MEET THE OWNERS
Chris and Patty met in August 2000 online. In 2005, they purchased 5 acres of land in north Joshua Tree with plans of building their dream home on it some day. That almost happened in 2006 but life threw them a curveball and their dreams were put on hold. Fast forward to 2015, when they decided to stop waiting for the planets to align and once again began making plans to build on their property. But as fate would have, life threw yet another fastball the beginning of 2016 when Chris’ mother got sick and passed away a short time later. They decided that life is too short to let your dreams pass you by and they jumped into homesteading with just a 30 foot trailer to live in and piles of materials they had been collecting for the past year. Join them as they share their homesteading adventure (the good and the bad) and learn a more sustainable way of living in the desert.
What do the 3 R’s stand for?
RECLAIM
We take materials unwanted by others. Whether it be tires, wood, remnants from a fire. And if we decided we can’t use it, we’ll find someone who can or dispose of it properly.
RECYCLE
So many ways to recycle materials on the homestead. Uneaten food is feed to our composting red worms or happily devoured by our two resident pigs, Little Man and Witchy Pooh!. Water from the sinks and shower is captured and used to water our trees, the garden, and native desert plants.
REUSE
One season a pile of wood pallets could be used for an outdoor shower. Then it could find itself being used to house a couple of pigs. Or those same pallets could end up as siding for the bathhouse. So many uses. So little time for all our projects.
WE IN NUMBERS
Tires Collected
Windows Salvaged
Outbuildings Built
Pallets Reused
WORK PROGRESS
There’s always something to be done on the homestead. These are just a few of our current projects.
THE BATHHOUSE
Our luxury outhouse really. This building will not only contain our outhouse (complete with composting buckets aka toilets) but also an indoor shower room and a washing machine closet along with a little extra room for storage.
ANIMAL PENS
So far we have built a pen using wood pallets for the two pigs we are fostering at the moment. We're getting a couple of goats in the near future so we are in the process of building a pen for them complete with an obstacle course made from recycled tires to keep them happy and active.
SOLAR
We started off with two 100kw panels when we began our homesteading adventure and now we are up to six 100kw panels. We're slowly adding panels to our solar system as funding allows. We believe in living debt free so we only purchase when we can pay for items outright.
THE SHOP
As we collect materials that are donated to us, we are organizing them into an area on our property we call "The Shop". So whenever we are working on a project and need a particular material, we go shopping in "The Shop"