a young couple in blue hill is living a
lifestyle that looks foreign to most of
us
with ease and comfort forging their
own path on their small sanctuary the
two are living what they teach
and teaching others the skills to do the
same
i'm so happy and like i find so much
meaning in my life
and just like wake up every day like
stoked to go to work
on the fence or you know bring the goats
out for a
stroll down the road we like to live
outside colby smith and hannah ray
are living life on their own terms it's
more enjoyable to be outside than inside
a house so we've kind of taken that
theme
to make our lifestyle fit that for the
past three years they've been living
off of their 50-acre spread in blue hill
building everything on it using
primarily what the land has to offer
the primitive term can mean first skills
right it's the
prime skill so it's kind of the most
simple skills that you need but also
primitive skills can be super complex
they share those skills
through their school way of the earth so
they make like
hide clothing that they can wear and
learn how to build shelters that are
really effective
and warm learn how to make fire from
friction
which is always kind of magical and
stuff like that that really like makes
them feel like deeply connected to this
landscape
both kobe and hannah got interested in
primitive skills
or earth skills at a young age at 13
colby did an outward bound program we
had all these backpacks on all this gear
all these kids yelling and scaring
everything and even at that age i was
like i wonder
like how we could do it and be out here
and not have all this gear and junk
and just sort of the pack was heavy you
know getting tired so
how do i live without this stuff and i
know there's food and there's other
animals but i'm not really
i'm not seeing anything he started
hunting for answers
hannah's curiosity grew when she was 16
watching the plants in her garden
i started noticing like all these
weeds coming up in the garden and got
super interested in what they were and i
went to the library and took out a book
on weeds of the northeast which is like
so surprised
that like all these plants were like
edible or medicinal
or like useful in some way and then i
could like interact with these plants
um and they became like way more
interesting than all the plants i was
trying to grow what most people discard
they're putting to good use box of
dandelion roots
and primrose they store food in their
root cellar
cooled in the summer by the spring that
they've engineered to run
through it this is a rendered pork
fat or maybe it's bear fat that's what
we use instead of butter
they salt mackerel and roadkill
they eat that too that stuff is a mix of
of rochelle deer and rocco mousse we
like to eat a lot of wild food too
they forage wild rice and make their own
acorn flour an intensive process
but one they say is well worth it but
not everything they eat
comes from the land we definitely buy
things from the grocery store we do buy
bacon sometimes
and you know chocolate it's hard to get
in the warm months they bathe in the
nearby ponder creek
fill it up with water but in winter a
cast iron tub
fire underneath it serves as an outdoor
hot tub
it's really nice on a cold winter
evening and while they love to be
outside cooking in their outdoor kitchen
in summer the cold pushes them indoors
into the earth lodge they built about
400 cut and peeled
spruce mostly spruce poles heated by a
rocket stove
and the wood kind of goes in vertically
and
burns from the at the tips sideways
into a kind of a heavily insulated
chimney
inside of this can sleeping on a bed of
cattail mat
and sheepskin and wearing clothes
they've made themselves this is my
raccoon purse it's a very
varied amount of looks at the grocery
store
one thing people might be surprised at
is that we find this lifestyle really
like
comfortable it might seem like it
would be very uncomfortable because
we're outside every day all the time we
have to haul water in and get chop our
own wood and bring it in and
you know all these projects that we're
doing require a lot of work on our
bodies and
people like i think associate living
more of earth-based life as a really
like they're kind of sacrificing their
comfort and
modern conveniences but i think as you
push yourself to live more earth
connected
your idea of what comfort is really
shifts and changes
they use power from a solar panel to
charge their phones
and give them light we're not really
against the technology but sometimes the
simpler way is often the better way
still
they have cars an instagram account and
a tractor in today's world we've kind of
displaced community with technology
everything is a tool you know
the question i ask myself is if this is
going to help me
like help further our connection to
nature like what does that look like and
how can we use it and then what
also is it sacrificing it may be an
extreme way to live
that's the main reason why we live like
this because it's i find it more fun
than living in a
big house and the simplicity adds to the
ease of living but for colby and hannah
it keeps them
grounded these skills are free they're
our birthright
and the more we can share them people i
feel like the more self-reliant they can
become
on their own now this year the couple is
offering several workshops including a
five-month immersion program
where people will come live on their
land starting out in tents
and eventually make their own earth
dwelling as always you can find out more
information
about their school and this story on the
207 section of our website
and mobile app i thought that was pretty
fascinating me too
amazing