Update on The Debster, and cousin Crazy George goes off-grid

I thought this was worth a chuckle ...

Well, the Debster has been home for a couple of days now, and life is settling back into some semblance of normalcy. She is still pretty limited in what she can do, but is improving daily. She gets up and down the stairs from the bedroom fairly well, and is doing her prescribed exercises with only a little bit of prodding from "the management of this torture chamber", meaning me. Her incision is healing nicely. She is normally a very slow healer, so that is VERY good news. And she has begun to cut back on the pain meds, also great news. One other thing that I really hope to see happen is that as the pain recedes and she gets some normal motion back, she will be able to work on strengthening herself all around. She has been in so much pain for so long, and hence virtually an invalid, that she has allowed her muscle strength to atrophy to an alarming extent. This is going to be a long process, but I hope that by the end of the year, after the other knee has been replaced, it will speed up quickly.

I received a letter the other day from my cousin Crazy George.

Hey Ronbo! [I'll explain that later]

Well, Patsy and I finally did it! We bought a spread near [name of town redacted]. You been yammerin about self-sufficiency and going off the grid for so long that we decided you just might be right.

 We have about 100 acres. It's kind of hilly, par for the course here in the Missouri Ozarks, too rocky to be great farmland. Most of it is wooded, but there are a couple of acres fairly level and clear, with a nice sized spring-fed crick running through it.

The nearest town is about 5 miles away, and our property is about a mile down a dirt road off the county road. The closest "neighbor" is about a mile away. There are NO utilities run out here at all.

This is a stock photo of a 1971 Airstream similar to George's.
He doesn't allow photos of his. Or of anything, for that matter. Kinda paranoid.

For the moment, we are living in our Airstream camper. We haven't decided what we are going to do about a permanent abode, but we are leaning towards building a log cabin. There is no shortage of building material, that's for sure!

There is a small outbuilding that hasn't fallen down yet. I'm going to do some repairs on it, and use it to house our garden tractor and our ATV. 

We had the crick tested, and the water has no chemical pollution. So I am going to put up a 500-gallon cistern, and a generator-powered pump from the crick to keep it filled. A good charcoal filtration system should take care of other remaining impurities. Eventually we will have to figure out a better water supply; that generator uses a lot of diesel fuel. Even adapting it to run on waste oil, and bio-diesel which I will be able to make myself, it is not economical enough to be a long-term solution.

I need to run into town and pick up some supplies, so I'll be mailing this from there. Give me a call. Although I don't have cell service out here, you can leave a message and I'll be able to get it when I get to town.

Hope to see you out here visiting soon.
George

Well, I have to go as well. Time to get the Debster up, get her breakfast, and finish the laundry. More to follow soon.

God bless!
Ron