Off Grid Behaviors

Why I Refuse to Quit on My Off-Grid Homestead

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SPEAKER_00:

Hey folks, welcome back to Off Great Behaviors. My name is Barry Smith, and I appreciate you guys for tuning in. It is early October right now. And the last time I was on, I was talking about hurricane season and how it devastated the Augusta and the whole Georgia, South Carolina area, North Carolina, and other areas around. There were talks of a hurricane a couple weeks ago, but it kind of blew over. And um that's pretty much it. I guess we're pretty much out of the woods of things, but no one will ever forget what that hurricane was like last year with Hurricane Helene. I said that I was gonna talk a lot about the pros, the cons, the do's, the don'ts of trying to live off grid. But I figured I would not prolong that information. There's a lot of it out there on the internet. And to back up what I was thinking before I would say it here, I did do some research. And it says that some of the biggest downfalls of trying to live off grid were just time. And what I researched was actually having to go to work every day and a full-time job Monday through Friday, and the pitfalls of that. So what I experienced was a lot of travel time, a lot of setup time, a lot of teardown time, just a lot of things that I didn't have the time to get to once I got off from work or before I went to work. Fortunately for me, there's a guy who I worked with who has some chickens in his backyard, so he gave me some eggs and they were delish. But for me, uh living off grid, being able to take care of animals and things that nature were virtually impossible. Having to be to work before seven, finishing after four, almost five, sometimes depending, it just wasn't feasible. And the statistics said that nine out of ten people who tried to attempt a lifestyle of off-grid gave up. I don't know how long it was or how long it took them, but for some of the same reasons I just mentioned, they quit. But guess what? I'm about three and a half years into this. I started early, early March, late February in 2022 with this project, and I'm not going to give up. I just have to realize what I can do and what I can't do. For example, I was trying to do it all. I was trying to build the facility, trying to build the land up, trying to start a garden, farm, all those things. It was just too much to do at one time. And not to mention, I just finished up a second degree and my specialist degree. So having completed my master's and my specialist degree in that three and a half year time frame was pretty significant on that level. Now that I'm the school is done and behind me from continuing education, I can focus a little bit more on the project. As the winter comes up and the hours are getting short, I've involved myself with more self-involving school. So I have to limit those activities after school as far as working on the off-grid facility and focus of that more on the weekends. And of course, there we go again. If you don't have friends and family on this facility on your off-grid, then when do you actually socialize with people? And uh that's the downfall again. So having to, for example, as a teacher going to football games or basketball games on Friday night, finishing up at the games at 10 o'clock and coming out to the place is just not the ideal situation for me. I would rather be set up, ready to go to the camp area before it gets dark. It's just part of it. I do have some lights out there for lighting purposes on a remote, but not to the point where there aren't a timer or something to that degree. So I just rather just be on site before uh it gets dark. But trying to support kids and trying to do my job in other areas that I'm assigned to uh makes it difficult to leave before it gets dark. So on that note, I just have to spend my weekends building the cabin. Um and right now, to further my adventures, I decided to do more with this trailer. So whatever trailer that I decide to build, it's gonna be an off-grid, overlanding style of trailer. Currently I have a 5x10 enclosed trailer which I keep my ATV in. And then there is another trailer that got destroyed by Hurricane Helene with my pop-up camper, so that's just a basic frame that I'm going to do something with. I also built another trailer that's really small, and the problem with that is it bounces all over the place on the road because it has such a short bed. But coincidentally enough, I bought a little small dump trailer that I just couldn't pass up. And um it was designed for the farming portion. But as I realized, the bed of it, it is six feet long, four feet wide, and it is bigger than the other smaller trailer that I have, but now I can use it as my overlanding trailer once I buy a rooftop tent. I did buy this little frame that I'm gonna have welded to this thing. Um bought it from a guy who does a lot of overlanding. I went to his house. He had a whole nice rig. He uh had a couple little deals that he built. So it gave me, well, he sold me this frame or this uh rack to go on top of the trailer for a good price. I also bought a uh jerry can, gas jerry can, and some other military cases that I'm gonna use. So it's a pretty good deal. So, in the light of all this, I'm going to really get on the road next summer. My plan was three, four years ago to travel across the United States and every place I can possibly see in the summer. And that is the good part about being a teacher. I can travel my entire summer without looking back, without checking the email or answering a phone call or talking to anybody. So once I get this off-grid trailer built, that is what my plan is. As let's, for example, it is October now. November, I plan on doing some traveling with family to the beach. And of course, December, we're out of school for a couple weeks, so I'll probably give that a shot, maybe a one week somewhere else. Then, of course, in April we have spring break. Getting the trailer ready is not an issue for me. But to be perfectly honest, I've had some concerns with my vehicle. Jeep Wrangler's a 2012, has about 180,000 miles on a right about down. And I may have mentioned in the past two and a half years, there's just been a lot of weird things going on with it. But I guess it's part of natural wear and tear. So this weekend, I was going fishing and my battery light came on and I had it looked at, and just as I figured it was an alternator. So not a big deal. It's just part of a car. I don't think uh I don't think it's ever been changed from the way it looks, but I could be wrong. But I've had it for, I don't know, about five or six years now. I've never changed the alternator, so um it's probably the original one. So I can't, you know, get mad at that. But I have been looking at a secondary vehicle. I'm looking at the Toyota FJ Cruiser. And I think they're gonna make a new one, but that's not in my budget. I'm looking at getting a pre-owned one if I could look around, but that's probably something I'm thinking that I want to take on the road next summer. The Jeep, I'm just not I'm not totally, I don't have total confidence in it. So uh we'll see. So in this off-grid trailer and some stuff that I had on the other one, I have a five-pound propane tank, uh, some areas for water, and and a grill. So the frame, uh, once it gets weathered on top, I'm going to invest into a rooftop tent. I didn't want the rooftop tent on top of my vehicle all the time, just for weight purposes and just the the typical Jeep sway, they say sometimes, or the Jeep wiggle, wobble, whatever. So it's not something I wanted to keep on there full time. So the good thing about the rooftop tent being on the trailer is that I can carry it with me at times, and also I can disconnect the frame of that uh so when I want to use it for gardening purposes. So that's kind of the reason why I'm gonna have it welded in a way such I can take it off uh periodically. So I again I'm not giving up on the whole idea of homesteading, so therefore I'm gonna make it adjustable when I need fit. So with that in mind, it is a few months out from the winter as it starts to get dark, but I'm going to definitely build um that build more onto that cabin. And regarding that cabin, it has come a long way from the beginning. It's taken several years because it's just um again the busy schedule and I wasn't totally committed to it. I had the pop-up camper and some other things I was using. So my desire and goal in the next few months is to complete the bathroom. Before I was taking showers and things at the Planet Fitness Gym. That was my way of uh cleaning. And of course had an outhouse or pop-up, sorry, a porta potty put out there, but nothing really official. So at this point, I'm adding on to the side of the cabin. I framed it up where I'm gonna have actually a full bathroom, drain, uh, just an open shower, and a toilet inside there, just in case I did have any friends or family come out. So that's come along pretty well. And over the past several years, three, four years, I've been collecting so much stuff. For example, um, I did buy a flushable toilet off Facebook Market, and I had to buy the little pump, 12-volt pump thing I need to connect. But uh, even prior to that though, for the actual travel trailer or house I was gonna build, I bought a black tank from a guy. Um, just put underneath the trailer. One other trailer I didn't mention was the first one I ever bought. There's a pop-up camper from this guy, and this must have been this must have been four years ago, maybe five, I don't remember. This was the first one I bought. I spent$300 for this pop-up camper, and I think the guy was living in it or something. I don't know. I was nervous at first about even toying it, just knowing all the ins and outs of it's just toying anything. And then by the way, I'm terrible with backing up a trailer, so it's just I just gotta be very careful. Pull into a spot so I can pull out, but it takes me forever to uh back up a trailer. I can't keep it straight. It's just I think I have terrible spatial recognition. I took a little test the other day for school, and you know, you have to fold these corners of a paper and see what holes lined up. I just pretty much gave up on it. But my spatial recognition is is terrible, I think. So that trailer I spent 300 bucks for, and as soon as I got it to a um a storage shed place, I popped it up and it just started falling to pieces. So it's taken me four or five years to really get to it. It's a 12-foot frame by six and a half wide, and the only thing that's keeping me from building on it is the fact that it's a single axle. I think if I'm going to build a tiny cabin or something to that degree, I want to buy something that has two axles, and that's what's holding me up. And it's too big for me to want to make it an overlanding trailer, but the one I have currently, this 4x6, is the one I'm going to use for my older overlanding cow. I'm sorry, my overlanding camper trailer. So coming out of Augusta, Georgia, I think the first place is to actually go through Atlanta where my daughter and granddaughter, granddaughters are at. So going through there and then going across maybe 10 or something, going through Alabama, then heading out west. I don't know for her how far I'll go, um, how long I'll spend in each place because there's so many places. And I want to be able to actually enjoy it, not just to say that I went there. So I hope to spend two, three days in each spot. And I may go as far as Texas, maybe even as far as um Arizona, Las Vegas area. I don't think I want to drive out to California. That I don't know if this vehicle has in it, but um I'll keep an eye on that and hopefully I'll have another vehicle by then as a standby. I was born in Wichita Falls, Texas. Grew up a Cowboys fan, for those who hate the Cowboys, and I don't follow Cowboys anymore. Uh I suppose once I joined the Navy, I just kind of lost track of a lot of sports, to be honest. So um there you have it. But I do want to, I have I've been to Texas since I was two. I guess we left when we were two, and I stopped through there one time traveling to California, but I did stop in the airport um for a couple hours. So that's about as far as I know. And Widget Falls is about uh a couple hours just from OKC. So they won the uh national title basketball last year NBA championship. So I'm thinking if I get a chance to go out there within the next few, uh within the next year, I'll go see an OKC basketball game. I mean, they really did a lot of work out there. That's an amazing thing they did. So I'm not familiar, I'm not sure if you all keep it with basketball, but SGA is a different type of player. Back to the trailer. Um I did buy a welder some months ago. It's still in the box, and there's a welding instructor that teaches at not at my school, but at another school I often talk to. In fact, he actually did some work on my first trailer that I had, but I definitely want to learn how to do things on my own. For example, again, this is football season and a lot of tailgating going on. So my desire is to build a custom trailer for tailgating. So with the four or five trailers that I have, surely I can convert one to some type of uh tailgating trailer cooking for friends or family just hanging out. But um again, I don't see myself as becoming a professional welder to do commercial work, but it shouldn't be too difficult to put some sticks together in those um, what's those um edges, uh, what they call those uh angle iron, putting those things together. I mean, I'm not looking for perfection, but I guess at the end of the day, once you square everything off, make it straight, level, tack it, or however you want to call it with the welding machine and get to it. And those who weld for for real, uh, I don't mean to offend anybody, but I'm just saying I spent 200 bucks for the welder, and I should be able to put a couple um angle irons together and frame in some stuff like a grill or a refrigerator, uh something to those uh something along those lines. And oddly enough, as I I'm not sure if you guys are familiar with those, I don't know, those deck systems for on a trailer or a truck. You can pull out those slide drawers easily. So I saw a different way of doing something with my trailer. I was not gonna invest$1,500 on drawer systems and all. So I took the infamous the infamous pallets and built something with some pallets so I can, you know, keep those um buckets and containers from sliding around. So nothing fancy, um, but I haven't covered it yet. That's the next part. But also when I was throwing out things because um just trying to downsize, I was about to throw out a file cabinet. It's a short file cabinet. I don't need to keep much stuff in the file cabinet. I've had this thing for a thousand years. And so when I took the drawers out because I wanted to make it lighter, I realized that those drawers had those little slides on the side. And of course, the light bulb came on. I could take those same drawers that I was gonna throw out and put them in that deck system. Again, I'm not sure what's gonna happen with the water and all that, but I'll figure it out, figure that out later. But to be able to slide uh the file cabinet drawers inside those things I built on the trailer, it's a win. I don't know if you're familiar with those little RV little slide-out deals for the for a generator or for a small grill. Those things cost easily$300. So how it works is it's built inside the trailer and it has a wall on the outside and a little door. It's locked. So you open it up, then you slide out the grill or slide out the generator. And I mean it's definitely very handy instead of having it strapped down somewhere. But again, um, if you want to do something like that on your own, you have to cut a hole in the side, put this the rack system in there or the drawer system inside there, and then put a door on the outside. But that's just um I'm gonna try to do this a little different. Try to do a DIY project with the drawer system and my file cabinet. So, needless to say, uh one important thing about living off grid in a homesteading, as you hear me on the right now, is recycling everything. Find a way to use whatever you have. That's the best way of saving money. Um, a man with a trailer is very dangerous. I don't care what it is, I think I can use them. I pick it up, throw it on the back of the trailer, and see what I can do with it. And sometimes it may take a while and junk accumulates, but think about it. I've had that drawer system, file cabinet, which I've never used, and about to throw it out, but I realized I can use those drawers as slide-outs. Who thought? Again, those are pretty expensive. I mean, easily 300 bucks. So get your trailer, go ahead and start building it, go online. And they even have some stuff already that um is no weld. So if you have some type of trailer, just go as just look up no weld trailers. So um they got them out there or rack system. So um the reason why I'm going with the overlanding trailer instead of just taking the Jeep is because I want to be up there for a while. And I'm 6'4, and trying to sleep in that Jeep is just not very comfortable. And not to mention I would have a whole bunch of gear in there, so it's just really impossible to be able to sleep in there. I have gear on top of the on top of the roof, which again, not a bad idea. So it just depends. But I again the 5x10 and clothes trailer is just too heavy to be told or torn around, at least in my opinion. I just don't trust the vehicle, and that's the way it is. Uh, had some work done to the rear end of it, had the grease or whatever, so I don't know much about towing and how much weight is actually bearing on the vehicle itself, but if I can eliminate that or reduce it, that's what I'm gonna do. So this trailer should be something awesome. If you go online and look at some of the off-grid trailers, they could cost$30,000,$40,000,$50,$60,000,$80,000. I mean, they're awesome. They really just uh if it may sound crazy, but I really could look at these different types of trailers like all day. I mean, the different colors, the different sizes, uh, the features, livable, non livable air conditioning, cooking, uh, shower, bike area. I mean, it's just amazing. Again, these things range again, anywhere from$12,000 for you know, basic to up to$100,000. I mean, they're just they're amazing. So go.