Windermere office helps South Kitsap woman living off the grid

Andrea Hope’s only source of electricity is a yellow extension cord that trails out her bathroom window to her neighbor’s house.

“I don’t have any refrigeration,” Hope said, explaining that she uses the small amount of electricity her neighbor provides to boil water, brew coffee or plug in her rice cooker. “I try not to use it that much.”

The South Kitsap resident has lived this way for the past two years, depending on her neighbor’s kindness to make up for the lack of power in her small home near Horseshoe Lake.

“She can’t pay for power, and she doesn’t really want it,” said Andrew Welch, a real estate agent with Windermere of Port Orchard, who spent much of Friday at Hope’s house. There Welch and about a dozen other Windermere employees hauled away a truckload of trash, cut down yards of blackberry bushes and put in a vegetable garden.

The project was for the company’s annual Community Service Day, which Welch said was marking its 25th anniversary this year. The office found Hope by calling South Kitsap Helpline for suggestions on who might need their help.

“She gets all of her food from Helpline,” Welch said. “We’re trying to put in a garden so she can grow some of her own.”

Hope was touched to the point of tears at the thought of having a garden.

“That is the most significant thing to me,” she said, watching the group raking blackberry vines and weeds from the plot of land. “I’m tired of eating weeds.”

After roto-tilling the soil, the volunteers planted corn, tomatoes, beans, squash and other vegetables.

Hope grew up in the area and bought the property 20 years ago from her family. When she returned three years ago after living abroad, she was losing her battle with Lyme Disease.

“I came back to die, or find a cure,” said Hope, 59.

Luckily, Hope says she found something very close to the latter.

“The good thing about catching a disease from nature, is that there is always a cure for the disease in the same area where you caught it,” she said, pointing to an Oregon Grape plant growing in her driveway. Hope boils pieces of the plant’s yellow stalks in a special ceramic pot to make a medicinal tea that eases the pain in her joints and other symptoms.

“It makes it possible for me to function,” she said. Before the tea, Hope said her knees were so bad she could barely climb two steps.

Another medicinal plant Hope finds near her house is a lichen, which she uses to fight infections and keep cuts clean. Hope shares her knowledge of local plants, and her story of survival, in a small book she began producing at home.

Called “Poetess Hungers,” the book details Hope’s discovery of the water-soluble alkaloids in Oregon Grape and how to extract them. It also features many of her poems, including the one she mailed to SK Helpline.

“Home in the woods/no phone, no net/eating wild plants,” she wrote. “Not sure what to do/if you can help/I say, ‘Thank You.’”

Three days later, Hope says strangers appeared at her door with three bags of food.

“It was better than Christmas,” she recalls in the book. “They brought toilet paper.”

Hope prints new books herself by plugging in her laptop, and has sold copies to Bethel Avenue Book Company in Port Orchard, and Left Bank Books near Pike Place Market in Seattle.

Hope said she hopes to begin earning some income from the books, as she said she refuses to accept welfare or other money from the government.

“As long as I own my own house, I won’t,” she said.

Thanks to the volunteers who planted her garden, Hope can look forward to having more than weeds in her yard soon. And, perhaps some heat this winter.

“We had a chimney sweep come to clean out her chimney,” said Welch, explaining that Hope couldn’t use her fireplace for warmth last winter because the house filled with smoke.

Unfortunately, Welch said the group learned Friday that Hope’s chimney needed more than a good cleaning.

“It’s going to cost about $1,500 to fix it,” he said. “I’m going to talk to the Rotary Club and see if we can’t raise the money.”

In the meantime, the Windermere volunteers were pleased with what they accomplished Friday.

Kathy Holcomb, who was painting outdoor furniture that Denise Raught donated, said the table and chairs were to give Hope a place to sit outside near the lake.

And Barry Jones, a 1971 South Kitsap High School graduate who recently began working for Windermere, said he enjoyed his first Community Service Day project.

“It’s a good thing,” Jones said. “It gives you a sense of how lucky you are.”

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