It’s hard to believe we started clearing a forest 4 months ago and yet are harvesting the most tasty tomatoes today!
This is a great video with Ryan and Shelly showing it off!
We are posting videos every Friday and Sunday mornings but I don’t think you want me to send you each one! If you really wanted too see them you could just subscribe to the channel and get notifications!
We’d love to hear your comments!
You know how grown kids are moving back with their parents to save money (or whatever)?
Well, Shelly and I moved in with Ryan!
More changes!
We sold the RV, bought a house and some wooded acres on a small mountain in Georgia in March.
Yep, things are different than in February when it was -48 in Minnesota!
This update is in July and to provide some sort of feeble excuse for the almost 6 month interlude let’s list some of what we have accomplished in the 3 1/2 months we have been here!
Shelly and I are finding this life so very different than our last 10 years on the road. We now have to walk much more just to fix dinner! And walking back to the bedroom and back makes us want roller skates!
Of course, the work involved in setting up a new (to us) house and personalizing it is tremendous.
We created a new channel on youtube and are posting these videos on that channel. You can find it by typing in back to basics tewtiy. A new video goes up there every Friday and Sunday morning. Most of the 20K subscribers (and comments) at the moment are from Ryan’s Tewtiy gaming channel but we hope to expand our audience to people like you – so please share the videos if you like them?
Thank you so much for sharing this journey with us. Many have been with us through the different “phases” of our life including 10 years of High Country Stables, the sailing for 5 years on YUME, then the four years traveling on the Airstream, and two fifth wheel RVs. We hope you stay with us as we build a place where we are as self sufficient as possible, as safe as possible from the craziness in the current world and a place we call home.
We created this video for you as walk down memory lane with Ryan to get us here.
We are very blessed to be able to share life with one son, (the other is still in the Air Force), and plan for the future together. There are really huge ideas to be fleshed out and manifested into reality.
Let the fun begin.
There were more comments from the last post than any other post in quite a while. Actually, all the comments were basically the same.
“That’s cold! Not me!”
I have always found a good for every bad, an up for every down – and thought you might like to hear what we have discovered so far.
Yes it’s cold. But you sure do appreciate the warmth when you come in!
For someone who is usually busy with projects, this enforced inside time has allowed me to set up a music ‘station’ and practice – a lot! This is something I have not been able to do in the boats or the RV’s and I am very much enjoying it! In addition, by being in one place for several months I actually get to play a regular gig!
Shelly has taken up painting, and as in all things artistic, is turning out some pretty cool stuff. With the extra space in the cabin, she also has much more room for yoga and dance exercise!
It is amazingly still and quiet. There are no roads near us, no streetlights (or lights of any kind actually), and no other noise whatsoever except nature. It is wonderful! And the stars and moon on the snow at night are incredible. We are on the lookout for the Northern Lights.
When we go the 5 miles into Ely, there are never any lines in the grocery store and we now know the owner/manager who quickly gets for us anything we ask (like my favorite Tillamook ice cream!). We are known by the postmaster, mail carrier, the fed ex and the UPS drivers!
We do have to watch for the wildlife – especially the deer. They grow big deer around here!
The beauty and stillness of a sunny day after a snow storm is hard to describe to those without the experience.
When we do finally make it to a beach in the summer, we will have a much greater appreciation for that too!
So I would ask you to think about what you might have going on right now, that might seem to be a negative thing and find all the positive things that offset it.
It changes your life.
And thanks for the comments!
-30. Warm today!
Remember watching the weather channel and the guy/girl showing the coldest spot in the US somewhere up in northern Minnesota at about -40 degrees?
We are on the right. Lake in the background.
Yea, well that’s where we are. 😉 And yes it is pretty cold. Put it this way. There is a glass “screen” outside door. When we open that door there is a 1/8″ of ice on the inside of the glass – and your hand will stick to the door handle. Chilly.
Mo loves it. We still have to go out 5-6 times a day with him. It takes us longer to dress and undress than we stay out! Usually it is the hands and feet that drive us in. Even with heated gloves!
The snow is amazing. Since it never gets above 20 or so (rarely), the snow is light and fluffy and fairly deep. Especially out on the lake where it piles up in the winds. (We don’t go out when it is windy if we can help it for obvious reasons!)
Ely Minnesota is a cool little town. We get what we need from there in the way of groceries, auto mechanics and stuff like that. There is the old main street theater that has two shows running for $5. We are heading in this afternoon to see ‘West Side Story’ for Shelly. I really appreciate having 4 wheel drive!
Every other Thursday I play music for three hours at the local coffee shop from 4-7. My kind of hours!
Our Eagle.
We are trying to take advantage of local type outdoors activities. Ryan came up over the holidays and we went dog sledding (lot’s of work! Need more dogs!) and cross country skiing (also lot’s of work!) And cold. But a good time was had by all including the really smelly dog teams! Wildlife is everywhere. Big deer herds come through the yard and out across the lake. We have a Bald Eagle hanging around who is amazing to watch.
See the falls? Kinda frozen!
We are on the southern edge of the Boundary Water Canoe Area separating/joining the Minnesota/Canada border. It is an amazing place. All of these lakes (we are right on Garden Lake) are available by canoe and apparently you can go for hundreds of miles. This has been a tourist area for a long time. Right down the road is a short 1 mile hike to a set of falls where the lumbermen used to float the logs to the mill. It’s a good hike for the dog.
Mid December & the lake is freezing.
People keep asking us why in the world we would spend winter in the coldest part of the country. Around here they completely understand when I tell them this is last place the maniacs trying to take over America are going to come!
We just thought an update was due. Plans for the spring have not yet begun to be made as we wait out the maniacs!
God is so good to us. We just arrived in Ely, Minnesota on the Boundary Waters Area between Canada and Minnesota.
It is November and we are so blessed to have a couple days of stunning Fall weather to enjoy it before winter comes in end of the week with 14 degrees!
For the past 6-7 weeks, we called Buffalo Lake, Minnesota our home which is some of the most fertile and perfect farmland in the world. I hired on as a contract semi truck driver hauling field corn, soybeans and a few sugar beets.
With this being the first time in Minnesota, first time driving a semi, and the first time seeing how these farms work, the learning curve was steep, fast and fascinating!
To give an idea of how much is produced in America’s farms, Brian Ryberg farms a slightly larger than average acreage at 6500 acres. He has 5 sugar beet trucks and 4 grain (corn/soybean) trucks running for pretty much 7 weeks in the field 7 days (off for church Sunday mornings!) for 10-16 hours a day!
In that time frame I estimate hauling 20-30 million pounds of grains with just the one truck. Now imagine that across the whole breadbasket of America. It is simply mind boggling to digest how many crops are planted and harvested in our country.
No wonder China wants to conquer us!
Watch the video to see how farming is done in Minnesota!
Life is a Yume! (That’s Dream in Japanese!)
We decided a long time ago it was infinitely better for us to be doing what we love doing all the time and working when we can.
Learn how this is accomplished by scrolling through the menu. There is lots of good stuff there from years and years of writing!