So, this is the story of our life… or at least my blog. I guess the first place to start is how we came to be “yuppie homesteaders” or maybe even before that, what it means to be a yuppie homesteader.
Basically, we are wannabes that cannot handle the real homesteading lifestyle. Instead, we live in rural New York State – yes, that is a thing! – and we craved a simpler lifestyle. It would have been lovely had circumstances provided us with a 100-year-old farmhouse for that more simple lifestyle. Instead, we live in a rather unremarkable custom-build that is a little over 30 years old. But, that’s where our story started and as is the case with most true stories, as inglorious as it sounds, that’s us. We are, at heart, rather inglorious.
Anyway, it started with a basic disagreement. Our kitchen was early 1980’s style, complete with oak cabinets in a honey finish, baby blue countertops and an off-white linoleum vinyl floor that was hard to clean so it had faded from its glory days of white. Outside, the house itself was technically a gray T1-11 sided house with dark gray trim, but in reality, it looked like baby blue with dark blue trim. I was surprised when I found out it was gray by looking at a can of old paint. The decks and the railings were also getting up there in age. Both needed replaced.
Oh, and we were getting married.
Now, the cool thing about two people in 40s getting married for the first time was that we suddenly had more disposable income than we had ever planned for. When you’re single, you have to live frugally and save generously. There is no second income to fall back on.
So there we were, getting married and deciding between two houses – my relatively renovated little charmer that was long on the little at just under 1,150 square feet but with a nice two-stall garage and a small city lot. In the other corner was my husband-to-be’s larger house at 2,700 square feet, set on six acres and out in the country. His needed a little more love, but definitely had “good bones.” And I thought renovating would be easy… . At least, that’s what I thought.
But back to that basic disagreement. So, we had saved the money for the wedding and with the sale of my house, had additional money saved for renovations. I was already picking out the cabinets. That’s when the reality of our house that needed a ‘little love’ struck home. My husband insisted on “infrastructure first” and genuinely, that’s a hard argument to counter. He was right. I hated the countertops – a sticky-bottomed glass literally pulled up the laminate – but infrastructure first.
Knowingly or unknowingly, that’s what started our path to yuppie homesteading. We needed a new heating system. Living out past the boondocks and a left-turn from “the sticks”, we had no access to public utilities, save electric. So, it was either another oil stove, propane or some option that wasn’t volatile to market forces and was a little more earth-friendly. Enter geothermal.
Geothermal had long been a dream of my husband’s. He had researched it to death – he does that as a research scientist – and it was his preferred option. Plus, we thankfully lived in a state and during a time when green energy earned tax credits. So, I shelved my decorating plans and we kicked off our first project.
To do the geothermal, however, wasn’t just a straightforward project of hiring a contractor. We needed to improve the “envelope.” Although our house was only 30 years old and it had long been the standard in the northeast to build homes with six-inch walls to improve insulation, we had four-inch walls and a whopping R-11 insulation. Additionally, our attic was at about R-25. Code – it would appear – was R-19 in the walls and R-38 in the ceilings. So, geothermal meant new insulation. And because that new insulation had to go on the outside in the form of rigid foam, new insulation meant new siding. And because doing siding meant that you might as well do the roof at the same time… yep, you can see where this was going.
So, the kitchen project got shelved but the house got siding, insulation, a new roof and geothermal. Oh, and by the way, it got heating vents to the upstairs. Yes, again, the house was only 30 years old and it was a custom-build, but the owner was the builder and as we would sometimes discover, there were some shortcuts taken along the way.
After the geothermal was installed, however, it became an easy path towards living more naturally. My husband had always done a huge garden and now with two of us, the garden could expand. I loved canning and preserving food and he seemed to appreciate it. And it just felt right. We had this geothermal where we were literally heating our house with groundwater in the middle of winter during the snow and the minus five-degree days.
My husband soon expanded my clothesline, giving me the option of hanging out two loads of laundry at the same time, we rebuilt the wood shed using scrap lumber from an old deck we had replaced and leftover tin roofing from another project (and it turned out fantastically urban/rustic!) and we were off.
After rebuilding our savings, I got out the kitchen project plans again. Back to picking out cabinets and countertops and dreaming of converting our house to a fully open concept with a modified exposed post-and-beam construction. This was going to be great!
Then, friends of ours got solar. They loved their solar. We couldn’t help but be intrigued. Solar, huh? Plus, there were still tax incentives. At the risk of being yuppie public assistance queens, we had to know more. Goodness, the tax incentives were starting to decline. We better jump on this.
A mere two months later, in the sunny days of October (that was a joke), the solar got installed. This was after home inspections to ensure that our roof structure could bear the weight of the panels, an analysis of our electric usage and several layouts to maximize the solar panels on the roof. We had solar.
Now, the first six months of solar were really just about having spent about $15,000 net – we would get some of our investment back through the declining incentives – and not really seeing much benefit. It was winter, for God’s sake. Winter in WNY is like the darkest time on the planet. We’re not really sure that the sun is allowed to shine in winter in WNY. There could be a rule against it.
But spring then summer eventually arrived and that’s when the fun began. When we adopted geothermal, we went from an estimated cost of $250-$300 a month for propane or oil to about $100-$125 a month for geothermal, which was all our electric bill. That was a pretty big savings. But, when the electric bill dropped first to $50 a month, then $30, then $0, well… things got fun. It would eventually even out to where it is today – about $20 a month to heat, cool and power our home – but we still find it pretty fantastic, especially considering that a little over half of the bill – about $17 a month – is the cost for delivering the electric we do use to our house.
And that’s how we became yuppie homesteaders. For us, we define it as living as naturally as possible but also not giving up those modern conveniences that allow us to live the life we have. For me, I’m a travelling consultant who works from home so internet access, electricity and a cool house in summer and a warm house in winter makes me happy. My husband the scientist is transitioning to working more from home. And let’s face it, neither one of us are getting any younger. So, we “need” the conveniences but we also need the low operating costs. That $300 a month savings goes right into retirement and we know that in the future, we are insulated from volatile utility costs. So, what we pay now could change but it likely won’t change much.
We continue to grow a lot of our own food, mostly so we know where it comes from. Yes, it saves a tremendous amount of money. But, we also know that some “edible” chemical wasn’t sprayed on it. We have to wash it before we use it, but not because it was processed in any facility but because we dug it up ourselves. I still hang out laundry, but it’s not just for cost savings. There is a simple satisfaction in letting Mother Nature dry your clothes for free. But, there is also the ability to leave clothes hanging on the line when you leave home and not worry about a lint fire in your dryer. Or, to let the clothes hang until you are ready to fold them, not be pressured that they’re slowing gathering wrinkles sitting in that white box next to the washer.
And we live pretty simply. I buy organic from laundry detergent to food, but I also shop local. Its amazing what’s out there when you look. We can get all local meats and vegetables, a lot of local fruit and even cheese. Food tastes differently when it wasn’t mass produced. I make strawberry jam, can or freeze a lot of the vegetables out of our garden and we grow enough potatoes to keep most of the neighborhood (there’s only seven houses on our street) in potatoes, if they wanted.
So, this is my blog. It’s about living more simply. Finding a quiet place in the world. Creating home as a safe place to land and slowing life down. We can’t simply escape life – it’s not feasible for us. We both have to work, we have families and commitments. But, we can live more naturally and authentically. If you’ve read this far, thank you. What you can expect is more of our transformation, how we live today, some really fantastic recipes and some basic “how-to” advice to adapting what living naturally means to you.
Welcome to the next great adventure. That of living a life of simple peace.
The Yuppie Homesteader 