Communities

Yesterday, while surfing Facebook, one of my friends liked and shared a photo link,  I’ll not say what the page was,  I don’t want to embarrass anyone,  but the gist of the graphic was:

Off-Grid,  no mortgage or rent,  no electric bill, free water, grow your own food, total self sustainability, be with nature, and still have every modern luxury. 

Hmmmm,  sounds really good,  appealing in every way,  there is one teensy little problem,  it’s not free.  Living off-grid does not alleviate you of bills or responsibility,  it in fact gives you even more to be responsible for.

I wrote a reply to each bullet point made above,  I’m not knocking living off-grid,  we have lived this way for near 10 years now and love it,  I just get annoyed when major misconceptions are bandied about.

Welllllll, you still have to buy a property where you are allowed to live off-grid, find a cheap one and you can pay for it up front or you will have a mortgage (or loan payments),  you could squat illegally,  but that will only last as long as you aren’t caught. Or you could ask a property owner if you can stay on their land,  good luck.

NO electric bill is right, but there are expenses involved, those photons don’t collect or store themselves, there is also ongoing maintenance.

Free water, maybe, you either have to drill a well, that is expensive, there is equipment involved, storage, pumps, or you can collect rain water, again there are up front expenses…

Yes, you can grow your own food, again it’s not free, there are expenses involved in that.

Self sustaining, hardly, you can be more self sufficient but it’s impossible to be fully, 100% self sufficient.

Yes, you can be with nature,  that’s probably the truest statement in the list.

Yes, you can do all of this and have every modern convenience, but it’s NOT FREE! Anyone who tells you that is either lying or naive. Living off-grid is attainable, I do it, but it’s no cake walk, I love my life but would never tell anyone lies about it…

I’m not trying to bum anyone out,  but reality is real, you don’t get something for nothing,  you have to work for what you want,  if living off-grid is the thing you want to do,  then go for it,  make a plan,  set goals,  work and save your money, learn as much as you can about living off-grid,  get some hands on skills in building,  electricity,  survival, medical, small engine repair…  You get the picture now,  so what are you waiting for? :)…

We live off-grid, on a mountain side in the high desert of far west Texas, since December 2007, we have embedded ourselves quite deeply in our little community, one of the issues out here is getting rid of refuse, we have turned that to our advantage, the community out here knows, if they have any potentially useful junk, they contact us first to see if we want it. The alternative is to take it to town, some 20 miles away and pay to dispose of it. As a result, we end up with lots of useful materials, it’s not like driving to the hardware store and getting first quality, new stuff, but we end up with things we can eventually use.

One of the local builders out here (who is also a good friend) was tasked with getting rid of a bunch, a huge bunch of papercrete blocks on another property out here. These are made of pureed paper and Portland cement, there is also some other material in the bricks, I recognize perlite and possibly Styrofoam pellets.

Whoever made these, made a bunch of them for some purpose and for whatever reason, never got to use them. So now we benefit from this windfall.

PB took possession of them without knowing what he might use them for, perhaps making a short (height) wall… I took one look at the stack and had only one idea, a Keyhole garden!

I had been wanting to make at least one Keyhole garden ever since I’d learned about them, our biggest resource out here for making such a thing is rocks, I just hadn’t had the time or will to collect that many rocks and make one, but now we have an abundance of these papercrete blocks and can make several Keyhole gardens, I even have PB excited about it.

I have lots of cardboard to use as a base layer, the benefits of being a merchandiser and more recently being a reviewer. If anyone is interested in learning more about becoming a reviewer, let me know in the comments below and I’ll do a write up about it.

PB and I are already talking about what to play the in the Keyhole garden, I want one just for salad type greens, lettuces of all sorts. Of course we will have to protect it from the critters, they constantly eat our food and decorative plants, but it’s part of living out here.

I’ll post updates as this happens.…