September 7, 2016

Community

Even RUSSIA is boosting off-grid living

 

You can get many things for free when you live in a good off-the-grid community. You can get your drinking water for free, from converting rainwater, you can get your energy for free from converting solar power.

What you can rarely get, in the USA or most other countries, is your land for free.

A good plot of land is essential to living unplugged comfortably, it’s helpful if you can grow your own food out of it and that can be costly.

Unless you are Russian.

Yes, the Russian government have launched a new programme giving away parcels of land in their Far East region for free. The scheme was put in place as an attempt to boost settlement in the thinly populated area, but it could give birth a new wave of Russian off-gridders?

The Russian Far East is two-thirds the size of China and only holds 6 million residents, compared with the 100 million who live in the Chinese provinces across the border. Sounds like the region is so unpopulated, you could get a plot of land almost anywhere – live peacefully – and still have enough room to build everything you want. Living off-grid in a place like Russia might not sound too attractive at first, but there are actually already some off-grid communities, such as the Kovcheg Village and the Rainbow Gathering.

The number of “eco-communes,” in Russia, has grown dramatically in the last decade, and the movement back to the land is drawing professionals weary of the country’s corruption, pollution, and new consumerism. Giving them a simpler, back to basics lifestyle that we all hope and dream for.

So, could you take the plunge and live off-grid in Russia?

By Chelsea Mendez…

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Real Estate magic – a yurt in your backyard

 

By Chelsea Mendez

 

Living off-grid implies nature, tranquillity – perhaps in a deep forest or a lonely mountain top, unplugged from the rest of the world. But have you ever thought about your own back garden as a place to unplug? As long as it has a side entrance or some way of entering without going through the house = you could have yourself a free home.

The bit of green that your kids may have dug up when they were little, and where you would host the annual family BBQ, could be the golden location you’ve been hunting for. For various reasons, we’ve had to hide the identity of the (English) subject of this story, but *Brendan fills us in on how he’s not only living in his own garden in a lush southern suburb – but he has actually sold the house to someone else, and by keeping the freehold, and selling only the leasehold, he has retained ownership of his garden and the right to live there – all perfectly legally.

 
“I came to be living ‘off-grid’ not so much from any long-term intention or planning as from finding myself a couple of years ago in a situation where I had sold my apartment, applied most of that money to various projects and good causes and was therefore unable to buy outright a new bricks and mortar dwelling. I am strongly against mortgages, having spent ten years paying one off and seeing all too clearly the vast power the practice of buying housing using borrowed money has given to the banks these last few generations.
 
  What I did still retain was the garden land attached to my house, near the centre of a small city, with a water supply, a south facing slope and good fertile soil for growing most crops. At the same time, friends who had bought and moved into a woodland were being told by the local government that they must take down the yurt in which they were living because it fell foul of the regulations for forestry land. They offered to sell it to Me at a good price.
 
   I have always been drawn to the idea of living ‘off-grid’, my favourite fantasies having been either a houseboat or a gypsy caravan. The combination of this opportunity to acquire a good yurt and my then circumstances easily persuaded me to move into my own back garden.
 
  Erecting the yurt, a remarkably stable, wind-proof structure made from ash and cotton canvas, was the work of only a couple of hours. Compare that with the months, even years, of labour expended on modern bricks and mortar housing! A couple of hundred pounds bought a small wood-burning stove and flue whilst another small expenditure bought enough bees’ wax, from Payne’s Bee Farm, to waterproof the whole structure, having first been melted on the wood-burner (an
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