The Ripples Leasehold

This is the spot where we’ll be living off-grid!

A couple of months ago, we began work on the Ripples leasehold at the Historic Johnson Farm on Kessler Mountain. We’re leasing land from the farm owner in exchange for doing conservation work and protecting the property from the various issues we blogged about in our monitoring post. So far, we’ve just mowed the hilltop acre, lopped a few branches, and made plans to widen the driveway opening and remove the invasive non-native Bradford/Callery pear trees and plant many native trees and grasses. One of our more solid plans for the leasehold is the installation of a greywater filtration rain garden which we talked about in this previous post. This garden will filter greywater from the off-grid tiny house on wheels (more information and details to follow once the purchase contract is complete). We’ll have a white metal roof for harvesting rainwater into a cistern, solar panels for electricity, and no propane or natural gas. We are delighted that a conservation easement protects the entirety of the farm, including this leasehold, and we deliberately chose to live and work under such an easement because of our Ripples mission to make a difference with our lifestyle. Where a person lives is a huge part of their lifestyle. We’re finally beginning those first steps to actually live off-grid! I often walk out to the leasehold to say hello and express gratitude. I send a little prayer to the mountain asking for guidance, and whisper a welcome to whatever animal just dug a burrow near the red cedar tree. This will be home, someday. It’s hard to visualize it precisely; we’re waiting on other people who have information that may change the picture. But the dozen or so businesses and organizations involved in this tapestry are weaving the threads together with us, and it seems mighty beautiful to me!