In 2016, Sarah Richardson broke ground on an off-grid Ontario country house powered by solar; 9 months later, her family moved into the Starlight Farm

In June 2016, Sarah Richardson broke ground on a hilltop property less than two hours from Toronto. Nine months later, she moved in with her husband, Alexander Younger, and their daughters, Robin and Fiona. Her house is pretty much self-sufficient, with its own solar system and private well, and the building process was captured on her HGTV series, Sarah Off The Grid. According to House and Home, which featured the finished home in 2018, Richardson named the property Starlight Farm. Projects like this can also reflect broader interest in off-grid living. A study titled ‘Who Stays in Rural Areas? Understanding Gender Differences in Location Decisions Among Millennials in the United States,’ published in the journal Population, Space and Place, compared millennials who stay in rural communities in the north-central United States with those living in cities, and found that people living in rural areas place more value on outdoor space and environmental quality than their urban counterparts.

Building a farmhouse from scratch, one solar panel at a time

Living off the grid is not easy. There is no existing power line to tap and no city water main to connect to. Everything, from electricity to heat, has to be created on site. Richardson’s team installed a solar array to power the home and drilled a well for water. As House and Home reported, the mudroom floors have radiant in-floor heating, run off the same system. Off-grid solar is no longer a niche option. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Spring 2024 Solar Industry Update, the United States had a cumulative 32.9 gigawatts of residential solar capacity installed by the end of 2023, and off-grid solar products are now used by more than 100 million people worldwide. Richardson’s project is part of a much larger trend of homes making their own power.

A house built on old bones and new symmetry

Richardson is known for mixing antiques into new spaces, and Starlight Farm is full of that contrast. The same House and Home feature notes that above the fireplace in the living room is a fragment of an antique Egyptian column, which Richardson raised so that it can be seen from both the kitchen and the dining table. Symmetry, she said, gives a room a sense of balance, calm and order, and that idea runs through the whole main floor. In the main bedroom, a carved architectural fragment from an old church serves as a canopy over the bed. The kitchen island and the wall above the stove are finished in solid and hammered brass. Even the ceiling of the dining area has a star-shaped compass rose motif, a detail the outlet describes as recurring throughout the farm.

Why more young people are drawn to this kind of life

More young adults have left big cities for smaller towns and rural areas in recent years, a trend researchers tracked in the same Population, Space and Place study mentioned earlier, which looked specifically at millennials in the north-central United States, comparing those who stay in rural communities with those who live in cities. The study found that the desire for outdoor space, clean air and a slower pace of life played a real role in that decision, especially among women, according to researchers Zuzana Bednarik and İlkay Unay-Gailhard. That doesn't mean everyone will build a solar-powered farmhouse of their own, but the lure of Richardson's choice, of control over your own space, a closer connection to the land, and independence from city infrastructure, is one a lot of younger homeowners see in themselves.

The quiet pleasures of living close to nature

There’s also a wellbeing angle to a home like Starlight Farm, built around forest views and open fields. A study in the journal Ecosystem Services, based on a representative sample of adults in England, suggested that greater contact with and connection to nature was generally associated with better health and wellbeing. Richardson seems to have built that principle into the house itself. In the sunroom, the throw pillows are patterned directly from the woodsy surroundings outside, notes House and Home. The idea, as Richardson noted in that feature, was to make the whole house feel connected to the natural landscape that surrounded it.

A home built to last, not just to impress

What stands out about Starlight Farm is that none of it feels rushed. For her bedroom, Richardson chose a soft, neutral palette because she wanted shades she would never tire of, House and Home reports, calling it her forever home. That mindset of building for decades, not a quick flip, is what separates the project from a typical renovation. This is also what the research on rural living tells us that younger homeowners really want: a home that supports a simpler and more self-sufficient life, not just a bigger one. Starlight Farm didn’t happen overnight, and building off the grid from scratch wasn’t cheap or easy either, but nine months after breaking ground, Richardson had a home that ran largely on solar power, drew water from her own well and looked out at nothing but trees.