Little Cabin Big Woods

Today I'm talking with Keesha at the Little Cabin Big Woods.

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00:00
You're listening to A Tiny Homestead, the podcast comprised entirely of conversations with homesteaders, cottage food producers, and crafters, and topics adjacent. I'm your host, Mary Lewis.  A Tiny Homestead podcast is sponsored by Homegrown Collective, a free-to-use farm-to-table platform emphasizing local connections with ability to sell online, buy, sell, trade in local garden groups, and help us grow a new food system.  You can find them at homegrowncollective.org.

00:25
Today I'm talking with Keesha at Little Cabin Big Woods in Tennessee. Is that right, Keesha? That's right.  Where in Tennessee? We're in Middle Tennessee, about an hour from Kentucky, so  northern middle. Okay, and how's the weather there today?

00:44
Today it is gorgeous out. We are on day two of what should be three days without any rain, which is the first time that's happened in a really long time.  Oh, so you're getting the same weather my parents have been getting in Maine for the last three weeks. All they do is tell me it's raining. Yes, constantly. Yeah, we had that last year here in Minnesota. This spring has been fabulous. I am so thankful, like dropped down on my knees. Thank God, thankful.

01:14
And today it's kind of gray, but it's not raining. So I'm, I'm thankful for that too.  Okay. So you got you or you guys, is it just you or are there other people? Oh, there's my husband too. Okay. So you guys are off grid. Are you completely off grid? We are, but we have  solar.  So we do still have  some luxuries. mean, we've got a window.

01:41
AC unit for the days that it's just really, really still and stagnant.  We've got a TV for an occasional movie.  Got a couple of ceiling fans. So. Okay. So this leads me to tons of questions because the closest I have been to off grid in my entire life,  I think I was about 15.  My parents lived in Steve falls main and I live there with them with my siblings.

02:10
And we had the tail end of a hurricane come through  and we were without power for an entire week. And the first, the first day and a half, we couldn't even get to fresh water because there was a huge pine tree across the road  between us and the fire barn where they had water. And so luckily my mom,  what grew up in Illinois where, where tornadoes happened and every time there was bad weather in Illinois.

02:38
her mom would draw water. She'd fill the bathtub, she'd fill pictures of water  for drinking,  and my mom grew up with that. So  luckily,  we had drinking water and we had water to flush the toilet with.  But we had no power, we had nothing going, no heat, no nothing.  It was September, so it was in the sweet spot of not too hot and not too cold, thank goodness. But

03:02
Yeah, my parents cooked outside on the grill or they actually had a fire pit so they would cook on the fire pit because they couldn't use their stove.  So that's the closest I've ever been to off the grid. And so tell me what it's like.

03:20
That's a good question. I will say it  has its challenges, but it's also really satisfying.  And from your taste of being off-grid that week from the storm,  I so you have an idea. When you cook out over and open a flame, there's nothing quite like that. It's really, really good.  since we do have solar,

03:48
It's an adjustment period. You do have to keep an eye on things. But we do  like pressure canning and such we do outside on the patio and get these wonderful views. And so  yeah, it can be a challenge, but it's worth it. And we just love it. We have an regret a thing. Okay, well, that's awesome. What brought you to it?

04:16
Well, we lived in Arizona in Tucson for about two decades and raised our kids there.  And  as time went by, just, we weren't really satisfied anymore.  And so  we did always bring our kids up with, you know, going camping and learning things about how they worked and such.  so they got older and we just started thinking.

04:43
You know, maybe we should just go ahead and take the leap and do it. And so when the kids were in high school, we kind of had a timeline thinking, okay, we've got four years left until they graduate. So let's start making plans. So we started looking at different states  and growing seasons and narrowed things down  and finally ended up picking Tennessee. But I think what really convinced us to go ahead and go for it was my husband and I.

05:13
We went on a 500 mile pilgrimage hike overseas in Spain  and you learn a lot when you're living out of a backpack for six weeks.

05:25
And we realized all this stuff that we had waiting for us at home was just stuff.  And you don't own it, it ends up owning you. So when we got back from that, I think we got rid of about 75, maybe 80 % of what we had  and sold the house  and off we went. Wow. So that trip inspired it. Well, it didn't inspire it all, but it definitely cemented your plans.

05:54
It really did. Nice.  Okay, so the thing that I remember about not having any electricity and our phone didn't work either, really. I mean,  it  was a true old-fashioned landline then. So yes, the phone worked. We could call 911 if we needed help. But for a couple days there, there was no getting into where we lived. So  we were pretty well screwed if anybody got hurt. Luckily, nobody did.

06:22
But what I remember about it is that it was so  quiet. Like the only real noises that we heard  was  chainsaws because people had to get the trees out of the roads.  And granted, was back,  good God, I'm 55. So it was a while ago  and we didn't have cell phones. We didn't have home computers. That stuff didn't exist yet.  And so I was very used to it being

06:52
I mean, we lived in the middle of  the woods in Maine.  There was birdsong and there was breeze through the pine trees, but there wasn't so much noise back then. So in the area that you're in, is it quiet? Is it nature sound?

07:11
It is very, very quiet.  And we do joke sometimes that it's kind of like a jungle. Sometimes  because you just hear the owls making a racket outside. My chickens always have something to say. They always do. We have dogs.  Yes, they do.  And yeah, but yeah, it's really quiet. But yeah, the animal noises.

07:37
Yeah, that takes some getting used to when you first come out here because we hear that, you know, the coyotes are walking around  and the owls and the raccoons, oh, the raccoons talk a lot. The raccoons make of nature noises. Do the raccoons chitter or do they have other noises that they make? They do chitter. They do. Sometimes we have to stop and think, wait a minute, is that an owl or is that a raccoon? Because sometimes they sound a little bit alike.

08:07
We have coyotes that kind of hang out in the cornfield around our place. We don't own the  field.  And I was up at about three o'clock in the morning three weeks ago, because I wake up at three and my husband snores and I'm like, I'm going to get up until I'm sleepy again.  And  I was sitting on our little porch with the windows open and it's dark out and I'm fine with that. No big deal.  And I heard a howl  and I was like,

08:35
I've never actually heard a coyote howl in my whole life. I've heard them  yipe and yip and bark, but I've never heard them howl.  And it made  the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I was like, wow.

08:51
I think that happened with us once with my husband and was outside and I was just inside the house but with the windows open. Yeah. And he calls out to me and we're not sure if it was a cougar or a bobcat but it was pretty close in the tree line to where my husband was. That was a bit unnerving. Yeah and the thing that I had to remind myself of is all of these animals were here before we were.

09:21
We are infringing on their home. And so  I was like, okay, that is the fear response that your body is supposed to have, but there's nothing to be afraid of. It's okay. It's out in the field. It's doing its thing. I'm in the house. Nothing bad is going to happen  with this animal. It's okay.  And then I was like,  Oh, how cool was that?

09:46
And we also just had an incident with a big raccoon a couple nights ago. We have chickens and he's discovered we have chickens. And I'm not sure that he's after the chickens, the eggs or the feed, but he was kind of nosing around the run, the fence that's around the coop. And so my husband shot off our 12 gauge shotgun above the raccoon's head. He did not shoot the raccoon. And I asked him why and he said,

10:15
I just didn't feel right about shooting this raccoon. He said he's only doing what he's supposed to do. And I said, okay.  And he said, if it had been  in the run, that would have been different. I said, okay, fine. So  we now have a raccoon who had the daylight scared out of him the other night and he hasn't been back. So we're  on alert for any more showing up.

10:40
That worked at least.  Yes. The possums are a lot more of an issue for us than the raccoons are.  possums are just relentless.  Yeah, we don't have too many here.  do have possums in Minnesota.  When I moved here long ago, over 30 years ago,  I was told that possums don't, they're not in Minnesota, but they are. We've seen them in our

11:08
nesting boxes in our coop, actually.  All curled  up. Officially, don't have wolves here. Authorities say that we don't have any wolves here, but  everybody up and down where I live has seen a wolf.  It's not all the time,  but we've all seen them. We've seen them twice in the last five years.  I mean, you they're around.

11:38
Yeah, here in Minnesota, we have the Department of Natural Resources, DNR. What's the acronym for your thing like that in Tennessee? Probably TWRA, Tennessee Wildlife Resource Agency, I believe. Okay. Well,  our agency like your agency, except ours is DNR,  swore up and down that we did not have cougars in Minnesota. And my husband and I knew

12:07
years ago that there are big cats in Minnesota because we would hike along the river and we would see their paw prints. And cat prints look a lot different than dog prints. Big cat prints really look different. And about, I don't know, at least five years ago, the Department of Natural Resources finally put out information that yes, there are cougars in Minnesota.  And I was like, no shit, Sherlock, what was your first clue?

12:37
And  the way they discovered is people were catching them on their trail cams.

12:45
So yeah, there are big cats in Minnesota and they don't like people. You  will rarely see one in person.

12:55
So they don't really come around too much. Oh, no. No, they do not like humans. No. The only ones that I have heard of people seeing in person have been hit by cars. On the highway. So yeah, but they hide. They like to be in really dense forested areas because then they're not bothered. But anyway, very far afield here. What do you?

13:23
How do you support yourself on the off-grid homestead?

13:30
Well, my husband still works outside the home. He's in IT  and I do  odd jobs. Basically. mean, my career was,  um, I was in middle school and high school English teacher and I'm not anymore, but now I do probably like a lot of homesteaders. sell eggs  and I barter a lot. So I've got a wonderful local lady who's got an absolutely amazing garden.

13:58
And she needs eggs and I like the produce that  pardon me. like the produce that she has. So I bought her eggs for food,  do pet sitting and  animal care.  And I do some occasional tutoring for some local high schools.  So it's not like all the stuff that you do on your homestead is supporting you and the homestead all on its own. Right. Okay.

14:26
And I didn't ask at the beginning, and I should have, how far away are you from the nearest town and your nearest neighbors?

14:34
I've got  neighbors, I don't know, I'm bad at distance, I'd say half mile.  But as far as, you know, going to a grocery store or something, it's about 45 minutes.  Okay. So you're a little ways away.  Cool. Cause most people here off grid and they think, you know, the middle of Montana or Alaska where you're  hours and hours away from everything.

15:01
Yeah, it's really not too bad. mean, it's far enough away where we have peace and quiet, but you know, if we really need something, then it's not too big of a deal to go do. But we do live in a holler, so very, very small one lane road. And when we get ice storms, it gets fairly ugly. I mean, during the, I think it was 21, we had eight inches just

15:29
solid ice and nobody got out of here for over a week.

15:35
Yeah, we get some pretty good ice here too.  there was a time two winters ago where my husband didn't go to work because he could not get out of our driveway. He could not get any traction to get out of our driveway at all. He was like, I'm working from home today. said, you do that. yeah. I had to do that too sometimes.

16:03
Sorry, I to swallow. I'm trying to think what I was gonna ask you. So do you have like any livestock? You have chickens? We have chickens. I think we have around 30 right now. And we've been doing, well, we've built this cabin that we're living in. I mean, literally ourselves by hand without any help. And so.

16:30
It's it's a work in progress. It's always a work in progress. So we've been doing that for the five years We've been here  and we've been living in it for Three and a half four years now because we were on in a pop-up camper for a little over a year on the land Okay, so I mean it's plenty far enough we've got ceiling and the insulation and the walls and all of that is done  and A couple weeks ago, we got the kitchen cabinets my husband's

17:00
built those and put them in. And so this week he's working on  the doors for the fronts of the cabinets.  so yeah, by doing it himself, I mean, he does it all. mean, local trees, he mills it himself, planes it, all of it. So it all takes time, but it's worth it.

17:23
Absolutely. And did he have any skills regarding that before you guys moved there?

17:30
The first time we took down a tree was here. He had built a couple of  furniture pieces, our TV stand,  a table, believe.  But boy, he's, it's a talent and we're on a five year plan now to where he can leave his current field.  And he would like to do woodworking full time. Nice.  Isn't it beautiful watching someone you love learn new skills?

18:02
It is. And he's, he's just so happy when he's doing that.  He just gets lost in his own little world. Yeah.  It's, like watching actual magic happen. My husband loves to garden and he didn't even know he loved a garden until probably 20 years ago.  His mom gave him some hand-me-down plants and he stuck them in. were flowers. And I said, uh,

18:27
I said, those flowers are doing great. said, you want to dig up a backyard and we can put in food we can eat? And he said, yes. And watching him tear that small backyard apart,  get some good dirt,  get the baby plants in, them all summer. And we had food at the end of the summer.  He was just glowing with happiness and watching somebody go through that process was just amazing. was, I mean, who knows? I never would have expected

18:57
I never had chickens before coming out here.  And  they are the funniest, most ridiculous little creatures. They are entertaining. I would have expected to just love chickens.  Yeah, we have chickens and their run is now where I can see them from the house. So if I step out on the porch, I see them screwing around in the run.

19:21
And they actually act like they're playing with each other. don't know. I don't know if chickens do play with each other, but it looks like they're kind of hanging out, talking to each other, chasing each other around like little kids. I think they do. just, took a photo yesterday. I was out in the front yard with them  and two of them, you know, they were out laying in the yard and sunbathing  and one had its head across the other one. Like they were just laying there cuddling.

19:50
It's the silliest thing, but...  I love it.  I love it when they take their dirt baths. I think it's really funny to watch them do that.

20:02
I don't have goats yet,  but I'm planning on it. Yes, you will be highly entertained with goats.

20:13
I hope so.  think I'm just going to get probably two or three. Try to keep it a little little easier, but we need to finish a couple of other things outside. And then we'll have the room for that.

20:29
Hopefully. Okay, so if you guys,  I'm trying to go back to the off-grid thing here because I know nothing and I want to know more.  If you guys are off-grid, does that mean that you do a lot of cooking outside? Do you have the solar hooked up to a stove in your house? How do you do cooking? Oh gosh, that's a good question.  We have an old wood cook stove.

20:55
So we do a lot of cooking on that, but not in the summer, of course. It's just too dang hot.  But that's also our only heat source as well. So that's how we provide our heat for the cabin.  lots of cooking in winter on that. And then in the summer, we do a lot outside because we have  one of those blackstone kind of big flat griddle.

21:20
Call them a grill. Yep  So we've got that and I have a  dual burner Propane stove camp stove that I do my pressure canning on out on the patio Nice. I really want one of those but we're not quite ready to get one  Do you guys hunt and fish or not?

21:43
Not as much as we like, but we're getting there. Okay. So  I don't want to be nosy, but I'm so curious. Is the, is the cabin, is the cabin that you built small that you're building? It is. Um, I'd say  maybe 600 square feet. And is it one level?  We have a loft upstairs when, when we first came out here and started building.

22:13
Um, our youngest son was still with us.  And so he was living,  he lived up in the loft  and he's 22 now. So he's off on his own doing his own thing, seeing the world  and our other ones off  in another state because he's in the military.  So it's just two of us here now. So  yeah, it's pretty small. mean, we've got it's open floor plan  and then we have kind of a half wall that divides the bedroom.

22:42
from the living room. And that is opened up with the kitchen. So it's pretty small, but it's plenty big for just two of us. Oh yeah, 600 square feet is way big enough for two people, especially if you like each other. If you don't like each other, it's not ever going to be big enough. Now we've got our moments. Yeah, I think every couple does. So do you have like actual plumbing or do you have a compost toilet or do you have an outhouse or just use the woods or how does that work?

23:13
Okay, so for the kitchen we have a sink, we've got hot and cold water. On the outside of the house we have  a tankless water heater that's hooked up to propane. Okay. And so that is also what makes our shower work. And then for the toilet we have composting toilet.  I want one. I want one of those. We have a perfectly functional bathroom in our house, Keisha.

23:42
There's my husband, our 23 year old son and me. I'm the only girl in the house. And I swear that bathroom is tied up all day long, every day on the weekends, one way or another. And I'm like, I am never going to get in there. It's not going to happen. I was like, I just need a closet with a compost toilet so I can use the bathroom.

24:03
I want. Yes, just a place for you. Yeah, just a place for me or they can use  the water closet and I can actually use my nice bathroom and it's really pretty. That would be great. That  would work.  Aha. Yeah, I would love that.  I said to somebody the other day on another interview, I said when we were looking for this place before we found it, the two prerequisites were that it must have a flat space to have a big garden.

24:31
and that hopefully it would have two bathrooms.  The flat space for the big garden won out.

24:39
Well, having a big garden, that's amazing.  My garden is not where I would like it to be right now,  but it will be.  So  we're getting there. I I  have raised garden beds, but this year we decided to relocate them to a different spot for better sun.  And so we are setting those back up again now.

25:07
That's the joy of garden beds though. You can actually move them to the better conditions. We were really lucky. This garden that we've had in since the summer after we moved here, we moved here in August of 2020. It happens to be a flat spot. The space is like, I would bet if we used the entire space, it would be more than half an acre, but we don't use all of it. We use about 100 feet by 150 feet. And it's...

25:35
The sun pours on it all day from the south, which is ideal. And there's a tree line that kind of blocks the wind so it doesn't  beat the hell out of it in, you know, midsummer when it's windy. We  lucked out so big and  I know it. I mean,  I am  so thankful that we found this place. I don't have words big enough to explain how thankful I am. That's amazing.  So yeah, and

26:04
If you're not into gardening and you're not into having your own chickens to have good eggs and you're not into any of this, no one cares. No one wants to hear about it. And part of the reason I started the podcast so I could talk to people who get it and know what this is like. I know. I think my oldest son thinks we're kind of crazy. He is not a country kid. likes his urban or suburban living. My daughter is like that.

26:33
She is living in Florida right now and she works at a shop that makes like, healthy smoothies and sandwiches, like a health food, fast food kind of place. And, um, I said to her one time, it's after we moved here, I said, do you think we're nuts? And she said, I don't. She said, you guys have been working toward this since I was about 15. She said, if you weren't doing this by now, I would think you were nuts. I was like, oh, okay.

27:03
So yeah, it's a lifestyle choice. It is literally a choice. No one does this without choosing it.

27:15
That's true. That's really true. And no one chooses off-grid living unless they, no one does it unless they  absolutely commit to it because it's not easy.

27:29
Yeah, it can be a lot, but we love it.  We  know somebody who's thinking about doing it, but isn't quite ready to take that step yet.  It's really something you have to be  sure that you want to do. Yeah, is there anything that you really don't like about it?

27:52
Not that I can think of. I hadn't thought about that before. No, I mean, we get such kind of crazy weather here. so, I mean, sometimes it's ice storms, sometimes it's tornado or flooding and the area loses power so much. so, you know, I'll step out on the patio and I'll look, you know, way up down the street one way or another, and try to see if everybody has.

28:21
if anybody has power or not. But for us, we're just here doing our thing because it doesn't make any difference for us. We still are just running  as normal.  Yeah, we're the same way. We have one of those generators that will kick on and send the power to the house automatically if the power goes out.  And so we could be off grid if we wanted to be here. And it's not really

28:48
a big deal either way. love the fact that if it's minus 40 mid-January and the power goes out,  we still have heat to the house.  That's good. Yes. But we're not off-grid by any stretch. Do we have the potential and capability to be off-grid? Yes, we do. But is it really off-grid if you have a convenience that makes you off-grid?

29:17
Oh, I did think of one thing that  hasn't been ideal, but we wouldn't have known until we got here is the cook stove I was telling you about.  love it.  You know, it's heated the place well for the last few years,  but  because of how they're designed, they have a very, very small firebox where you put the wood. Yes. And so if it gets down to  one, two degrees, mean, anything below 10, I'd say then.

29:47
We ended up taking shifts at night, probably every 45 minutes we've got to, we have to feed wood into it. Yeah. And it's, it's just, it makes for some very long nights when it gets that cold. And so a couple of weeks ago, we went and bought a more, traditional wood stove and we don't have it in yet since we just got it we've got to redo the, you know, the pipe through the wall, but that will be a, that will make a really big difference for us.

30:16
Mm-hmm.  Yeah, getting up every wouldn't have known that.  Having to feed the wood stove every 45 minutes when it's cold does not sound like a fun way to spend night.  No, it really isn't.  That will change next winter.  Good. I'm glad.  What's your favorite thing about your whole lifestyle choice?

30:40
It's got to be a tie between the peace and quiet and the self-sufficiency. Just  knowing that you're capable of doing things. And even if you don't have the skill when you start, you learn it.  And it just makes it so.

31:02
Hmm. That's a good word for it. It's amazing. it really is satisfying. You can go to bed at the end of the day, you know, exhausted and sore and so happy and content at the same time. call it, I call it sleeping like angels because you're so, you're so comfortable in, where you're at that you just, you're tired, your body is exhausted and you sleep.

31:31
Like you restfully sleep. Yes. Yes. Not, not anxiously sleep and dream about the repetitive thing that you do at work all day.  Or you wake up every hour worried about your job or your kids or your car breaking down. Yeah.  Yeah. Yeah. I haven't slept  so well other than my husband's snores. That's a whole different thing,  but

31:59
I hear you there. used to sleep  so well when I was a kid in that house in Maine,  because I knew that my parents took really good care of us and they had a solution for pretty much every problem. Because they kind of lived like off-grid homesteaders. That's how they did it. And I always felt safe there. And living here, I have felt more safe than I have in 30 years. It has been  such a gift.

32:31
That's awesome. love that.  Yup. And I'm not saying it's for everybody because it's not, it is absolutely not for everybody. But if, if,  if, if any of the listeners, if, if, sorry,  if any of the listeners  have an inkling in their soul that this is something they'd be interested in, I think that if it's there, you should pursue it. Cause if you hate it, you can always change your mind and move back to the city. Yes.

33:01
All right, Keisha, I try to have these run half an hour. We're there. Where can people find you online?

33:10
You can find me on Instagram. My handle is little cabin big woods. Okay. And that's it. No, no Facebook, no website, no nothing.  I've got YouTube is also little cabin, big woods and not as active there as Instagram. Okay.  All right.  I so appreciate you taking the time to talk with me. You are the, think you're the first really off grid.

33:37
person I've talked to and I've been looking for somebody  and I'm so glad you the time to talk to me today. Thank you. Well, thank you for having me.  Have a wonderful day and as always people can find me at a tinyhomesteadpodcast.com. Thank you, Kiesha. Bye. Thank you. Bye-bye.