The mountain road between us and the kids school.

Thought we'd share some pictures of the icicles beside the road on the drive to town.

Poison Oak sucks

Ok so Jon and I have Poison Oak pretty bad after cleaning up around the new dam we built for the water pump. It is spreading so fast and it is very itchy. :(((((..... I am currently treating it with Vodka and cranberry juice so hopefully it will go away soon. No i am ingesting not using topically, duh.

The Water Pump

So we finally got up the money and parts to put together a Hydrolic Water pump. It uses the pressure of the water flowing down through the inflow pipe to push the water uphill to our house. Without Electricity. Awesome.... We started with a freshwater spring which is fed from the Pensylvania Aquifer, 2-330 Gallon water tanks and a whole lot of PVC along with plastic hose.

We have free water!!!! Well it wasn't free for all of the stuff to put it together but it will pay for itself. Omg it actually works, had to tweak it a bit but we get about 25 gallons an hour. No what to do with all of the water.
Both tanks filled up in 3 days and I hate to see the water overflowing out of the side. So we directed it back down the hill to the spring itself.

So It all started with a big move

So we decided we had enough with the city life and the kids being on electronics all of the time so we decided to make a change. We had to find a way to make our family life better for us and our children. So we scoped around for a couple of months to find a place in the country with a good school and very few neighbors. We finally found a great place in the mountains of Tennessee. We knew everyone would think we were crazy but we decided that a simple life would be what we needed. So off grid we go.......
It has been a definite change in our lives but it has been a fun roller coaster ride.
We bought a big enough camper for the 5 of us with room for our oldest when he decides to visit. This is what our place looked like when we got here. We were in for a challenge.

We bought a wind turbine and a small solar panel for power. But water has been the biggest issue since we got here.

Where all are all the damn socks?

What the fuck is going on around here?  The Hell if I know.  The Sock monsters must be hella big up here on the mountain.  The better half says she isn't speaking to me because I have the most socks...  Sorry??? What do I say?  Except my feet are warm.  Well, I know this was a pretty sorry first blog post, and short too, huh?  Oh well, leaves me room for improvement, right?