(From left) Christoph and Copeland Casati on the High Bridge Trail, which now ends in Pamplin, near their Charlotte County home
Copeland Casati has a home in the Fan and serves on the board of the Historic West Grace Street Association. She works in communications and content creation and posts photos on Instagram of elegantly set tables and entrees garnished with flowers.
She also has another, very different life.
“When you see me in the city, you would never know I’m picking weeds for breakfast and spending lunch breaks with a chainsaw [cutting firewood],” Casati says.
The family’s second home is a passive-solar, energy-efficient prefab house Casati and her husband, Christoph, built with the help of some Amish neighbors and a now-retired local contractor. It sits on 110 acres in Charlotte County, about 80 miles southwest of Richmond.
“Where we are, people never stopped homesteading, and our Amish neighbors have never lived on the grid,” Casati says.
The Charlotte County house is completely off the grid, meaning it isn’t connected to any public utilities. The family has a well and collects rainwater, which they purify through filtration and UV lights; the sun heats the water and provides electricity. “An antique cook stove is the sole source of heat,” Casati says, noting that it often overheats the snug home.
A foraged morel mushroom
Casati forages for edible plants such as creasy greens, a relative of watercress — “nutritious and packed with antioxidants” — and serves them as part of solar-cooked meals. She makes rose petal jam, which she says has healing properties, and her two children savor maple sugar snow as a sweet treat during the winter. The family’s horses serve as living lawnmowers, keeping the tall grass in their expansive yard in check.
Casati writes about her off-grid life and shares recipes on her blog and on Instagram at @pantryfoodandforaging. When asked how she connects to Wi-Fi, she replies, “That’s a great story. A retired engineer got tired of waiting for internet to come — our little rural area wouldn’t make it profitable to the usual providers — so he built his own network off of old fire towers in the area, creating a utility truly for the community. Thanks to him, we have been able to work remotely all these years.”
The idea for her family’s off-grid getaway was born from Casati’s own childhood. She grew up on a family farm and has fond memories of “wading through creeks and catching salamanders.” She and Christoph, who works for consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton in Northern Virginia, wanted their children to have similar experiences. “It was really important to us for them to have earth to learn and grow, but with stewardship,” she explains.
The Casatis’ camper and prefab home
The couple bought 55 acres of land in 2000, choosing a location near the town of Pamplin City so they could contribute to the rural community’s revitalization. “Like revitalization in Richmond, Pamplin City has worked hard to save its historical structure and irreplaceable character to thrive again,” Casati says.
They initially spent weekends at the site, living in a vintage camper before starting to build their prefab house in 2008. Once it was completed, the family stayed for weeks at a time, treasuring experiences such as “glowing sunrises and sunsets, happy horses, quiet walks in the woods and antics with chickens,” Casati says.
More recently, the couple purchased an additional 55 acres to prevent a sawmill from being built nearby. The expanded farm, Casati says, is “saving our community from overloaded logging trucks careening up and down our twisty, narrow, historical road at all hours.”
After building her own home, Casati started a company, Green Modern Kits, so others could easily make prefab homes and enjoy the off-grid lifestyle. “The prefabs were designed by amazing architects, mostly from Virginia,” she notes.
The Casatis’ off-grid home has kept the family safe and warm, even in extremely cold weather, Casati says, recalling a day when temperatures were below zero, snow was falling nonstop, and her husband was working in D.C. “While the children homeschooled, I quietly spent the afternoon lugging days of firewood against the house, checked the always-stocked pantry and kept the cookstove hot. … Being the lone adult amidst acres of no one, I was anxious,” she admits. Then, from the pitch-black darkness outside came a sudden, loud, frightening sound — which, Casati reveals with a grin, turned out to be an abandoned hunting dog looking for shelter. The family took in the grateful beagle and later found it a loving home.
The Casati home in the winter
As much as she loves the country, Casati also enjoys the enriching opportunities life in Richmond affords. A knowledgeable and well-known history buff, she was invited last October to the Virginia Executive Mansion by its deputy butler and historian, Martin C. Townes, to meet the Marquis de Lafayette (played by a reenactor), who was visiting Gov. Glenn Youngkin as part of the VA250 commemoration.
Back at the farm, Casati decided to use history as inspiration to design dishes appropriate for the marquis. She had foraged a lot of chestnuts, “which the French adore,” and made chestnut soup, pickled rice and chicken, calling the menu, “A Meal for a Marquis.”
Casati’s two home communities may seem different on the surface — one rural, one urban — but she says the people in both places have much in common: “They all share warmth and humor and willingness to pull together.”
And though her children are grown and in college, the off-grid house in the country will be their home forever, Casati says. She hopes they will bring their own children someday and make more memories.
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