Ever Wanted to Try Living off the Grid?

For anyone who’s ever felt the tug toward somewhere simpler.

It’s Thursday, which means you might be doing that thing many of us do—staring out a window, feeling the vague itch of wanting something different. Not a permanent escape, necessarily, but a shift, a widening, a life with a bit more air in it. I know that feeling. Most of my favorite decisions have grown from that soft restlessness. Which is why I’m writing this, in case you’re in that window-staring place today.

One of the quiet miracles of social media—beneath the frenzy and the posturing—is that it allows people to find each other. I relied on it when I opened my restaurants in Maine, when I built my It’s a Dinner series, when I needed someone who understood the peculiar mix of chaos and magic that happens behind every beautiful moment. I’ve lost track of how many truly good people entered my life simply because I pressed “post.”

Last weekend, I wrote that we’re looking for help at our ranch, and while that was true in the practical sense—we do need help—the real truth was fuller. What I’m actually looking for is the beginning of a community. Not the airy, romanticized kind, but the kind made of people who show up in boots, who understand that most dreams aren’t objects you step into but structures you build with your hands, over time.

For six years, from 2016 to 2022, I ran It’s a Dinner, a monthly series of farm meals shaped entirely around seasonality and the simple act of gathering people together. What most guests didn’t see was the constellation of people required to make those evenings feel effortless. Even when I was flying from California to New York with produce in my carry-on, there was always a small, unseen team turning all the moving parts into something graceful. I came to understand that the behind-the-scenes community mattered just as much as the guests seated at the table. Maybe more.

It’s true everywhere, once you start noticing it. The perfect restaurant meal has a hidden family behind it. A theater performance relies on the hands you never see. Even a subway ride is held together by people whose names you’ll never learn. Every slice of beauty, ease, or convenience is supported by an invisible architecture of human effort.

And now, as we build our ranch here on Rapa Nui—this place that is equal parts wild, ancient, and tender—I think about that architecture constantly. Yes, we dream of creating a place where people will someday come to stay, to rest, to gather. But right now we are in the part of the dream no one ever glamorizes: the making of it. The hauling of lumber. The coaxing of water systems. The improvising when the weather laughs at your plans.

The dream isn’t the final destination—it’s the journey itself. And this journey will be long. Years long. Which means this isn’t a one-month or one-time opportunity. We’re looking for people to trickle in over time, to join us in small or meaningful ways, and hopefully gain something themselves by coming to this wild, remote island and stepping into our ever-evolving project. For the next few years, I want to host helpful hands—people curious about off-grid living, people with skills to offer, people searching for their own horizon. There will always be space for the right people at the right time.

Because right now, the dream is not “finished ranch.” The dream is building the ranch—learning, trying, failing, laughing, redoing, improvising. This is the raw, present, elemental version of life that teaches you things you didn’t know you needed to learn. You rely on rainwater. You negotiate with insects. Horses become your co-workers. Languages drift around you that are everything but English. It is a step up from camping, but only a step.

I don’t want to dress any of this up. But I also won’t pretend it isn’t beautiful. There’s something about this kind of living—this absolute participation in your own days—that feels increasingly rare. Maybe that’s why people pause when they read posts like mine. Maybe that’s why messages come in from strangers who are tired of the fluorescent version of life and want something a little more elemental.

Here’s the practical version of the invitation—the one I posted on Instagram:

“I’ve met some of the best people I know by posting on IG, so here we go again.

We’re building on our off-grid ranch, and we’re looking for help to bring it to life. Individuals who can stay a month or more, contributing in meaningful ways—childcare, construction know-how, or simply being the kind of hardworking generalist who doesn’t flinch at rolling up their sleeves.

Life here isn’t always glamorous or predictable: we rely on rainwater for showers, fetch well water, and adapt to a rhythm that moves like weather.

You’ll live in our newly finished cabin, work alongside the ongoing transformation (and often horses), and experience an unvarnished Rapa Nui.

If it resonates, reach out—or pass it to someone who might belong here for a while.”

There will be drama, of course. There always is, when the living is this alive. But there is also meaning—the kind that only appears when you’re building something from the ground up, with other people, under a sky that seems to understand.

So if you’re reading this from your Thursday window seat, feeling that small tug toward something different, maybe this is your sign. Not to abandon your life, but to follow the part of you that wonders what another version of living might feel like—one built in real time, with real hands, in a place that asks everything of you and gives something back.

If you feel like this is a bit of you fill out this form.