That keeps me in a perpetual state of feeling intimidated, of struggling that borders on pointless worry, but my brother-in-law says I only work well under pressure. So I constantly feel on the verge of defeat, and that sees to it I almost always win.
Kathy and I have been married now for about 15 years. She has a profession and works nine to five. She does agree that I’d survive without her income, but with it I’m blessed with medical insurance and expansion possibilities that are equally beneficial to the both of us. She also pays for the phone, Internet, car insurance and taxes, but don’t get the impression I’m a “kept” man with a sugar momma and that I sit on my ass all day.
The paycheck from my labor provides electricity, hot and cold running water, a warm, cozy house, a huge self-sufficient garden, an orchard, wine to drink, as much maple syrup as your taste buds can stand and your choice of a relaxing hot tub or a Finnish sauna. It also provides a profound sense of independent security.
I take care of 15 buildings and cut wood for 17 functional fires on the mountain. They don’t all burn at once, thank God. Those 17 fires service the syrup boilers, the distillery, the sauna, the hot tub, the Oliver, two wood-burning cook stoves and the many wood stoves that heat our buildings and guesthouses. I keep and help keep a total of eight big tractors and track machines running and repaired, a couple of trucks, a snowcat and an array of tools including the sawmill and the stone crusher. When I had a collection of 22 chainsaws I suddenly realized I was being eccentric.
Kathy also finances big-ticket items like the Staber washing machine and the propane refrigerator. Occasionally she’ll buy me a nice