In the beginning...

We decided to begin our homesteading adventure after Tracker finished his PhD in Burlington, Vermont. It was a dream we had both had for years, and we were ready to begin this new chapter together. We wanted to have a homestead that didn't rely on animal labor or fossil fuels to do the work for us. We knew we wouldn't be able to do it 100% fossil fuel free from the get go, but that would be what we were striving for. 

The first step was to make a plan. We knew we didn't have the funds to buy raw land, but we still wanted to get started living in rural Vermont and building our green homestead. Our solution was to rent land while living in a home that we could move with us once we purchased our own land. The next step was to determine which kind of home would best meet our needs. At the time, we were living with a cat and house rabbit. We knew the four of us couldn't live comfortably in a tiny house with such a big family. 

We considered many different options and finally settled on a yurt. It would be affordable, not require a lot of skills for assembling and we could move it once we owned our own land. It would be small enough that it wouldn't require a lot of materials to build it and would reduce the amount of wood needed to burn to heat it in the winter months.

We stayed in a yurt in February 2015 to experience what it would be like before taking the plunge and buying one of our own.

The next step was figuring out how to build all the systems we would need in an off grid home. That included: showering, washing dishes, toilet, laundry, cooking, heating, water, electricity and internet. I will explain all of these systems in future posts detailing how they work. But before we purchased the yurt or found a location to put it, we were planning out and practicing many of the systems we would use in the yurt while living in our apartment in Burlington.

We purchased our yurt in the spring of 2015 and started looking for land that we could rent. We wanted to stay within 30 minutes of Burlington so that I could continue running my massage business. We had many different locations that we thought would work out, but fell through for one reason or another. It was a roller coaster of highs and lows trying to find the right spot. 

During our hunt for land, we hired a friend to design and build the platform for our yurt and the shed that would house our batteries for our off grid solar power. He built them both on his property with the plan to disassemble, move and reassemble them once we had a secure location.

In my next post I'll get into where we ended up renting land and how that next chapter unfolded for us...