The Grid Is For Squares

Amy Thorstenson
  • 5.0 (1)
  • PERSONAL JOURNALS

Meet Vince and Amy, a couple of Californians with a dream of creating their own off-the-grid homestead. Join us as we chat about our triumphs and our struggles, give advice, and together we can find out if this crazy idea is more than a pipe dream.

  1. 06/22/2021

    The End of a Season

    Hey friends! We come to you today with news… we’re officially taking a wee break from The Grid Is For Squares. Over the course of 36 episodes, we went from getting the idea for a homestead to buying 10 acres to building a greenhouse to building a yurt, and we thought that right now might be a reasonable time to call the end of Season 1. It’s good timing in a few ways, actually, because although the main reason I’m putting a pause on the show is because I’m INSANELY STRESSED AND EXHAUSTED ALL THE TIME AND SOMETHING HAD TO GO, it also makes a lot of sense to pause right now because we just completed our Big Big Project (the yurt) and the latest “phase” of Vince living off-grid with his family just ended a few days ago. The rest of the summer, we’ll mostly just work on smaller projects like improving the rain catchment basin, firescaping, and saving money to build more things. So enjoy your summer, everyone! We’ll pop back in if there’s anything major to report, otherwise we’ll return with Season 2 in a few months. It’s been so great going on this journey with you all and we look forward to what the future holds for our homestead. ❤️

    15 min

  2. 06/08/2021

    We Have A Yurt!

    It’s been a long time in the making, but it’s finally here! We have a yurt! It’s been months of excavation and building the platform and installing the flooring and waiting for the yurt company to fabricate the thing, and now we finally have a yurt. A few days prior, Vince and his mom and brother rented a UHaul and drove up to Grass Valley CA to pick up our finished yurt— or at least, the pieces of our finished yurt. It was on us to actually put it together on site. Which, as you can imagine, was a bit of a project... listen to today's episode to hear all about it!

    33 min

  3. 05/25/2021

    The Miscreant Zone

    Well, we have another “Grid Is For Squares Unplugged” this week… a little shorter than other episodes in the past. But Vince and I have been so busy lately and I know everyone understands. We’re doing our best. The podcast I was recently hired to produce professionally, The Suburban Women Problem, cracked Apple Podcasts’ Top 200 in its first week, which has been a strange and interesting and extremely stressful ride. But SWP is a political podcast with high-level guests like Chasten Buttigieg and this is a totally different beast… weird, small, and very personal. I’m fine with The Grid Is For Squares never topping any charts or getting any press—in fact, I prefer it that way. But if you are here and you have been traveling with us on this journey, thanks. We’re glad you’re here. So while I’ve been doing that, Vince has been living up on our property with his mom and his brother Morey, just like he has since the beginning of April. Most of this episode is him updating everyone on what they’ve been up to—myself included, since I haven’t been there. P.S. “The Miscreant Zone” is what Vince calls the shady area behind the greenhouse. I didn’t know what to call this episode and that made me laugh, so now it’s the title. That’s TGIFS Unplugged for ya, baby.

    28 min

  4. 05/11/2021

    Rain and Pudgy Pies

    I’m not going to lie to you, friends. I really did not want to edit this episode of The Grid Is For Squares. I’ve been working 60 hours a week at my new job, which is creating and editing a podcast, so the last thing I wanted to do was edit another podcast in my “free time.” But I’m glad I did, for a few reasons. One, I haven’t seen Vince much this spring and it’s always nice to hear his voice. Two, our power was out in Glendale when we recorded, and it came back on while we were recording, which was a fun real-time adventure to go on during our recording session. And three, it’s been a few months now since I’ve been up on our property and this makes me feel like I’m at least kind of still part of it. What a spring it’s been. Well, I’m not going to linger on this post (see again: working 60 hours a week), but a few things you’ll hear in this episode are: Meeting some neighbors Capturing at least 50 gallons of water from a single day of rain Burning poison oak (carefully) during the rainstorm Helping our skoolie friends with some bus projects A turkey taking an ash bath where we’d burned poison oak the day before Using a vintage pudgy pie grill to create all kinds of culinary abominations Our yurt should be ready sometime this week, so very soon we’ll be picking it up! Well, that’s all for now. Stay safe out there and learn something about a mushroom today.

    32 min

  5. 04/27/2021

    Weird April

    Hi friends! So April has been weird. I mean, of course the whole past year has been weird, being a sentient creature is weird, anything existing in the universe is weird, but for our particular microcosm, April has been particularly weird. I just started a new job so I’ve been living alone in our apartment in LA while Vince, his mom, and his brother Morey have been living off the grid on our homestead all month. So Vince and his mom and brother recorded this episode up on the property, hanging out in our greenhouse. It was great to hear Vince’s voice, because I miss him, but it was also interesting to hear about what they’ve been up to and what it’s been like living off the grid for a month.

    43 min

  6. 03/30/2021

    Flashback

    Hi friends! We're currently in an exciting and busy moment... I just got a new job, Vince's brother Morey is coming out to live on the property for a month, so instead of developing some new content, we thought we'd pop back to our very first episode (recorded in 2019) so see how far we've come. We'll be back in a few weeks (maybe our usual 2, maybe 3 or 4) but we WILL be back... we'll have a yurt by then and lots of stories about our spring blooming. ❤️

    38 min

  7. 03/16/2021

    Take Me To Skool: An Interview

    Today marks the 30th episode of The Grid Is For Squares! It’s hard to believe we’ve been at this since January of 2020. And, perhaps accordingly, the format of today’s episode is a little different than usual… we have an interview! Earlier this month, our friends Mike and Amber joined us up on our property to work on their skoolie. So I thought I’d take that opportunity to interview Mike about his experience converting a school bus into a home. If you like The Grid Is For Squares, please leave us a rating and a review! We would really really really appreciate it. Thanks and stay safe out there!

    39 min

  8. 03/02/2021

    A Necessary Evil

    Hi friends, welcome to another episode of The Grid Is For Squares! Today, we’re discussing something that we hate but something that’s an unfortunate reality in building an off-the-grid homestead: money. It’s so hard not to stress about money, and not just during the pandemic but generally in this late-capitalist hellscape where GoFundMe is apparently a health plan. We’re hoping to be self-sufficient and communal eventually but, ironically, that won’t be possible until we’ve built a lot more and thus spent a lot more money. Talking about money can be difficult… at turns, I feel ashamed of how much and how little money we have. There are tons of people out there who couldn’t have built what we have already; they work hard but are surviving day to day. But I also feel embarrassed sometimes compared to other homesteaders who have way more funds than we do and have been able to build a much more impressive homestead in much less time. So we wanted to take this moment to be fully transparent about how much we’ve spent on our homestead so far.

    41 min
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Meet Vince and Amy, a couple of Californians with a dream of creating their own off-the-grid homestead. Join us as we chat about our triumphs and our struggles, give advice, and together we can find out if this crazy idea is more than a pipe dream.

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