eloquinee

I go to the store all the time. Even though the goal is to one day have at least 90% of our food supply covered by our gardens/animals, we are at least 5 years away from that goal. We still buy clothes too at thrift shops, and we buy feed for our chickens. We rely heavily on Amazon for weird stuff we would never be able to find, special tools to build. It has saved us a ton of trips to stores. I don't know about changes in the retail industry, I think society needs to work on overconsumption though.

Our typical day involves a lot of moving water. We start the day moving wood in for the day, getting water for showers and dishes and consumption on the stove in the morning so we have hot water throughout the day. Feeding the fire is a big task, as wood is our only heat source. It gets cold in the winter in Vermont. In January/February, we have to wake up every hour and a half to feed it. There's a lot of baking and cooking, things are a bit different on a woodstove. On a weekly basis: We spend time weeding the gardens, weeding the orchard, splitting wood, getting wood from our woodlot. There's always a project that disrupts the flow of daily life.

We are ok with that feature in our life. My husband works in tech, and sometimes has to work from home. We are ok with being connected to society in some forms :)

We have a septic tank, yes. We have a well, but we have to manually extract the water from the ground, then carry it inside the house. Stupid joke ahead: we don't have running water, we have walking water.

My husband is a sys admin. I was a librarian, but quit my job after 8 months of living off grid. I was enjoying being on the land more than my job. As for sharing responsibilities with raising children... Well, we have fallen in our gender roles. I do the cooking, tending the gardens, doing laundry, taking care of the children, and he does the building houses, doing the heavy lifting. It happened slowly, and part of me hates the fact that I am happy in this situation (I was raised by a stay at home mom, and vowed to never be 'just' a mom).

I have kept a few side jobs for my sanity and to bring a bit of money in. I am a freelance reporter for a local newspaper, do communication for the school in town, am a recording secretary for school boards.