A place that doesn’t need us.
Artist Jeff Wetzig builds an off-the-grid house in Wisconsin in order to escape the noise and combat consumerism.
Writing and reporting by Sarah Bakeman
Jeff Wetzig held a chainsaw in one hand. He revved it up, focusing his eyes on the shady maple tree in front of him. It wasn’t diseased like the other trees he’d cleared, nor was it dangerously leaning toward the timber frame house he’d built. In fact, Wetzig usually spent his mornings tapping the tree and making coffee from the sap.
Despite being the family’s “yard tree,” as of last year it had become an obstacle for the newly-installed solar panels on the side of the house. Its lofty branches filtered the sun, leaving little power for the chest refrigerator inside.
As the chainsaw ripped apart the bark, his wife and two kids shed tears. “It was a hard thing to cut a friend,” Wetzig said. “I didn’t have time to cry. I was trying to not die from a chainsaw.”
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Wetzig and his wife, Christy, have owned the lot they now live on for eleven years. They started camping in a small shack (pictured above) on the weekends but soon began to wonder what it would be like to call the woods their home.
The Wetzig timber-frame home stands in its second year of being a full-time residence, with solar panels, a greenhouse and a water tank out front.
“We have a love-hate relationship with the wildlife. You love to watch them, but then they eat your plants.”
— Jeff Wetzig
The Wetzigs have made use of their land and now grow a lot of their own food such as mushrooms (left) but they have had to find creative ways to keep squirrels, chipmunks, and other wildlife from eating their food before it is grown (right).
In the summer months, the Wetzig family does all of their cooking outdoors in their pizza oven and on a stove attached to the side. "You have your summer way of life and your winter way of life," Christy said.
Christy Wetzig pours cups of Chagga (left), a drink made from a bark-like root that must be chiseled into pieces. They harvest the root right on their property instead of buying it for a steep price at the store. "It's right here if we bother to pick it" Jeff's daughter Mercy mused.
Christy Wetzig is in charge of stacking the logs of wood that Jeff and their two kids cut. She developed a style of stacking them into intricately crafted domes. It takes the family two full stacks to heat their home throughout the year. While two stacks serve as the supply for the year, another two will sit for a year until they are completely dry and ready to be burned.
“To cut down trees ... means you are affecting the landscape for years … All the trees we cleared became part of the house.”
— Jeff Wetzig
The family's handprints and initials are engraved into the plaster wall.
The Wetzig family huddles around the stove that serves as central heating and a cooktop in the winter. "We kind of nailed it," Jeff said. The house they reside in is everything they had dreamed it would be.