Why this Michigan family lives off the grid

GRASS LAKE – Straighten out the car after the last turn on the winding gravel drive that leads to the Trumpey family’s 40-acre homestead and you finally get a glimpse of their straw-bale home.

It's off the grid, operated by a solar array and heated by burning wood.

For many urban and suburban folks, "off the grid" signifies survivalist, and “straw bale” seems like a code for shoddy construction.

That's not the case with the Trumpeys.

Their 2,200-square-foot, two-story home has a dramatic timber-frame entrance with huge windows, rust-colored stucco walls, a green metal roof and a cupola. It has an herb garden in front and every modern convenience inside.

Joe and Shelly Trumpey and their family, which includes teen daughters, Autumn and Evelyn, and two foster children, were among families named Homesteaders of the Year for 2015 by the magazine Mother Earth News, a Bible for sustainable living.

It's a way of life they dreamed of together when they met as students, studying abroad in Scotland.

Neither grew up on farms, but both had an interest in living a sustainable lifestyle, something a growing number of Americans share, millennials in particular.

They married in 1988 and started out with a farm in North Carolina with chickens, rabbits and a handful of sheep, hoping to raise half of their own food.

They moved to Michigan when Joe was offered a job at the University of Michigan's Stamps School of Design. Shelly, a teacher, works in the Pinckney school district.

The move took them to a 10-acre farm in Tecumseh, which they outgrew. They've built their Grass Lake property from the ground up, starting with fences and using material - including stone, earth and dead ash trees - from the property.

“Joe Trumpey is a great example of what’s possible, because his place is amazing and he’s totally doing it, but still living the middle-class lifestyle,” said Amanda Kik, co-founder with her husband, Brad, of the Bellaire-based Institute for Sustainable Living, Art & Natural Design.

They raise heirloom animals, such as American mule-footed pigs, all-black, wire-haired and bred to produce lard. They have a  single hoof rather than a cloven hoof like other pigs. Their diet includes food scraps Shelly collects from school lunches.

Walk through their pasture and you’ll see compact highland cattle with slender horns and tight mops of curly auburn hair as well as wooly, four-horned Jacob sheep, an heirloom species that is considered threatened because few remain. They also raise chickens and turkeys, and use all of the animals for meat. They also sell wool from the sheep and share

They go through about 15 face cords of wood each winter, stoking a gasifying boiler to heat the water that goes through 4,000 feet of tubing in their home’s radiant-heat floors. Solar power is stored in an array of 30 golf-cart batteries. They can run low after a long stretch of gray winter days, so the family may postpone energy-hogging activities such as laundry or working with electrical tools in the shop.

They don’t buy meat, vegetable or eggs, but do purchase things they don’t produce themselves, such as bread, grain and dairy products.

“People get overwhelmed seeing what we do,” he said. “Certainly there are a lot of things you can do without going off the grid.”

Start, for example, with your electricity bill. Find the line that lists the number of kilowatt hours used. That gives you a starting point. Make changes such as using energy-efficient light bulbs, turning off lights when you leave a room and unplugging energy-draining electronics when they’re not in use. Consider replacing old appliances with Energy Star-rated models. But make sure you compare those models, too; some use much less power than others.

If you don’t have space to create an entire produce garden, start small, Trumpey says.

“Plant a couple of tomatoes, and love the tomatoes you harvest,” he said.

Kik has similar recommendations.

“The key is to start where you are,” she said. “So if you’re really interested in growing your own food, you can start with a small garden. If your city allows it, you can get a chicken to lay a few eggs for you,” she said. “If you’re concerned about energy consumption, you can take small steps to get your house in order.”

Dean Baas, senior research associate for the Michigan State University Cooperative Extension Service, said he sees the movement towards sustainable living growing across society, from large-scale farmers to small-yard homeowners.

“I think society is going to call for more of it,” he said. “People are looking for more naturally and sustainable locally-made products.”

Trumpey is always looking at new possibilities for sustainability, but admits his family may have reached a peak.

“Other than adding a dairy cow, we’re pretty maxed out at this point,” he said. “We might experiment with a little bit of wheat and corn.”

Learn more about the Trumpeys and their Sandy Acres Farm.

Contact Kathleen Lavey at (517) 377-1251 or klavey@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @KathleenLavey.

A surge in sustainability

Interest in sustainable living goes all the way from urban folks with chickens, bees or plots in community gardens to big-scale agricultural operations.

Amanda Kik’s team at the Institute for Sustainable Living, Art & Natural Design organizes the annual Farm School conference – it’s Jan. 29 in Traverse City – to bring many of them together.

“We’ve got kind of old-school dairy farmers wearing overalls, and we’ve got young, dreadlocked vegan farmers, and they all hang out together and share ideas,” she said. This year’s topics include beekeeping, which Kik says seems particularly hot right now, as well as mushroom-farming, water management evaluating land for the best way to site a new farmstead.

She said interest has ballooned. Three years ago, 700 people attended the conference; attendance is expected to top 1,200 in 2016. 

“It’s been growing and I don’t see it slowing down,” she said. “We get more and more calls all the time from people.

Consumer interest and demand has helped pull commercial farmers into sustainability as well, said Dean Baas, senior research associate for the Michigan State University Cooperative Extension Service. 

“Particularly organic farmers and people who are selling to farmers’ markets, they want to say it’s raised sustainably and they’re not using herbicides and they’re not using hormones, that kind of thing,” he said. “People see market opportunities, but they also believe in it.”

The Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development doesn’t officially track the number of farms using sustainable practices. However, it offers a program to help farmers protect the environment, including proper storage of fuel and chemicals and appropriate timing and application of fertilizer.

The program has done things such as take farmers from the Monroe area out on Lake Erie, where algae blooms boosted by agricultural fertilizer runoff have tainted the water.

“You pull a water sample and it looks like avocado puree, that has an impact on people,” Kelpinski said.

A total of 623 farms received verifications this past year, a record, said Joe Kelpinski, manager for the Michigan Agriculture Environmental Assurance Program. More than 3,000 verifications have been granted since the program began. Verified farms range from a 1/10-acre produce operation to a 12,000-acre farm covering nearly 20 square miles.

“Our retention rate is about 84 percent of farms,” Kelpinski said. “So once they get in, they stay in the program,” he said.