About
Myself and himself live on a few acres of boggy hillside in Co Leitrim. We are planning to grow some food this coming year (2011), having neglected the garden for a while due to time constraints.
All our energy comes from nature – our electricity comes from the sun and wind, a photovoltaic array and a home-made wind turbine and our heating is courtesy of a home-made stove which burns wood and turf. We do buy gas to cook with and at the moment we also use gas to heat our washing water (rain-water).
Hopefully next year we will be living in our new house, being built by ourselves at the moment with a little help from our friends.
There are quite a few people in Leitrim living off-grid as we do, making the most of not having a large income and also making the most of local resources – we are in good company!
I am in my forties and have lived in a few different places in Ireland and also big cities abroad. For me big cities were grand for awhile when I was younger but they don’t do anything for me anymore and I am very happy to live in a quiet rural area.
I love books, enjoy gardening and love learning about crafts and old country skills. I enjoy travelling, walking and boats, occasionally riding motorbikes and horses and I used to enjoy driving once upon a time, not so much any more since the roads became places of insanity in Ireland.
We enjoy playing with wind turbines and we often work with people who are interested in building their own. It brings us to very interesting places and we meet very interesting people.
We have not travelled outside of Ireland for some years now and we were planning a long trip later this year which has been postponed, as well as trying to finish our house so it will be a very busy year for us. Perhaps we will get a holiday in the sun before the year is out, however this year in Ireland has been very good for sunshine so perhaps we have already had our share…