Lately my days are packed full. I long to chronicle all the activities, the information I am learning , and the general impressions about our new journey. The sheer busyness prevents me from writing as much as I would like. As I get older, it gets hard to remember all the details. My goal in keeping a written record is to provide history for my children and grandchildren about our quest to get back to the land. So much information has been lost because of abandonment and neglect. Who needs to know how to butcher a pig when you can go to the store and buy Farmland? Why learn to process a steer when you can buy from Tyson? Why learn to work with draft animals when you can do so with John Deer and fossil fuel? I have written many times about the reason we are forsaking modern methods for a revival of the old fashioned. I won’t repeat that here. But, I must comment about how difficult it is to return to the old ways when nobody does it anymore. The knowledge, tips, and advice is six foot under with our ancestors. Most aspiring homesteaders will face many obstacles when trying to learn basic survival skills. Many are homesteading despite the absence of information. The learning curve is great. But the disillusionment with the false promises of modern society is greater.
In the last year and a half, we were blessed with a remarkable and dynamic friendship with plain people. This large community possesses a vitality and success that encourages even the most critical skeptic of non-electric living and draft horse farming. Generally, plain people are reserved and closed to the outside world. They put up with English long enough to do business with them. This was my experience in Kansas. Others report plain people to be English people who wear plain clothes. You can’t tell the difference in their lives because they rely so much on corporate America, rides from the English and industrial agriculture. This is not true with our friends. They are living examples of really living a plain and simple life with success.
I was pleasantly surprised to find the plain people in Missouri are of a different stripe. They are open, warm, and friendly. We have formed friendships that have permanently changed who were are as people and our goals in life. This is a subject, I wish I had time to write about extensively. Yet, actively living out the methods they are teaching us prevents me from keeping daily records as much as I want.
It is my hope never to forget this time in our lives and all we are learning. I am not sure how long our apprenticeship will last. As we convert to more of their methods, we will find less time to travel, less time to work with our friends side by side. I intend to savor every moment we have with them. In the past when we were unable to visit in person, we kept in touch through writing letters. We both felt it was just not the same and are enjoying our time working and fellowshipping together again.
Thankfully, my children are learning just as much first hand as we apprentice with our friends. While I may forget details and lack time to write it all down, they have keen minds and may be able to recall what I have forgotten. My prayer is that the children will hold fast to the methods they are learning so they can teach their own children too. My children are witnessing first hand a variety of farming methods that may forever change them. In fact, as I watch them work and play, I can already see the influence of the plain people on them.
Over the last few weeks, my husband worked with the plain people in their farm fields. He drove a team of horses to prepare the fields for crops. Our friends operate a green house but also sell produce for community’s market. Their market is popular and busy during the produce season. Plain and English alike keep the market booming. Many times I would stop at the store and see a parking lot full of cars. A winter store continues to augment the income of many in the community. They ship out many vegetables and fruits to local stores as well. Several in the community have a variety of family businesses to diversely support their incomes. A few families make furniture, one runs a general store, another a fabric store, still another runs a butcher shop, and the list goes on. Our friends are diverse in that they milk cows, keep chickens and rabbits too. Each aspect of their farm brings income. In early spring the green house brings profit. Only a few modest signs point customers to their home. Word of mouth prevails and customers travel an hour and half to purchase green house goods.
While my husband worked in the field, I helped Mrs. G. around the house and farm. The bulk of this article will address the use of wood for cooking and heating. I will also discuss water storage systems which are important to us who desire to go off-the-grid.
Our friends begin work in the green house in January. Some seeds are started in their home. They like to have early tomatoes so they seed them indoors and carry them out to the green house during the day. They do this until they have enough flats to start the wood stove. The green house is heated by a wood stove. In fact, wood is used to heat their home and to cook food. The children and I helped clean up the wood pile and carry kindling to the shed. The wood is split with an axe. The wood is delivered from another Amish community who specializes in saw mill work. Mr. G. split’s the wood and Mrs. G. hauls it to the shed and to the house as needed. The plain people in this community do not use any gas powered engines. I have seen others cut down trees using hand saws. Though the work is painstaking, they do complete the job in a surprisingly quick manner. While hauling wood may seem like a mundane task, it was helpful for us to participate. If you rely on wood as a source for heating and cooking, it is important to know how to properly manage and store the wood. It was helpful for me to see how the wood is brought from the shed into the wood box. To cook daily, the wood box must be kept full.
During the cooler months our friends use the cook stove in their kitchen. There is always two teapots full of water on the stove. This makes hot water available quickly. My friends do not have running water. They have a hand pump in an enclosed room just off the back porch. We wash our hands in a basin of water in this room. When I help with dishes, I fill a pitcher of cold water and carry it to the sink and put a little in two separate dishpans. I also put a little water in a bowl for rinsing debris off the dishes. Next, I take a teapot full of hot water and pour the hot water into the two dishpans. Washing dishes without running water is simple. In fact, it is so simple, the first time I did it I wondered why I have spent some of my life paying a water company, electric company and gas company to complete my work. The ease of this task comes from thinking through the steps and laying out your home to make it all work.
My friends indoor hand pump gets water from a cistern. They have lived in this house for eight years and have never had problems with a water shortage. They do not drink this water though. The previous owner was a convert to plain living. He did not know the finer details of building a cistern. He left no practical way to clean the cistern.
My friends have a second source of drinking water from a hand pumped well outside. They keep a large cooler full of fresh drinking water next to the indoor water pump. Yes, it might be a hassle to keep the drinking water pitcher full. In the winter it may be taxing especially. However, when I examine my experiences I plan to gladly exchange the high costs of water bills and electric well pump costs for this minor inconvenience. Twice in fifteen years, I replaced an expensive well pump on our rural farm in Kansas. It took electricity to operate which meant dependence on the grid. The pumps ran approximately $800. We had various problems with our well pumps over the years. One major complications was having no access to water when we had an eleven day ice storm. My friends do not have this problem. Further, I had to heat my water with an electric water heater. Again, I was dependent on the grid and it was costly. Upon moving to Missouri I paid the city for water and sewage. I also paid the gas company for hot water. This is by far more complicated to me then simply having a good cistern and a hand pump.
For garden watering needs my friends have a windmill near the pond. The windmill pumps water into a 30 foot holding tank near the greenhouse and gardens. When water is needed for the plants it is delivered by gravity to the garden. The metal tank is a common item on the landscape of those who live in this community. Apparently, they are salvaged. We intend to locate the source and set up a similar watering system for our farm.
When we butchered meat with another plain family, they had an intriguing water system for their butcher shop. They had running water in the shop. When I inquired about its origin, my friend took me to another room. In the room sat a small wood stove. It had a hot water reservoir. Just above the wood stove, there was a cistern placed in the second story of the room. The bottom of the tank and the related fittings were exposed through a clever design with two by fours in the ceiling. The wood stove kept the pipes from freezing and the elevation of the poly tank allowed for ample water to be delivered by gravity to a simple sink. I inquired further about how others in the community kept their outdoor poly tanks from freezing in winter. He said some insulate them with standard insulation. But, many use composting matter around the outside of the tank to keep the water from freezing in the winter.
During hot summer months, my friend uses a summer kitchen for cooking. The summer kitchen looks like an enclosed porch or an addition to the house. A door separates the room keeping the heat out of the main living area. She does her wash here as well. The summer kitchen and wash room has a separate exit making it unnecessary to carry wet clothes through the rest of the house. She uses a manual washer. In fact, her husband makes the manual washers. It is another source of income for this family.
Seeing the layout of their farm and home has saved us years of heartache and frustration with learning curves. We know first hand the problems that come from not knowing how to set up your home and farm to run non-electrically. There are some small design problems in our friend’s home due to the builder being a new convert to the plain lifestyle. A quick search on the internet reveals helpful but limited information. However, most sites offer high priced solutions to going off-the-grid. For example, some companies offer self composting toilets with exhaust fans built in and promise no odor. Several readers wrote and shared these contraptions wreak. A home constructed self-composting toilet works better and costs less. Consumerism affects the off-the-grid wannabe as well. It has been a joy and privilege to see how it works behind the scenes from people who have lived off-the-grid all their lives. I can’t imagine how many years we would have spent researching and experimenting to get the same information we have gotten first hand.
Stay tuned for more on our work with the plain people.
Udderly His,
The Kansas Milkmaid
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