Why We Traded Utility Bills for Bear Encounters and Mountain Sunsets

Episode Transcript

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Hello and welcome to another edition of Off.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
Grid with Horses.
I'm Russell and I'm Alex.
Russell and I are going toshare two life adventures of our
lives with horses on ourColorado mountain ranch.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
We live way off grid, at 9,300 feet above sea level,
high in the Colorado Rockies.
Where the air is thin but thebreathing is easy, and life is
hard, but the living is good,hello, and in this episode of

(00:43):
Off-Grid with Horses, we'regoing to give you an overview of
what it's like to be living offgrid with horses, what it's
like to be at 9,300 feet, andjust what the attraction is.
Around 10,000 people have movedoff grid in 2024, which is a
10% increase from the previousyear, so a total of 350,000

(01:03):
people live off grid, and out ofthose 350,000 people, about
30,000 have horses.
I don't know how many peoplelive at 9,300 feet in the
climate that we do, so ours maybe a little bit different.
So I'm here, russell, and withAlex.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
I'm here with Russell too.
I am Alex.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
So, alex, why in the world would you want to live
off-grid?

Speaker 1 (01:29):
By and large.
The reason I like to beoff-grid is I've found over the
years I'm a little bit of anenergetic person and I've
discovered being away frompeople and engines and machinery
at least the abundance of whichyou find in regular society, I
feel much less static, I feelmore like I'm at peace and I'm

(01:54):
more grounded and I don't feelinterrupted by other people's
energies.
That's why I'd like to be offgrid and I'm 100% willing to
work as hard as I have to to beable to be off grid and be able
to spend my time with the horsesand the domestic and wild
animals we have out here.
What about you, russell?

Speaker 2 (02:12):
Well, for me, I enjoy being a part of nature, and
when we are up here, we areliterally a part of our
environment in a way that'sdifferent than what most people
experience.
It's different than simplygoing on a hike or even
backpacking, where you'recamping with nature and with the

(02:36):
animals.
When we're up here, off-gridbecause we are way off-grid
we're six miles from the nearestutility, we're back into the
national forest, so it's verymuch a part of being with nature
.
Yesterday, when I was takingcare of our horses, we had a
herd of deer come down and thatherd of deer was about 20 or 30

(03:01):
feet from me.
I walked out because I had towalk out of the paddocks to do
what I needed to do and therewas a mother with a fawn, and
the mother looked up at me andjust went back to eating.
She didn't care that I wasthere.
I was just accepted as somebodythat lives here as well as she

(03:22):
does, and so I like that.
I like being a part of nature.
I like being away from peopleas well.
When we're up here, there'smany times that you can't see
anybody.
You can't see any signs ofhuman life.

(03:43):
We are extremely secluded and Ilike that I like looking out on
our deck at the sun that'ssetting on the mountains across
the valley, and just enjoyingthat and the peacefulness.
There's no roads around us,there's no highway.
The only signs of human lifethat we see are occasional

(04:09):
airplanes, and it's just nicebeing away from civilization.
So how did you get up here,alex?
Well?

Speaker 1 (04:21):
in about 2019, this wonderful human being and I
founded a rescue.
Um, it was supposed to.
It just started out as a horserescue, and then it began to
become more than that a placethat served both people and
animals.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
And this wonderful human being is me.

Speaker 1 (04:39):
Yes, Okay, and we founded this 10th Mountain
Equine, our 501c3, founded inColorado December 24th on 2019.
And since then we have grownand blossomed and it started in

(05:01):
Eagle County.
It started in Eagle County andall signs of all kinds of
different things ended up takingus up here, and up here exists
because of you.
Why don't?

Speaker 2 (05:16):
you tell us a little bit about that.
Well, my family purchased thisland back in 1972, and my
grandparents and my parentsbought the land and they began
looking for land that was moresecluded, because, as a family,
we would love to camp, and whenwe would go to a campground, we

(05:38):
just got tired of having so manypeople around us that, even
though we were in the mountainsand in nature, there were
motorcycles and there were carsand there were people running
around and there was music andall this stuff.
And so, as a family, we decidedthat we wanted to try and find
a place that was ours and wasmore secluded, and we found this

(06:01):
place.
My grandparents, my parents,did.
They found this place.
This is an old homestead backfrom the 1800s, early 1900s.
It last operated until we beganreoperating it, but last
operated in about the 30s, andthey found this and they
purchased it.
We spent vacations up here,weekends up here, vacations up

(06:31):
here, weekends up here, and thenin 2022, when I semi-retired,
then I relocated up here, movedup here, and then Alex came up
here about half a month, half ayear, six months, nine months, I
can't really recall later andbrought the horses.
So we have how many horses,alex, do we have now?

Speaker 1 (06:47):
Well, we have nine on site at the moment and we are
about to be adding a tenth toour herd.

Speaker 2 (06:56):
And describe what a day is like.
What's your average day like uphere with the horses?
What's your average day?

Speaker 1 (07:03):
like up here with the horses.
Oh, an average day up herestarts around 5 am.
I get up and I feed the cats,who are angrily awaiting their
food, and then I get water sothat I can add water to the
grains that I prepared the nightbefore or the day before.
And then I head out and I goand put masks on the horses that

(07:27):
have sensitive eyes so thattheir eyes can be protected
during the day, and then I goout and I take care of their
feeding grains.
The ponies are the only horsesthat we have that don't have
full-time hay accessible, and soI give them some hay to start
out the beginning of their dayand then go over and add waters
to the horses that we need.

(07:49):
Everybody gets some grains inthe morning, except the ponies.
They just get their hay, andmany of the horses don't
actually need the grain, butsince some of them get it, then
all of them have to have some,so nobody feels like a bad horse
.
And then that gets me to about7 am, and quite a bit of other

(08:10):
things happen throughout the day.
But that's the bare beginning.
We have dogs that we tend toand water that we have to tend
to.
We have electricity that wehave to manage somehow to get
into the property.
And actually this brings me toa question that I had for you.
I'd love to have you share witheverybody, or maybe we can

(08:32):
share together, some of thedifferent things that people may
mean when they say I'm off-grid.

Speaker 2 (08:39):
Oh, that's a good question, because when people
say that they're off grid and Isometimes will look at a YouTube
video and they'll say thatthey're off grid and when I look
at the YouTube video I see apower line in the background and
what they mean by being offgrid for them is that they just

(09:01):
haven't turned on theirelectricity.
So they are quote unquote offthe grid because they just
haven't turned on theirelectricity.
So they are quote, unquote offthe grid because they just
haven't gotten on the grid, theyjust haven't turned it on.
To some people, off-grid is theother extreme, meaning that
they are completely off-grid.
They don't get groceries, theydon't get propane, they do

(09:21):
absolutely nothing and they livecompletely off the grid.
Propane they do absolutelynothing and they live completely
off the grid.
We're a little bit in the middle.
I'd say we're probably closerto the extreme of being off grid
because we don't have a powerline to turn onto.
There is not an option that way.
It's six miles away andextremely expensive to bring it
in and it's just not going tohappen.

(09:43):
But we do use propane for heat,we do use grocery stores and
gasoline and so forth.
So we go into town.
For us, going into town isabout an hour drive and there's
some stores that are a littlecloser, about 30 minutes from

(10:04):
here.
But going into town is about anhour drive and we'll get
groceries at the grocery storeand stuff like that.
So we're not completely hermits, but we are hermits,
self-sustaining for the mostpart.
We have solar panels thatproduce electricity for us.
We have a generator that wealso use as a backup generator,

(10:28):
so if the batteries get low, thegenerator turns on, and living
with solar panels and solarelectricity when you're truly
off grid is a challenge.
Sometimes I say that solarenergy is not quite ready for
prime time because there areissues with it.
There are problems now, andthen the batteries have problems

(10:50):
now and then our well is a deepwell 380 feet and we have a
very specialized pump that infuture episodes I'd like to go
through and discuss with you howour pump works, because it's
different than what most pumpsdo, operates off at 12 volts and
we pump into a cistern.
Then we have another pump whichsupplies the house.

(11:13):
So it's off-grid for us meansnot connected to a utility.
It doesn't mean that we'recomplete hermits and live in
caves, but we do not have apublic service company that we
can call and say hey, ourpower's out, I'll come.
We do have intranet because wehave Starlink, so we connect

(11:37):
through the satellites forintranet, which is an
improvement over the past fewyears.
Before that we didn't haveinternet.
We kind of get cell receptionnot completely depends where
you're standing, which is alsoan improvement.
A few years ago there was zerocell reception up here, so
that's improved.
They put up new towers aroundand so forth so we can get some

(11:58):
cell reception again, dependingupon where you're standing at
the time.
So that's what off-grid meansto me.
Doesn't mean that you're ahermit, but it does mean that
you are not reliant upon publicservice.

Speaker 1 (12:12):
Well, there you have it, and, as we all know, there
are definitely all kinds ofdifferent thoughts that come up
when people say different things, and so that kind of lets you
know where we are and wherewe're thinking in relation to
being off-grid.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
So we're way up here, say.
We're at 9,300 feet, ourproperty has National Forest on
two sides and we're in a verysmall subdivision.
We have 28 acres and our 28acres is way up in the back of
the subdivision.
You can't really see anybodyaround us, but there are some

(12:49):
people down in the valley.
About a half mile away would beour closest neighbor.
So, alex, we're, we're way uphere.
Do you ever have anyexperiences with any of the
wildlife up here?

Speaker 1 (12:59):
oh, that's right, yes , we have lots of experiences
with wildlife up here.
Oh, that's right.
Yes, we have lots ofexperiences with wildlife up
here.
I am probably, I probably havemore experiences than the
average person with wildlife.
Also, I've lived all over andhave always been kind of on the

(13:20):
edges of everything and I'vealways come to know deer and
bear and coyotes.

Speaker 2 (13:30):
So what's your favorite bear story?

Speaker 1 (13:35):
Well, I'd have to say , although we've created a whole
bunch more fun bear storiessince I've lived up here, one of
my all-time favorites is knownby our friends as don't boop the
bear, so let me share that withyou right now.
Some years ago I was living outin Eagle Colorado and I was

(14:01):
handling managing an 86-acreranch and we had large
irrigation systems diameteracross the field and cover a
whole bunch of area at fire hosepressure levels, you know cause

(14:30):
.
That's what it takes to be ableto cover a field.
And so I had gotten home fromdoing something, I had a skirt
and sandals on and I was out inthe field we had.
There was the house, and thenthere was the shelter the small
shelter for this one paddock andthen the fencing for that
paddock and then there was thelarge shelter for that paddock,

(14:51):
and then that paddock had somewater troughs and eventually
opened up into the big greenmeadow, which is what I was
watering at the time.
And so I was out there in mylittle skirt and my sandals and
watching where the irrigationwater was coming to.
I wanted to make sure it wascoming far enough, but not too

(15:12):
far that it bothered the horses.
And so there I was watching itand one of the horses goes
running from the big paddock uptowards the house and I goes
running from the big paddock uptowards the house and I watched
the horse go and went back tolooking at the irrigation water
and then another horse wentrunning and that moment I knew

(15:33):
there was a bear.
I looked a little farther overand I just froze because there
was a bear about 30 feet awayfrom me, walking from the woods
into the area that wascompletely trodden down from
horses living in it and a nice,nice little big bear.
It was a young bear, probablyonly 150, maybe 200 pounds, and

(15:59):
it walked in and the rest of thehorses, except for one, ran off
over to the shelter closest tothe house.
And I was very still.
I decided I will be a deer andjust blend in with my scenery.
So I watched the bear go aroundand the bear went over and it

(16:21):
sniffed one of the grain pans ofthe horses and then it walked
over and only one horse hadn'twalked, hadn't run away from the
shelter and that was one of myvery dear horses and she was
very sick at the time and shewas just standing there inside
the shelter, unbothered by thefact that the bear came there,

(16:43):
was just standing there insidethe shelter, unbothered by the
fact that the bear came there,and the bear walked over.
And the bear stood up on itsback legs and put its paw up
right where Santi was on theother side of the wall, and just
stood there for a moment andthen just walked away.
And the bear walked around andhe wasn't super tall.
So when he walked behind thewater trough that I was standing

(17:03):
near, I spun around so that Icould be facing him instead of
having my neck cranked aroundsideways and likely to fall over
.
And then the bear walked outfrom the other side of the water
trough and he got about sixfeet away from me and then he
realized I was there and it gavehim a start oh my gosh, there's
something there.
And he looked at me and then heran off into the woods and I was

(17:26):
like and then his head poppedup and then he came back and he
walked around me and I didn'tmove and he walked a little
closer around me so it was likemaybe like eight feet away from
me the whole way around and Ikind of watched him with my head
and then watched him comearound the other side.

(17:48):
Then he trotted back to thewoods again, but he didn't get
all the way to the woods, hejust paused there.
And then I did what any smartAmerican woman would do I put
out my hand and the bear pausedfor a moment and he walked over

(18:09):
to me and he came over and hesniffed my hand and at that
moment the only thing that Icould think was God, alex, don't
boop the bear, don't boop thebear, don't boop the bear, cause
his nose was right there nextto my finger.
Anyway, I'm still here.
So, as you can tell, I didn'tboop the bear and he just turned

(18:32):
around from sniffing my finger.
He didn't walk around thebackside of me this time, he
just turned and he walked awayinto the woods.
And that is my favorite storyof bears, although, boy, we do
sure have a whole collection ofthem anymore.

Speaker 2 (18:49):
And up here we have a bear.
He's a little bit bigger thanthat.
Actually he's a lot bigger thanthat.
He's still a black bear.
He's not a grizzly or anything,but he weighs, we estimate,
around 400, 450 pounds.
He's an adult male, or at leastwe think he's a male.
He's big.
Have you had experiences withour big bear here?

Speaker 1 (19:14):
I have.
He is a lovely critter.
I'm very happy that he seemsvery timid around people,
because just yelling at him getshim to go away.
I think the closest I've beento him actually was I came out
one day and I'd heard the dogsbarking at something a little

(19:35):
bit earlier and I was like, ohno, it's probably the bear, and
I didn't get up.
And so I got up around 5, and Igot up and I looked out the
window and there the bear wassitting there with our bear
proof garbage can, that steelrimmed with all the latches that

(19:55):
he had just ripped the steeloff of one corner of, and he
just was sitting there.
And he just was sitting therewith the garbage bin in his lap,
reaching in with his left frontpaw and pulling out one piece
of garbage at a time and tryingit out, tasting it and setting

(20:16):
it aside and eating.
Then he'd pull out anotherpiece of garbage and try it out.
And I was nowhere near as calmas I sound like I am now in
retelling this story.
I was very upset.
So I grabbed the closest thingto me, an orange, and I ran

(20:37):
outside screaming at him to getaway.
And I took the orange and Ihucked it at him, screaming at
him to get away.
And I took the orange and Ihucked it at him and he was gone
before I could even get itthrown, and running up to far
enough away that I couldn'treach him anymore.
And I kept screaming and hefinally wandered off.
Because I can holler with thebest of them, truth be told, and

(21:00):
so that's one of our bearstories.

Speaker 2 (21:04):
And we have some bear stories on video.
We don't have Don't Boop theBear on video.
I wish we did, but there wasnot a camera around at that time
, and so we do have, though,some videos of our big black
bear here.
If you go onto youtube and youpunch in off-grid with horses

(21:28):
it's not all one word for forthe youtube, just off-grid with
horses you'll find our youtubechannel, and on our youtube
channel we have some videos ofbears and of cows and of other
things that including Includinglarge mule butts.
And we have a large mule butt.
Yes, we have a very large mulethat lives here.

(21:49):
His name is Bear, used to becalled Teddy, but we thought
Teddy wasn't the right name forhim because he's big, and so we
have large mule butt on thevideo as well.
So what else happens up here,alex, that you'd like to tell
people?
Just as an overview of whatit's like to live up in the

(22:10):
wilderness, off-grid, 9,300 feetwith horses?

Speaker 1 (22:15):
Well, it is dreamy.
We've had people come up andsay that this is paradise and I
can't argue.
However, it does require a lotof work, and sure we can take
extra energy from the groundbecause we've got all these
wonderful, wonderful stones andcrystals in the ground.
We have milky quartz and rosequartz and micas and pyrites and

(22:41):
a number of other things tomention as well.
But it's really hard is anenormous understatement.
Living and working up here isso fulfilling, so gratifying,
but it's the hardest thing I'veever done, and I've done a lot

(23:02):
Hard physically, yes, very, veryhard physically.
I worked in South America for awhile creating a tour route for
a tour company and we wereliterally out 10 hours a day on
our horses with machetes,cutting paths into the woods and

(23:23):
finding old ruins, and it waswonderful, but it was very hard
work and even that doesn't holda candle to what we do here.

Speaker 2 (23:33):
What's the weather like here?

Speaker 1 (23:36):
Actually, from what I understand, it's very much like
the Himalayans.
We get down in the winters tosometimes as low as like
negative 15, negative 20.
Our summers will get into thelow 80s.
We don't have nearly as muchsnow as where I moved from.
I used to be in Eagle Countyand honestly I don't even know
how much snow we got there like30 feet, like 100 feet a season,

(24:00):
I don't know.
But up here it averages about 6feet and I think it would have
killed me if I had come directlyto this.
But having been through theatrocities I've lived through
already in snow depth reference,it really is a wonderful light
load compared to what it was.

Speaker 2 (24:21):
One thing I've noticed up here is that although
our total accumulation may befour feet, five feet, whatever,
but it melts and blows away.
So even in the middle of winter, in January, in our front area
there'll be snow, but it won'tbe huge, it won't be terribly

(24:45):
deep, and that makes it a loteasier for the horses because
they're not always trudgingthrough snow and their paddocks.
They pad it down and it meltsoff, evaporates out.
So we get snow, but it's notlike you would think, at 9,300
feet, that we would just beburied in it.
But that's really not the wayit is.
We get a couple of bigsnowstorms a year where it'll

(25:07):
snow a foot or two feet, maybethree feet, but then it usually
melts away fairly quickly.
Alex has a very interestingknack of when she has to go away
.
If she's going to an event backin Eagle County, where she's
from, or some event someplaceelse, that's when it snows.
It's just been very uncannythat this past year when she

(25:31):
leaves, that's when we have ablizzard, and the last time that
she left for a couple of dayswe got 15 inches.
It was only supposed to snowfour inches and we got 15.
Our area here is weird forweather because in many respects
we're in a little banana belt.
It'll be snowing and cold andhorrible all around us and we'll

(25:54):
have next to nothing, or theywill have next to nothing and be
warm and it will be horriblehere and snowing here.
So it's an interesting weatherclimate here.
It is not like the Bahamas oranything as far as being warm,
but the summers are delightful,the summer's low 80s and it's

(26:18):
just gorgeous up here and it'sjust gorgeous up here.
One other thing that we do uphere we have to be very creative
when we have the bear issue.
We had the bear breaking intothe quote-unquote bear-proof
trash can, and so what we did iswe took one of our fence

(26:39):
chargers, because we have fencechargers for the horses.
So we took one of our fencechargers because we have fence
chargers for the horses.
So we took one of our fencechargers, which produces a very
small shock, and we connected itto the trash can and connected
it to the steel, so that whenthe bear touched the steel, he
got a slight shock which hedidn't appreciate.

(26:59):
What did he do then?

Speaker 1 (27:03):
Trashed our stuff.

Speaker 2 (27:05):
He got very, very upset, got slightly angry and he
started tearing apart boxes andcrates and anything he could
see, because he was really,really mad that he got shocked.
But it worked, it did.
All right, so anything elseyou'd like to add, just as an

(27:25):
overview on what it's like to beup here?

Speaker 1 (27:28):
I'm sure I can find something to make up.
You know, honestly, the firstthing that I said, that our
folks had said, is that it'sparadise.
Really, honestly, I can'timagine hey, maybe by the beach
with all this, but that'd haveto be a really really deep ocean
.
So I think that everything uphere is just miraculous.

(27:52):
I can't imagine being anywhereelse, and I like having people
come up here to share the timewith us.

Speaker 2 (28:01):
All right.
How can people contact you,Alex?

Speaker 1 (28:05):
You can reach out to me at Alex at 10meorg.
You can reach me at Alex andthat's A-L-E-C-Z at
offgridwithhorsescom.

Speaker 2 (28:22):
All right, and you can also reach us in general at
info at offgridwithhorses, andif you have any comments on what
you would like to see or hearin these episodes, please don't
hesitate to send us an email.
We really want to hear from you.
We live a very unique,different kind of life and we

(28:47):
would like to share that withyou, and so if there are things
that you would like to know howwe do certain things, why we do
certain things, what it's likeup here, things that we may not
even think about, that areinteresting to you please send
us an email.
Again, it's info atoffgridwithhorsescom, and we
will respond and we will try toinclude your suggestions into

(29:11):
our episodes.
Also, you can look us up on theYouTube, which I've already
mentioned.
It's Off Grid With Horses onthe YouTube and we post YouTube
videos from time to time.
We don't do that every week,but when something comes up, we
try to post that on the YouTubevideo so that you can see what's
going on.
All right, so when's ourepisode of off grid with horses?

Speaker 1 (29:37):
Number one episode yes, we've made it.