Dear Santa, please bring us a Homestead!

Stuff and Raw Ingenuity

As much as we want to assassinate every mote of clutter lurking around our house, we recognize that a healthy, carefully selected array of real-world items will charge our dreams with meaning and purpose.  I’m particularly excited to exercise my creativity in actually fashioning many of these items.  Did you see Amanda’s previous post featuring the 100+ ways to use wooden pallets to craft anything from small tables to whole houses?  What untapped, unrecognized potential nestles in the bottles, cans, cardboard boxes, and hundreds of other “trash” goods we throw away every day?  Heck, TerraCycle has crafted an $8 million+ global business off of random junk.

I have this funny feeling that, five or ten years from today, instead of chairs, tables, couches, and ranges, I’ll be asking Santa for broken boards, bottles, and bicycle parts to power my latest project (my current enchantment – a self-propelling electric car outfitted with its own energy generation gear).

All we want for Christmas…

Ahh, the dreams that tug me out of bed even on these cold mornings!  The days of intense creativity will come, no doubt sooner than we expect.  For now, though, we’re contenting ourselves with a comparatively standard list.  While pondering the items that will make this dream a reality, I can almost sense the trappings of this lovely season:  smell the rich, from-scratch, stove-top dark chocolate cocoa; feel the waves, pulse, and crackle of a lively fire; and hear the jingle of sleigh bells far in the distance.

A snippet of our 100+ off-grid wishlist

• Bike Trailer (for hauling groceries, kitties, and various goods)
• Work/gardening gloves
• Gardening tools (trowels, ceramic pots, seeds, guidance and expertise)
• A free-standing bathtub
• Lanterns (more specifically, portable, clean-burning light sources)
• Circular, high two-person table with two chairs
• Toaster oven
• Deer or other garden fencing (though the VHS tape method sounds pretty snazzy)
• A trailer or mobile home (loaned for temporary use while building)
• Crockpot or other kind of slow cooker
• Cast-iron skillet
• Solar Cooker (and maybe even an outdoor clay oven)
• Rammikan (reusable small stainless steel container for dips)
• Compost bucket (or some other portable, good-for-apartments composting solution)
• Clothesline (preferably something like this nifty pulleyed system we saw used overseas that can rise into unused vertical space)
• Chauffeur with 4WD (either paid or willing to barter – without a car, we need to get creative to visit land)
• A community of excited, curious individuals to help build our home (we really want to do it old-school, and make an educational project out of it)

It takes so very much to create a self-sustaining, earth-nurturing, community-bolstering lifestyle… I only wish I had more time to learn!  If you have any of these items, know anyone who does,  or would delight in collaborating on the DIY creation of something (including items not included here, but that you think would be hugely helpful to us and you), let us know!  We’re looking to procure items as handouts, trades, purchases, or pretty much by any conceivable (and legal :P) means.  Each new item will help turn the our future from a Disney-inspired cartoon into reality.

You amazing individuals are absolutely integral to our journey.  We only hope that somehow, someday we can support you as much as you do us!

Delightful holiday wishes,

~Ryan

P.S.  Got some ideas about items that would supercharge an alternative lifestyle?  Our list could use some help – post away in the comments!