Living Off the Grid
A conversation with theoretical fix-i-cist and Kimmie of the Codgie Mosh, Mike Crutcher.
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. — Edward Murphy, Jr.
The day before the title was set to transfer on our remote 40-acre Mendocino County homestead in the summer of 1995, the A-frame house burned to the ground. We never learned what caused that late night fire, though theories abounded. The fire department limited the damage to the periphery, but the house was surgically removed from the site. Luckily, the chickens survived.
A month later we struck a deal to buy the land with its pond and orchard (rubble included) hoping to build a house, four miles up a gravel road and two miles from the nearest power line.
Enter Mike Crutcher.
It might be a bit out of line to say, but we inherited Mike with the property. He worked for the previous owner, Manfred, a hairdresser from Bavaria who lived in the Haight-Ashbury. In this neck of the woods, you were out of luck without someone with Mike’s skill sets, especially if you have very few of your own. He knew where the water lines were buried and how to get electricity to the well pump and other basics of country living.
“Off the grid” essentially means you’re your own municipality.
Mike was born and raised in Mendocino County and in high school a teacher identified his mechanical aptitude. He earned a scholarship to motorcycle mechanic school in Arizona where he cut his teeth on small engines and learned a bit about desert fauna, aka, herpetology. Thirty years later he continues to help maintain our energy and water systems (and for lots of other clients) and I’m always amazed by his powers of troubleshooting.
The number one rule of living off the grid is that things go wrong on a regular basis. For lack of a better term, Mike Crutcher is a wearer of many hats. But the truth is, he’s an extremely positive person with a love of nature, outsized mechanical abilities and an abundance of creative drive.
One of the first lessons Mike emphasized as we were adjusting to remote homesteading was “MUST KILL MICE !!!” Apparently one crawled up his leg while he was checking the oil in our generator shed. With their blackberry bead eyes country mice are pretty cute creatures. Unfortunately mice have no place inside your home, outbuildings or car engines. The same goes for bats and woodrats.
We’ve had to solve quite a few puzzles over the decades. At times I could hold a phone to a generator and Mike could diagnose the problem, part of that small engine wizardry. Troubleshooting essentially means identifying the obvious culprits and working backwards or forwards to identify the problem. More recently we had a leak that was cutting off our fresh water flow. It took a few months to resolve and lots of digging, sketching and head scratching. We got it eventually and the sand filtered water is now flowing at maximum pressure, at least until the next incident.
Of the many qualities I admire about Mike Crutcher is his willingness to try to keep small engines and appliances and vehicles and even amplifiers alive, especially those destined for the dump. It’s the whole process of taking things apart and reassembling them that he enjoys and it goes back to deconstructing the toys of his childhood. He’s helped us repair blenders, toasters, generators and solar systems.
In the Anderson Valley there’s a club named the Kimmies of the Codgie Mosh, or Kimmie Codgers for short, to which Mike belongs. It roughly translates to “boys of the old machines” in the archaic Boontling tongue. Every year they fire up previous generations of water pumps, chain saws and tractors and other codgie mosh at the Mendocino County Fair. You should check them out sometime along with the sheep dog trials and barrel races.
Hope you enjoy this conversation.
All for now.
