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cod liver trimmings
Food

Food, not supplements

cod liver trimmings
Food comes after water in the hierarchy of the things you need to sustain life off-grid.

First Water, then Food, then Fire, then Shelter, although you could argue Shelter and Fire should be the other way around.

Food and water the source of our nourishment, and you simply cannot live without them.

Off-the-grid living puts a heavy emphasis on self-sustenance, self-doctoring and running your own power supply. This means that you’re going to have to give up many conveniences that modern society offers.

You will be living away from the convenience of supermarkets that provide most commodities in one huge place. Gone will be the ease (as well as the stress) of living in the city.

Water is usually rather easy to secure, although we have made a video on our YouTube channel about what happened when we went searching for free water in the city.

This article is focused on food. There is also a video about finding free food in the city.

But how do we secure food when living off the grid?

Fishing

If you’re able to find a clean natural water source, there’s a chance that you might also have found a source of food. Of all off-the-grid food available, fish is the most beneficial. It contains your daily requirement of Cod Liver Oil which is more essential to survival than one might think.

The advantage of fishing is that as any fish you catch, you can cook and consume immediately, as opposed to fish farmed supermarket fish, filled with its own faeces and five days from factory to plate.

Farming

The most common method of securing food comes in the form of farming. And it is rightly so, because this is where you’re going to get your staple food from. This is essential to your survival because crops like your vegetables, fruits, and grains will help get you through the winter, where animals and fish may be rare.

You may even decide to raise livestock to further boost your ability to nourish yourself and your family, as is the case in subsistence farming. Though it’s important to note that the purpose of subsistence farming is to allow you to provide exclusively for yourself (or the off-the-grid community) and thus, the farm and the crops produced from it have no commercial value.

Hunting

For the average outdoorsman, hunting is a favorite way to pass time. It is a hobby to most people. But for those who opt to live off the grid, it is a way of life and a means for survival.

It is an essential supplement to both farming and fishing, especially when you need to get through the winter. Pelts and fur are also very valuable during the bitter cold…

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Energy

Commodities forecast – food, oil, farmland prices to slump

Commodities Trader Peter Brandt sees lower oil prices; bubble in grains, farmland

Brandt is a technical trader, poring over charts and patterns to spot potential breakouts and breakdowns. Nowadays he’s bearish on corn and other grains, along with farmland, oil and natural gas.

“When you look at those markets, I think we’re at prices that are unsustainable.” said Brandt, who also writes a popular Internet blog about trading commodities and stocks. Read Peter Brandt’s blog.

Gold is one of the few commodities Brandt is staying long on. He also said the U.S. stock market is attractively valued, and warns of a “huge bubble” forming in Treasurys and other fixed-income investments once U.S. interest rates rise.

1. Natural gas is a bust

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Solar Decathlon

solar decathlon picture
Last year’s battle

Teams from 20 universities have spent the summer building enough homes for an entire solar village. The off-grid, self-powering homes will be on display for 10 days in October on the National Mall in Washington D.C., competing in the Department of Energy’s 2007 Solar Decathlon.

The point of the competition is not to create new building technologies. Entrants have to use commercially available products to prove that their sun-powered home can be commercially reproduced. For Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) university with its access to super-efficienct, NASA-grade solar panels, that was a disadvantage.…

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Land

Battle for Wild Camping

Kev
Kid lawyer saves dad

Recently I took the boys on their first wild camping trip on Dartmoor, writes Electric Kevin on his blog. I had picked Postbridge as a good location for mix of open moor, forest and stream. How wrong could I have been ! We pitched by a wooded area and had started our fire, the boys had been running around excitedly for about an hour making noise as excited 8 year-olds are want to do. I was startled by the sound of a 4×4 being driven furiously towards us via a track from the woods – it skidded to a halt by our tent and the middle-aged driver was apoplectic, “You can’t camp here –…

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