Fresh strawberries are a bit of a win.

My paternal grandmother died in the mid 80s (also her mid 80s) without electricity or running water in her house. The kitchen was a separate building, but there was no toilet--water was for washing only. The outhouse was over by the graves.

I do remember one Christmas there was a blizzard, and all the electricity went out and the pipes froze, and we had to get water from the hand pump outside.

Huh.

Yeah, power outages during storms were common back before power lines were buried. Most dairy farmers would just milk their cows by hand during a power outage, which would take many more hours than with milking machines. My dad had this big-ass generator on a trailer that he'd hook to a tractor to produce electricity during outages so he could milk cows with the milking machines. The generator would power the house too, and I remember the house lights being kinda' dim while on the generator.

Jesse, for the Good Things tumblr. This made me cry, in a good way.

[link]

You should totally do that, Liese.

I will look at all those good things!

It is snowing a lot here, but it's pretty warm out, so it's not sticking much yet. In my urban life, I went out with no socks on, walked to the bank, then to the nail place, then to the burger place, all within a couple of blocks. I think I was the nail person's only client today and she left while I was still drying, so that seems like it was a good call. I mean, I tipped well. Also, her name tag identified her as a Nail Therapist, which I suddenly saw as Nail The rapist, and had to keep myself from saying to her.

Of course, if I did, someone would surely drunkenly stumble into it and piss on my woodpile.

Well, probably not so much here, but I'm pretty sure there were unauthorized uses of our outhouse in New Mexico. Which I miss. It was a two holer.

I spent 4 years living in rural Maine as a child - we had a woodstove, although (unlike a lot of people we knew) it was not our primary source of heat for the house. I knew plenty of people with outhouses and/or no electricity (gas appliances and lamps) in Maine, actually.

The house I grew up in did have running water and electricity, but the pipes would freeze regularly (or the water delivery truck wouldn't be able to make it), so we would use the outhouse. All the appliances were gas, too, so it was mostly okay when the electricity would inevitably go down. The moose would sleep underneath our satellite dish when it got that snowy, so we wouldn't be able to watch TV, anyway.

My DH grew up in house with a wood stove.

First batch of cookies are almost done. They look good, but if memory serves me right, getting them off the pan and on the rack is the hardest part.

Oh, I forgot - we also had a wood stove in the middle of the living room that got used often.

This house's HOA prevents us from putting up an outhouse, which I resent. So I want to build a woodshed, and put the little cutout in it so it looks like an outhouse. Because I'm an ass like that. But seriously, it is so beyond me how I can be in Arizona so rural there is no road maintenance on one stretch because no one can agree on who owns the road, and yet have homeowners covenants more restrictive than when I lived in downtown Wichita or Indianapolis.

Composting toilet!

When I go all off-grid fantasy land, it always involves a composting toilet, because I hate outhouses with a passion.

Almost as much of one as my hate-on for HOAs.