After years of living in Brooklyn and Los Angeles, one writer and his partner bought a 1,200 square-foot off-grid cabin in Abiquiu, New Mexico with 40 sandy acres covered with juniper and piñon.
Last October, my partner Colleen and I bought a 1,200 square-foot off-grid cabin in Abiquiu, New Mexico. We have 40 sandy acres covered with juniper and piñon, and a front porch that looks out on Cerro Pedernal, the looming flat top mountain made famous byWe had been living comfortably on the Eastside of Los Angeles for the last three years, bouncing around Brooklyn for close to a decade before that.
Our specific off-grid situation means that we’re not hooked up to any city utilities, so our electricity comes from the six large solar panels in the backyard, our water comes from rain, and our heat comes from burning wood in a cast iron stove that sits comfortably on the first floor behind our old dining table. The mud and stone walls are almost two feet thick, which keeps the house cool in the summer and warm in the winter after we’ve been cooking the fire for a few days.
The house is wired for electricity like any house you’ve ever been in, but the solar power system only came with a single panel—it was barely powerful enough to turn on the lights. At the inspection a few weeks before we closed, we met Allan, a quirky solar genius who came up with a relatively inexpensive system to fit our very low-usage needs. With constant sun, a high-efficiency refrigerator, and a giant cast iron wood stove for heat, electricity here is a breeze.
One of the best parts about living off-grid is that we’re a self-contained system. When spring winds took out the power in town a few weeks ago, we had some of our electricity-deprived friends come up to our house to hang out and watch movies. I still don’t know what exactly “homesteading” means, but a few people have referred to our situation out here as such. It sounds like it involves cows pulling wheels.
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