After a wild several months since our last update, Indy and I have finally landed back in Taos to begin the development of our mostly vacant land. Last time I posted, we were heading down to Costa Rica to work at the Envision Festival, which was an amazing time. After our month in Costa Rica, we headed out to Taos to begin the long process of building a homestead. While we were in town in March, we got a driveway cleared, our new (to us) camper parked on the land, and a storage shed constructed before heading back to California for two months of festival work.
April and May consisted of festival gigs at Coachella, Stagecoach, and Lightning in a Bottle. We worked for the Perimeter team at Coachella and Stagecoach, which provided a great opportunity to see all of the characters that attend those events. Then at Lightning in a Bottle, Indy worked on fencing/site layout, while I worked as a builder/rigger on a main stage.
Two months of work flew by, leaving us both exhausted physically but glad to have some money in the bank. After leaving Lightning in a Bottle, we did a family tour of California, visiting our relatives as a newly-engaged couple for the first time! (Oh yeah, we got engaged at Lightning in a Bottle ❤ ).
It helps to have friends who are phenomenal photographers when getting engaged. Thanks Andre LaBrune for capturing this moment!
Would you believe this is a completely candid photo, taken moments after she said yes?
We just arrived back in Taos after our little family tour down the coast of California, and we are getting to work building a drainage culvert, a roof over our camper, and a solar-powered plumbing system. In the first few days of being on our land, we took the time to set up our yard a little bit to feel more at home. We now have a fire pit, a yoga/meditation space, and we’ll be setting up our outdoor shower in the coming days.
Such an amazing place to do some yoga and look out over the mountains in the morning
Our little fire pit and gathering space. Perfect place for a night time beverage and star gazing.
One aspect of our build that sets us apart from other off-grid projects we’ve found online and through Instagram is that we are planning a zero waste build, meaning that we will send nothing from our land to the landfill. We’ll be using our bottles and cans inside our earthen walls, burning combustibles as kindling for fires to cook over, and we’ll be packing our landfill into tires to build a compost enclosure. Choosing to build an off-grid home was a way for us to focus on being more self-sufficient, consuming less, and producing less waste. This means we’ll be selecting products based on their packaging or lack thereof, and selecting materials that are produced locally. If you’ve got any suggestions of ethical companies that maintain a dedication to sustainability, we’re looking for people we can partner with! Leave us a suggestion in the comments, or in an email!
Build Good Things 