A short drive down the valley south of the town of Creston, British Columbia, off the main highway where very few motorists venture, a lonely road wanders into the woods to Doug Oberacher’s homestead.
This road doesn’t lead to town, or anywhere serviceable. In summer, the sweltering heat and steep valley repel would-be travellers. And the mosquitoes are formidable.
“When people look down that driveway, they go, ‘I don’t think I want to venture down in there,’” Oberacher, 65, told The Epoch Times. “It doesn’t attract a lot of attention.”
Yet this is the place Oberacher, a former oil pipeline engineer from Calgary, chose for a home in 2010. It’s life in a log cabin in the woods. Although it has no outside power connections, he’s furnished the place with heat, electricity, hot showers—the works—thanks to solar panels, batteries, wood fuel he gathers, and most imperatively, motivation.
“When I bought it, it was the end of the road and nobody was down in here,” he said, speaking of his off-grid homestead in the Kootenays. “There’s some small farms around, but nobody doing what I’m doing.”
On the 20 acres Oberacher bought 15 years ago, he found nothing but raw, untamed woods down a steep valley with no road (he had one put in later), which he remembers having to crawl over fallen logs in the pouring rain to survey when he first arrived.
From that moment, he says, “I fell in love with it.”
Since then, he’s built a tool shed for his chainsaws, had Mennonite constructors raise a garage, and erected a cabin dwelling. It’s all up to code with power and plumbing, so he can enjoy urban amenities today, while one day, when he’s old, live in relative comfort.
The whole idea would deter the faint of heart. But Oberacher had a realization as an engineer in his 40s while managing a pipeline project, stationed in the jungles of South America, where he worked in a village that “had nothing, and they were happy people.”
“They had the basics of life,” he said, adding that he came to realize he wanted to escape the “rat race” of his life back in Calgary. “And I thought to myself, … ‘I’m gonna strip this down when I get home and come up with a plan to actually make a real change.’”
He did just that.
Oberacher knew just the place to make his dream come true.
His father had bought an orchard near Erickson, a small community east of Creston, when Oberacher was a boy, and to him it seemed like paradise. “I just remember this Creston, B.C., area,” he said. “If I ever had a dollar, this is where I'd end up.”
Back in Canada, Oberacher liquidated his assets, sold his toys—his three skidoos, Zodiac boat, and Harley Davidson—and set out to look for land.
“I didn’t do it like on the spur-of-the-moment. I studied, and I looked at maps, and I drove around, and I stayed in motels in town,” he said. The surrounding forest, he said, had to be cedar, because that offers the best water resistance.
Some of the work he figured he would tackle himself while some had to be hired out. For starters, there were logs to be milled and a gravel road to be pushed in by professionals. The untamed wilderness—his “jungle”—he could clear by hand or machine.
“It was so raw,” he said. “I had a quad, and a trailer, and weed eater, and I had to cut my way into the jungle. And the bugs were so bad. It was just so hot.”
Forging inroads, Oberacher began to unearth more than he'd bargained for, finding wartime relics. He learned the land was once a colony for World War I veterans to stay and recover from their trauma.
“It was really intriguing to be finding the 1930s snuff cans and bottles, that kind of stuff, back there,” he said. “It just drew me in.”
After a few years, his cedar cabin was standing proud, with a carport added the next year. He hauled water in until he began capturing rainwater underground. In the beginning, he ran his operation using a cheap diesel generator, but now freestanding solar panels are what keep the lights and devices running in his home. Wood fuel provides heat, which is why Oberacher is constantly sawing and hauling dead wood.
Life off the grid is demanding. “You’re constantly managing power, battery banks, checking those,” he said, speaking during a cold snap that had him checking his wood-heated garage three times the previous night.
“You got to be careful you don’t freeze your batteries, otherwise it’s a whole huge expense. Then you could freeze the house, freeze the water, everything.”
Occasionally, neighbours assist by offering their own specialty, whether it’s metal-working or raising free range chickens, and friendly bartering helps with the effort.
Yet, despite the hard work involved, Oberacher was adamant about one thing: he wasn’t going to live like some off-grid homesteaders, using candles for light and having no heat.
“Let’s do it once. Let’s do it right,” he said.
An electrician wired his cabin properly. Plumbing and electric heat (which he doesn’t use) was installed because, down the road, Oberacher figured, he might want to sell. Someone might want to connect with the grid.
Oberacher’s homestead was so successful that it attracted his girlfriend, Chantel, whom he met in Creston a few years back and now lives with him. “She’s new to this,” he said. “She’s picking it up fast.”
Their off-grid journey has been more than fruitful—literally.
Taking a page from his dad’s orchard in Erickson, Oberacher grows organic fruit trees—peaches, cherries, nectarines, several apple varieties, pears—on his acreage, and myriad organic vegetables in his garden. The blistering Kootenay summers ensure overabundance of whatever the latest fruit craze is, and whenever the harvest is too much, Oberacher connects with locals and invites them to a fruit feast.
“I put an ad on Facebook,” he said. “‘Organic, come help yourself.’ The tree will be cleaned off that night. And I typically word it for young families to bring their kids out and get the experience.”
