Six Years of Off-Grid Island Living
Greetings from the island everyone. Hope all of you are doing well and enjoyed your Easter Sunday with family and friends. Barnacle and I went in Sunday morning and spent Easter with Mom and the family. I had found a recipe in one of my dad’s Grit magazines and baked an Orange Soda cake to carry across the bay for our meal. Oh my goodness that thing was delicious! Just what I needed, more cake.
The days are getting a little longer now, providing a bit more evening time for outside chores, projects, fishing and beach time. The sargassum seaweed is arriving in full force right now on the beach. This is a Spring ritual along the Gulf coast, and just part of Mother Natures way of fighting beach erosion as the seaweed settles into the sand and dunes.
The sargassum doesn’t make for a glamorous looking beach, but it does bring in an assortment of beach finds, including some nice pieces of bamboo lately. I’ll clean the bamboo of the attached barnacles, clams and algae, and then coat the pieces with a polyurethane finish and display them around the house and yard. The finished product makes for a beautiful piece of bamboo, some of which are 20+ feet long, with various shades of wood grain. Of course the seaweed is also the primary source of my composting. Last week I started a compost batch using 11 baskets of seaweed, 2 baskets of old chicken manure and a full five gallon bucket of coffee grounds. . . I drink a lot of coffee. That should be one good batch of finished compost in about six weeks.
Well, this month marks six full years that I’ve lived alone as the only full time resident on this barrier island. It seems like only yesterday that I made the decision to make Matagorda Peninsula my home after retiring from the Victoria Police Dept., having served there for 22 years.
When I cleared this little spot and began the very labor intensive project of building in May 2000, my plans were not to eventually reside full time out here, but instead to just have a little fishing and getaway place. But as time progressed, the primitive but peaceful solitude out here, versus dealing with the chaos and multitude of idiots in my profession on the mainland, I realized that this was the lifestyle I wanted.
This is by no means the easiest of living conditions out here. It is completely off-grid, meaning there are no improvements or available outside power or fresh water providers. A person has to provide his own “electricity” by way of generator, solar or wind turbines (connected to multiple batteries), and devise a way to have fresh water by putting in an underground well or catching rain water, or doing both, as I do.
Any type of appliance, like a fridge, freezer, stove or water heater needs to be propane powered, otherwise you are running a generator the entire time. All of my lights, ceiling fans and water pumps are 12 volt and operate off a battery and solar panel system. And dealing with the corrosion and harsh environment out here is a daily task. Anything electrical or metal, short of high grade stainless or aluminum, will corrode and rust. . . period. Especially if it’s on the south side that faces the Gulf of Mexico, as there is a light salt mist that lingers in the air across the island non-stop.
People that have not personally set up a place out here cannot fathom how much work is involved, it can be a physical and mental challenge, to put it mildly. For the lazy and those with no work ethic required to establish a place out here, stay on the mainland.
But you know what, even with all the challenges, obstacles and hard work that is involved to live full time out here, I would not have it any other way. I have no desire to ever live back on the mainland, and God’s willing, will never be required to do so. I get my dose of real world life when I need to make my trek across the bay every 7-10 days for needed supplies. I’ve developed friendships in Port O’Connor during my six years of supply runs, talking to Henry Allen and Billy at the dock, Alice and Johnny at the Post Office, Shirley at the library, Mike and his crew at Speedy Stop, Wanda and Judith at POC Hardware, Sonny at the outboard shop, Debbie at the bank, and many more. Seadrift will always be my hometown, but POC is where I go for needed supplies and the occasional human interaction. . . but I don’t want much of it.
Well I’m back in the chicken business. Having gotten rid of my previous ones because of their age and not laying eggs any longer, I hauled 50 young ones across the bay last month. If I had a dollar for every weird look I got while loading those chickens in the boat at the dock, those things would have paid for themselves!
I so enjoy having chickens out here. They provide a relaxing atmosphere watching them forage in the grass for bugs, cackling throughout the day and of course laying fresh delicious eggs. It will be mid August before they start laying, but with that many Barred Rock and Americauna chickens, I’ll be able to keep up with the demand for fresh farm eggs that everyone enjoys.
Well that’s it from the island for now, everyone take care and have a great day.
Clint Bennetsen is the only full time resident on Matagorda Peninsula Island, and writes a monthly column for this newspaper. To ask questions or comment, you can contact him at ccbennetsen@yahoo.com or dolphin1@tisd.net.
