Anne Cobham: practising what she teaches

Paul and Anne Cobham are the second in our series about Canadians living off the grid. They run Willow Retreat and Survival School from a secluded off-grid property in Cape Breton. They moved there in order to escape from the suburban grind and live a simpler, less stressful life. This is not quite what they ended up with!

“But that’s part of the journey,” said Paul, a survival instructor. Anne is a Reiki Master  - a teacher and meditation instructor. They are on the Cabot Trail in the small village of Middle River, Nova Scotia, nestled against a wooded hillside in the Cape Breton Highlands.

The lot includes five acres of organic gardens, a pond, a barn, a chicken coop, a power shed, and an off-grid log home with a fascinating history all based on a very private 125 acres, of which 100 acres is mixed hardwood forest; used during WW2 as a supplier of wood in the construction of various RAF aircraft, and until they purchased it this 100 acres hadn’t been touched since 1944.
After 20 years of living in suburbia, just outside Toronto Canada, earning money to pay bills “so we could live in a house to make money to pay bills,” they had enough with rising costs for energy, transport and day to day living, let alone the pollution. They started to look for an off-grid property they could afford.  After spending years looking, they found that place, in February 2010, almost two years ago.
Paul and Anne are surrounded by wilderness preserve, which is provincially protected and is off-limits to motorized vehicles, including ATVs and snowmobiles, It is very quiet; in fact all you can do on their surrounding land is walk, provided you don’t disturb, destroy or damage the flora and fauna etc., you can’t even camp.

Their driveway is 3.5 kms long, it’s a winding tree-lined drive, and visitors will pass bobcat, moose, partridge, the odd coyote, and of course Mr & Mrs Beaver. At the same time, the local ravens or bald eagles will do fly-bys to see who’s coming down the lane.  “The ravens can get quite protective of us!” says Paul.
Maintaining the lane and snow clearing can be a fulltime task. They purchased an old Soviet era 4×4 tractor with a dual augur 8 foot wide blower, and a front loading bucket which is great for maintaining the gravel driveway,” it’s not pretty but it is rugged, easy to fix and burns next to no fuel, it still has the CCCP markings. When the snow is only a few inches deep they use a Suburban with a plow.

“The beauty of living this new lifestyle is we don’t have a 9 to 5 grind, so if the weather is bad and we don’t have clients coming to our courses, we just stay home and let mother nature melt the snow,” says Paul

In their micro-climate the couple grow varieties of fruit, including grapes.

Power comes from a micro-hydro system. Here is a brief outline: a pipe takes water from the year-round stream up the mountain, runs it down to a power house where the water goes through a turbine, the energy from that is converted into electricity, which goes into the wires that feed the house. The electricity is stored in a battery bank in the basement, ready for use (the batteries were from the decommissioned Diefenbaker bunker).  Paul gtakes up the story: “We have a inverter and a number of control systems which clean up the electricity before it goes to our sensitive electronics such as the TV, computer, etc. We also have a back-up generator. This year we will be adding a couple of guest cabins, and will be using Solar Pv cells to supply power, and a solar Hydronic heating and pre-heat systems for our hot water system.”

Their drinking water is a priority; this comes from the same spring-fed stream that provides the power. The water goes through a separate line, down the mountain and travels appx 1500 feet through a 1 inch pipe and into the house through a filter and Uv system.  Back-up for our water consists of storage barrels and a pump system in case the water line freezes – this normally happens when the animals chew on the insulation for nesting material.

A well now gives capacity of 12 gallons per minute, (imperial Gallons). With weather patterns changing you need a back-up system for water that comes from deep underground, and will not be affected as much by seasonal variances in rainfall such as drought etc. The well pump is going to be a solar power slow flow system that refills storage tanks in the basement, and from there the water is pumped into our regular household system.

Although we are off-grid, we have all the conveniences of a regular suburban home. We have high-speed internet, satellite TV, a security system, all of which run on our free, water-powered electricity. We can have a hot shower courtesy of our on-demand water heater, and a lot of the time we even generate more electricity than we can consume.

“As for what we miss, or wish we had,” said Paul “ I can’t think of anything. We moved here full-time in June 2011, having finally escaped the trap of suburban life, and now we grow our own vegetables, harvest our own firewood, and drink pristine spring water from our own stream. We have no electricity bill and no water bill, and when the Nova Scotia Power lines are knocked out by high winds or ice storms, we are unaffected.

“Of course it is not all perfect: we’ve had to make major upgrades to the systems since we bought the place, and it’s been a steep learning curve and at times incredibly frustrating. One of the things we’ve learned is that it’s essential to have back-up systems, and preferably not just one, but two back-ups. There is no utility company to call when things go wrong (which they inevitably do), and no repairman is going to call.  When you’re off-grid, it’s down to you, and you’d better have a plan for when things go pear-shaped, especially in the winter!

“Being able to do plumbing, electrical wiring, welding, carpentry, mechanics, to name but a few skills are essential, anyone who has no practical skills should take some night classes before they even consider going off-grid, unless of course you have a huge bank account.

It sounds like the couple have overcome the need for money as well!  Paul and Anne are coming up to their 30^th wedding anniversary and most everyone will wish they look that good after 30 years of marriage.