Reesa 0:00

You know, once you have a kid you just start thinking about your house. All I could think about was that my home my home, I would look at houses everywhere and I was like, How could I ever you know, do that I just utilize you know, podcasts like this Pinterest, YouTube and I saw that people were doing it like low tech

Ethan Waldman 0:21

Welcome to the Tiny House Lifestyle Podcast, the show where you learn how to plan build and the tiny lifestyles. I'm your host, Ethan Waldman, and I'm thrilled to have you join us for another adventure into the fascinating world of compact and conscious living. Today we're venturing off the beaten path and into the realm of off grid living with our inspiring guests Reesa, who has carved out her own piece of paradise on a multigenerational homestead route, our conversation will uncover the nuts and bolts of Reese's journey from the inspirations that sparked her transition to a scaled down sustainable lifestyle. To the practicalities of building an affordable tiny home from an Amish built shed shell, well dive into her low tech solutions for heating, water storage and even delve into the world of humanure composting. Get ready to be enlightened and maybe even a bit envious of the simplicity and beauty that off grid living can offer as we explore how Reesa and her son make the most out of their tiny house and the land they call home.

All right. I am here with Reesa. Reesa is a single mom living with her son in an off grid tiny house on her family's multigenerational homestead. They share land with her parents and 23 animals. Reesa is passionate about empowering other women to create their dream home and live a sustainable lifestyle that they can afford. Reesa, welcome to the show.

Reesa 1:48

Thank you, Ethan. I'm so happy to be here.

Ethan Waldman 1:50

Yeah, so glad to have you. So tell tell us the story of kind of how you came to live in an off grid tiny house?

Reesa 1:58

Yeah, well, it's always been a dream of mine, my dad built an off grid, not tiny house, it was a pretty decent sized house. But it was a straw bale structure. And he just had these amazing off grid systems in place. He had a greenhouse attached to it. And I was a toddler when he was doing this. So I got to be part of that experience. And it just really stuck with me. So I always had a dream to put a house of some sort. I originally wanted an off grid, straw bale house, okay, on my my mom and my stepdads property. And that kind of fell by the wayside when I met my son's father. And I kind of gave up on that idea. But we since I have separated and my son and I came back to my parents back to the farm. And basically my grandfather, my father's father, who I'm named after Reese, he left me a very small inheritance. And he left a little bit to my mom, too. So we combined it. And I purchased an Amish built. I think it's a technically a shed, but it's really more of a cabin. Okay, and it's a shell. So, and then I've just been busting my butt to figure out a way with very little money and help to kind of create my dream home. And so I'm pretty much more than halfway through the process right now.

Ethan Waldman 3:27

Nice. Nice. So Where where are you in that process right now in terms of like, finishing out the cabin?

Reesa 3:33

Yeah, well, as you can see, I'm downstairs right now there is an upstairs it's a pony wall. So the walls are about like, maybe like two feet. If that and then they have like a a frame. So the upstairs there's no finished work done up there. Down here. I've finished all the walls, there's a few little cosmetic things like molding around the door. I have to do the floors, that's going to be last because it's just not a necessity. I have really cute rugs. And it's a very low tech. So that's another thing that I'm really passionate about is showing people that you can do off grid without buying the expensive solar system, the nature head composting toilet, the mini split, you know, I don't have any of those things. So this is an ever evolving process. So I might upgrade as we go. But right now it's very minimal. Okay, I got my wood stove, you know, so pretty much finishing the upstairs, and then just, you know, expanding the property. I built a patio out of the rocks that were already here. I plan to do more stuff like that, you know, build like a jungle gym for my son. There's always more stuff but pretty much I have to finish the upstairs and insulate the ceiling. And that's a big one. Okay, yes.

Ethan Waldman 4:47

So when you got the shell was there any insulation in it at all?

Reesa 4:51

The only thing that there was was the roof. I requested that they put in the double bubble or whatever you call that. It's that like bubble tin foil type stuff. It does provide enough insulation for me to stay here. But when it's really cold, it's just pretty rough. Yeah. But that's it. The floor is insulated as well. I did make sure that they did that. Okay. Nice.

Ethan Waldman 5:13

And what's your like? General climate zone?

Reesa 5:16

It gets cold. Okay. I mean, we're in the Northeast so it can get below zero. We have big winters. It's been a lot more mild the past couple of years, but it still gets pretty cold. Yeah.

Ethan Waldman 5:27

Yeah. And so you already mentioned this, but is your heating 100% wood?

Reesa 5:33

Yes. 100% wood. I have a huge wood wood stove. It was gifted to me from my friend. It's like an old jerry rigged thing, but it works really well. And I also cook on it in the winter.

Ethan Waldman 5:45

Cool. Yeah. Cool. And so how long are you able to like leave the house for in the winter and know that it's going to stay warm ish.

Reesa 5:55

Warm ish. Well, okay, if it's really cold, if it's like, below 30. Yeah, pretty much I can leave for the day and come back at in the afternoon and it's fine. If it's below twenty, it'll be cold. Okay. But if it's on a normal, like below 30 day, if I'm gone for a day and a night and a day, it is freezing. And it takes forever because the wood stove has to heat up all the wood and all the materials and it's crazy. Like how much key is really stored in the structure? Yeah,

Ethan Waldman 6:28

yeah. Absolutely. And then tell me about about your plumbing. Or if do you have plumbing?

Reesa 6:37

Well, I love my water system. So I'll start with that. I have a kind of like, I learned this from a van life posts on Pinterest. Okay, I went back and forth whether or not I want to do a handpump because basically there's no actual plumbing. This is a technically a dry cabin. Okay, so what I chose was I have these two five gallon food grade storage containers and I fill up the water at my parents house. Okay, so that's something I do want to just disclaimer, I understand that not everybody has the opportunity to you know, have land already at the ready for them or have the main house with all the perks. So I just wanted to state that, you know, yeah, but anyway, so I filled that up, but my parents they have a well, and then I only go through mine because I don't take showers here yet. I only go through five gallons of water a day, if I'm cooking and everything, so I only actually have to fill up one of those per day. And then I have a foot pump. And it basically siphons the water out of a faucet that I made out of like a copper pipe with some SharkBite fittings. super inexpensive pull away. Yep. And then it drains into a five gallon bucket. So then I can use that grey water. If I want to water my gardens, I do use almost 100% natural products. I'm really big on that. So I could use it on the gardens or I do have a you know, you can pretty much use it wherever. So that is how I do that. Nice. I tried to collect dishwater in a bowl so that I'm not constantly having to dump it because I would have to dump it every day if I didn't do that. Right. And then I have a compost toilet. So a homemade one. Okay.

Ethan Waldman 8:22

It's humanure bucket.

Yeah, almost. So I love the humanure handbook. I love that whole system. I will say I do have a urine diverter just because I wanted it to be more. Just, I didn't want to deal with the girls pee a lot. Let's just say that and we can't go pee outside. So I have a separate container for the pee and then yes, I do with the sawdust. I use cedar chips from Tractor Supply. I find those to work really well. cedar chips. Okay. Yes, they and it smells nice. You know it has like a very you know what cedar smells like? I'm sure Yeah, yeah. So I use that and I cover cover the solids. I use a compostable bags. Okay, not biodegradable. That's something I like to help people you want to use compostable? If you are going to use a liner, is

it cedar like cedar bedding? Yes. We're like actual woodchips?

Reesa 9:15

No, it's cedar bedding. Yeah, they're called Peter chips, but it's really just like shaving. Okay, okay. Sorry, I

Ethan Waldman 9:23

interrupted you.

Reesa 9:24

I talk a lot. It's

Ethan Waldman 9:26

okay. No, no. You're being interviewed. So that's perfect. Yeah.

Speaker 1 9:30

So I have a just a homemade compost bin that I made outside. And that is where I put all my compost. We have farm animals, so I use their manure, for my gardens. I don't really need to use my food scraps. So I like to put that in there because that's part of the humanure system is it's good to add other organic material. Yeah. And yeah, so it's just made out of four pallets. And then basically once it's full, you know, you need to have an other pallet structure, but it really takes I mean, like a good two years for the human or to become safe to disperse anywhere. So right now I just have one, but it's super easy. And then that is next to archivo. Which I don't know. Have you ever heard of a kybo know what's a Kybo? So Kybo is a cool structure. It's like an outhouse, but it stands up on top of the ground, so it's high up. So basically, everything falls into like a pile on the ground under it, and then you add the organic material. And then at once it's full, that's when you shovel it out, put it in the compost bin, let it continue to compost. Because basically, that way it actually can compost because it has the airflow it has access to water. Whereas with a and I'm not, I'm not saying the outhouses are bad. I just know that when you bury the hole, it doesn't get the airflow that it needs to properly fertilizer.

Ethan Waldman 10:57

You get the anaerobic bacteria. Exactly. That's actually super. That's super interesting. I love I don't know if you're able to send me a picture of the Kybo I'd love to include it on the show notes. Oh, yeah, people would be really interested to see it.

Reesa 11:11

Yeah, I have a whole blog post that I basically did on all of my, like off grid systems. And that's in there. We threw it up my stepdad and I threw it up because my dad was going to be visiting and staying in the tiny house and in my tiny little bathroom is really it's just like a plywood wall and at the time didn't even have a door and I was like we need a private structure. So we throw it up. We made it ou t of saplings. Okay, and corrugated steel and I mean, it's very DIY on the cheap, but it's so cute. So yes, I wouldn't I see that's where all the pictures of everything are. And I would love to also send them

Ethan Waldman 11:48

okay awesome. I'll I will definitely link to that blog posts and pull some photos so people can check them out. Yeah, that's that's super interesting. There's actually I've been helping some friends design something like that. So I'm interested to see it because you know, the the pit outhouse as you said, like, creates a lot of anaerobic bacteria because there's no airflow and they smell terrible. Yeah, actually, the all the Vermont State Parks and I live in Vermont use they call it a moldering toilet? Uh huh. And it sounds like what you describe where the toilet platform is above the ground? Yes. And the waste goes down into like this cage. Yes, it's a slower composting. So like the the temperatures don't get as hot as as probably in your humanure pile but it does compost. It just takes longer.

Reesa 12:34

Yeah. And so funny you say that, we got the idea. My mom got the idea at a at a farm called farm and wilderness in Vermont. So that's what they use on their campgrounds. And they call them chi bows, and some of them have two seats. My parents have one down at their house. That one has two seats. It's very charming.

Ethan Waldman 12:51

Yep. Yep. Yeah. Well, that's, that's awesome. It sounds like you've got a really great off grid system going?

Reesa 13:00

Yeah. I love it.

Ethan Waldman 13:02

And it sounds like it's not just something that you're doing out of necessity. It sounds like it's what you really value.

Reesa 13:09

Absolutely. I so do I you know, once you have a kid, you just start thinking about your house. And once I was pregnant, all I could think about was at my home, my home, I would look at houses everywhere. And I was like, How could I ever? You know, do that. Like, I don't have a solid job right now. I didn't at the time. I had a little, you know, babies attached to me. 24/7 and I yeah, I didn't know what I was doing. But I knew I wanted it. So I just utilize, you know, podcasts like this Pinterest, YouTube. And I saw that, that people were doing it, like low tech, and still having a beautiful home and I just I was like, okay, maybe I can do this. And it is such a passion of mine. It's one of my favorite subjects. I love showing people how they can do this too.

Ethan Waldman 14:01

Yeah, so would you mind sharing, like what you've spent so far?

Reesa 14:07

Oh, gosh. Okay, I'm really so I will try. So the shell itself it was a total of I want to say like 16 grand delivered. And it had I added some windows when I got it but it had one two, it came with three or five windows to nine light doors. So it's really glary right here but like two doors with windows. It was stained Nice. floor was insulated a ceiling was insulated with the you know that double bubble? Yep. And and then they delivered it. So that was you know, I knew I was able to build something like in any amount of time. So that was that. We had to pay for a crusher run because that's what it went on top pressure on is just like gravel. Yep. And we did do a pretty like high gravel pad. So about like over a foot just because you know, we got a lot of snow here and we wanted it to be up off the ground. You don't need to do that you can do like four inches worth. So we probably spent like 1500 on the gravel. And then so that's though like 16,000 plus 1500. And then insulation. You know, I was using 30 batt insulation, which is pricey. It's like $90 A bag. So this is probably maybe like three or four bags worth. So I don't know, I'm I don't know, if you're adding this up in your head. I'm trying to think maybe like 20 grand total right now. About 20 Now, yeah, you know, I will say that everything in here has been thrifted dug out of my parents basement base. I was buying drywall on Facebook marketplace for like $5 because people would cut stuff out of it. And like, I was like, I don't know, I don't have money right now. But I have like ingenuity, so I'm just gonna make something out of nothing. So a lot of this was, you know, gifted hand me down thrifted dumpster dove my tiles were my mom found them in the dumpster. So nice. I utilize the Habitat for Humanity restores. I don't know if you've ever heard of those. Yeah, they're just like, places you can go for used appliances and furniture. Building materials. So yeah, I think just if I were to guess about 20 grand, that's amazing. Yeah. Congratulations. Thank you. Very happy with my place. How long have you been in the in the house? So I would say we got it. I got it about two November's ago. Okay. And I didn't start it wasn't like liveable until last June I want to say okay, I finally was at a point where I was like, Okay, I think that I can set my stuff up now in a way that it doesn't have to be a complete construction zone. I can just like isolate little projects and stuff. So that's when I did that I was sleeping upstairs when it was a complete construction zone down here. Wow. But I was determined to be in here in the winter. I'm still at my parents part time. Just but this place, I could be in here full time. Right now. I will say I let my woodstove go out at night because the windows upstairs aren't really big enough for me to escape from with my little one if we had a fire, so I let it go out at night. And I just have like a billion blankets. And it gets cold in the morning when it's really cold outside. But I will say this is really cool. It took me forever to figure it out. This wood stove, it could be like 15 degrees outside. And if I light a fire, I can have hot water for coffee and 20 minutes. That's pretty nice. Nice. And so

Ethan Waldman 17:53

do you do all your cooking on the wood stove? Or do you have another way to cook

Reesa 17:56

so I have been just doing everything on the wood stove. I have a propane, two burner cooktop. But the one I had originally bought. And I cut out the hole in my in my counter for I just realized it was really cheap. And I was like you know I'm not going to use this. I don't want to risk it. So I bought a more expensive one. And it is off by one inch, one or two inches. So I can't use it until like cut into my tiled countertop, which I so I'm just waiting on that. And it's getting to be a little too warm for the woodstove. So to be on like all the time. Yeah. So So I do have that and that would be propane. Just with a little 25 gallon propane container outside of the house.

Ethan Waldman 18:42

Just a little tank. Yeah. And so I do see I see some electric lights behind you. What's what is your electrical setup?

Reesa 18:50

These are Lucy lights. Have you ever heard of those?

Ethan Waldman 18:53

No. Okay, you're sharing so many great, like products in terms of things. Lucy lights, the

Reesa 19:00

lights. They're all it's all my blog post. Okay, okay, so the Lucy lights are awesome. We found out about them a while ago. And these particular ones are. They're like $54 on Amazon apiece. And the lights that you see above are connected to a little port. And that port has a solar panel on it. So you can charge it in the sun. Or you could charge it in a wall or your car. It takes like an hour tops to charge. Okay, they say that it's 40 hours of charge time. Okay, I still don't know for sure if that's 100% accurate, okay, but they do stay charged for a while. They have three light settings. And I love the light that they have. It's so close to like incandescent lighting, and that's so hard to find. I really don't like the fluorescent lighting. So I love those. Yeah. And also what I do is I just have a sky, which also has a solar panel on it, okay, and it's such like a $100 Charger blog, and I just charge them with it like periodically throughout the day like if they need it. So I never really have to take them out in the sun. I'm kind of in a wooded area, so I don't get a whole lot of sun here. And then I also have a little $30 on Amazon, like pendant light, if you can actually see. Okay, be that right there. Okay, thank you. And as a little solar panel beautiful, and I just put it on the outside of the house. It has a teeny tiny solar panel. And it actually also has like a it's a little more of a garish light, but it is still warm. And it's not as bad as some of them. So yeah, nice. And I have three of the Lucy lights two for down here. One for upstairs. Nice.

Ethan Waldman 20:44

Nice. And so you charge them they have to get charged separately. You can't charge them all together. Or can you?

Reesa 20:51

I totally could. I just don't like to have to take down the charger ports. I like to just leave it all there. It's just I get worried. I've already kind of, you know, dropped them and I don't want to break them. Yeah, so yeah. But yeah, I mean, technically they're for camping and stuff, you know?

Ethan Waldman 21:09

Yeah. Yeah. So So you mentioned earlier kind of some of the things that are on your like your master plan for the tiny house sounds like finishing out the upstairs putting some insulation? What's on your wish list in terms of systems do you do you plan to do any upgrades or changes to any of your off grid systems?

Reesa 21:29

I do. My dad just bought me for my birthday jakhary power station and a 500 watt and it does come with a solar panel panel. So that's like my upgrade from my little charger block that I'm still gonna use. Power is just like once you realize like how precious of a resource something is like, I'll use all the little power holders that I can. So that's going to be my like next step up, I hope to eventually have like a full solar system. I would love that. Oh, another upgrade I have coming is my friend gave me a 275 Or maybe it's 250 gallon water tank and it's attached to a utility trailer and a hose. Okay, and so I am going to be using that in the summer. And that way I can water my gardens if I need to. I can, it's easier to water the animals and I'll just won't have to go down as much. And I'm really excited for that. We can just hook it up to the ATV and drive it down. I have my own road access. Okay, so I'm like in a kind of different place than in the main house. So okay, then okay. I don't plan to do I grew up with what he I don't plan to get like a mini split or, or a heater propane. I don't I just don't feel the need to. I'm okay with getting a little cold sometimes. And, you know, I just love wood here a little hot oil. I do. I'm a little hot right now, to be honest.

Ethan Waldman 22:55

Well, that's that's good for the winter. That's pretty mild winter.

Reesa 22:58

Yeah, definitely.

Ethan Waldman 23:00

So how has it been, you know, raising raising a child and in this little cabin.

Reesa 23:07

It's been so great. He loves it. And it's just so fun because we're just always, you know, together. And he has his little play area. And we're right up with we have horses on our property. So we're right up by the horses too. So we can just go walk outside, go see the horses. We have a teepee up here. It's just it's so lovely. You know, my mom raised me nice, similar to the way I'm raising my son. And you know, this place is totally kid sized. It's not too small for him. And it's not too small to have the two of us here. Yeah, I just think it's really enriching and you know, it's gonna teach him a lot about the way that you can live and being comfortable living close to the Earth. Yeah. self sufficiency. Yeah, absolutely.

Ethan Waldman 23:56

And you have you know, your website is great. You know, I I will definitely link to your blog post about your off grid systems. It sounds like you really enjoy sharing, you know, sharing about this lifestyle and helping others Have you have you helped anyone else do something similar?

Reesa 24:15

Not fully. I have a friend who hopes she has a dream of and life dream but really she wants an RV so I planned to be helping her with a lot of this stuff. Just little things you know we have Wolfers, come stay on our property. I don't know if you've heard of wolf USA. Yeah, so we have like more kind of situations like this throughout the property. So sometimes I you know, I have like, Oh, hey, mom, like for the composting toilet. We should do a urine diverter so now she's gonna do a urine diverter but nothing large scale, but I really hoped you

Ethan Waldman 24:49

Nice, nice. Well, you've you've definitely kind of set yourself, you know, you've got a beautiful platform for, you know, sharing all that. Thank you. And then in terms of Have the farm and the animals are, are the animals like you get any food from the animals? Are they just for fun? Are they for work or what do they do?

Reesa 25:10

Well, so the horses actually we So aside from my blog, my mom and I have a ministry called Hearts in hand horsemanship, where we pair people with our horses as a means to heal from trauma, anxiety, just PTSD. So we have we serve the police military youth. So that's what we do with the horses. We practice natural horsemanship and we love to teach people about that. Nice. And so that's what our horses and we love our horses. They're our family members, all of our animals are family members, but we don't have any issues with slaughtering a goat to eat. So we will still name them. But so we were okay with that. You know, love them, name them, and you got to eat them eat them. It's okay. It's so yeah, so the goats will get meat from. We just, I'm in the middle of writing a blog post about the birth of some new baby goats we got a couple days ago. Nice. So we will have milk, we'll probably start milking. And then the boys we will probably eat when they're old enough. And the girls will probably keep her milk goats. We also have honeybees and we get honey from them. Lots of honey, but we don't sell any of it nice. Yeah, we have lots of gardens. We have lots of raised bed gardens, and we eat out of our garden all summer and fall. Nice. What's something that's that surprised

Ethan Waldman 26:34

you about this lifestyle that you weren't expecting?

Reesa 26:38

And it doesn't have to be super rustic. Like, my home is, you know, is definitely a little rustic. But it's also very much like the, you know, pictures you see on Pinterest of just a regular house. And you might not know right away that it was off grid, you know? Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, really like low tech off grid. So you can have like, you don't have to have the, you know, rustic hunting cabin in the woods aesthetic to do the low tech off grid. You can have the beautiful, you know, scandi, the style house that you've always dreamed of without, you know, having to have all the super fancy stuff. Totally. Yeah.

Ethan Waldman 27:24

And then one thing that I like to ask all my guests is, you know, are there any resources? Like they could be YouTube channels, books, people that, you know, helped you on this journey that you'd like to share with our listeners? Oh,

Reesa 27:38

absolutely. So one of my biggest inspirations is a really dear friend of mine. Her name is Ariana, and she has a farm stay in Vermont called the wild farm Vermont. She does Airbnb. And she has like, a teepee and a beautiful cabin. She has horses. Also, honestly, all sorts of animals. She eats some of them. She milked some of them. And it's just a really cool place. And she has just really inspired me. And just like my design aesthetic, and just making everything in your house beautiful. And she's also a single mama and she just really, I mean, she plows her own driveway with her little tractor and she is just so She's incredible. She just does everything. And it's just an inspiration. But she's also like a homemaker too, like me. So she just really inspired me to do the thing and be excited about it and be excited about being a single mom homesteading in her own home. So she definitely and then this podcast for sure. I love this podcast. Oh, thank you. And I also just love using Pinterest. Pretty much search off grid cabin on Pinterest, search tiny house, you know, search, whatever, how to whatever. And that's how I really found pretty much how to do everything. Honestly, more than YouTube, and I love YouTube. But YouTube I use more for inspiration and Pinterest. I mean, really, if you want to figure out how to do stuff, there's so many people out there who are happy to show you.

Ethan Waldman 29:12

That's so interesting. I feel like that's the opposite of what many people would say that they use Pinterest for inspiration and then YouTube to learn how to do Yeah, I

Reesa 29:20

guess you know, I think it can be both ways. Yeah, I think with with the YouTube you don't see as much of the low tech as you do on Pinterest, or just like ways to do it. I guess I haven't seen a lot of low tech. But super like, que like, no offense. I love the awkward cabin in the woods with like the hunting aesthetic. Yeah, but like you don't see a lot of like a mix. It's usually the really nice, pretty ones are really expensive. You know, and I see that a lot more on YouTube. Yeah, but I did watch a lot of the like, you know bushcraft guys make in their cabins in the woods on YouTube. When I love that nice, nice. Risa,

Ethan Waldman 30:04

thank you so much for being a guest on the show today. I really, really enjoyed meeting with you and loved our conversation.

Reesa 30:09

Me too. This has been such a joy. Thank you for having me.

Ethan Waldman 30:13

Thank you so much to reset for being a guest on the show. Reesa shared so many great resources like the Lucy lights, wolfing, the wild farm in Vermont and her blog posts on off grid systems and I've shared all those links, as well as some photos of Reese's home over at thetinyhouse.net/290. Again, that's thetinyhouse.net/290 Well, that's all for this week. I'm your host Ethan Waldman, and I'll be back next week with another episode of the Tiny House Lifestyle Podcast.