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Portable tiny house and airstream-ish office

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Ann Holley wanted to create an off-grid, transportable tiny house that would be technically an RV, but with an aesthetic that wouldn’t feel like living in an RV. What she created with her partner Darren Macca is a 125-square-foot “stick built” home with a cedar exterior and a refreshing and expanding all-white interior. “Living in something the size of an RV doesn’t actually have to be like living in an RV,” explains Holley.

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July 24, 2014 1 Comment
Communities

A bridge to Bobbage

PICT0152

Living here going on 8 years and we still have to hike up to the sky castle, the reason is because of a seasonal creek that runs in front of the property near the road, it can be navigated if you have 4 wheel drive and the creek isn’t running (which it isn’t most of the year). It isn’t the water that makes it difficult though, it’s the depth of the creek bed.…

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July 20, 2014 1 Comment

Gardening roundtable

About a week ago, I got a phone call from one of my neighbors and friends out here, it was time to do another gardening roundtable. That’s where a bunch of us gets together to discuss our gardening experiences. Living in the high desert mountains in far western Texas, we have a unique growing area, and within this area, there are even microclimates to deal with, so my garden may have different qualities (temperature, moisture, wind, soil conditions…) than someone who lives at the same altitude as I do but just around the corner from me…

So today after church and our second Sunday church potluck lunch, we just had enough time to get over to the community center just up the road. There were about a dozen of us there, most are experienced gardeners, a few were very new to gardening, a few had gardened out here for many years.…

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July 13, 2014 1 Comment
Communities

How to build your own water cistern system

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What Is A Water Cistern System?

Those living in a municipality often take for granted utility services that many rural property dwellers are not privileged to enjoy. Many people living in rural regions are extremely fortunate if they are able to afford the huge expense to drill a water well and even more fortunate if the drill actually strikes good potable water. For those rural proprietors or tenants who are challenged by the absence of a drinkable water source on their property a cistern system is a practical and economical alternative.…

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July 10, 2014 4 Comments
Communities

Ascalapha Odorata aka Duppy Bat

My late night visitor, these huge creatures show up each year in late spring early summer, they become active in the late evening and night, they can startle or even scare you, though they are completely harmless, unless you count your reaction as you jump off the trail and try not to trip or fall.

I have been walking across my property at night, the flashlight illuminating my way, when something large and dark darts through the shaft of light, my initial reaction is it must be a bat, it’s the same size and general shape of a bat, as it flits through the light again, I realize that bats aren’t attracted to light, they fly around in the dark but tend to avoid light and people.…

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July 2, 2014 1 Comment
Communities

Greenpeace “loses $5m” of donations

Greenpeace, the environmental charity that lost its way over a decade ago, has announced it has also lost money – over $5 MILLION dollars of donations have been frittered away in currency speculation.

Greenpeace headquarters, a marble-lined former bank in Amsterdam is a place where self-important Greenpeace executives plan their next vital air journey to visit a politician or industrialist. Greenpeace executives work is too urgent, you see, to follow the rules they prescribe for others. Greenpeace International Executive Director Kumi Naidoo loves to be photographed at meetings around the world.

Now, one of their management cadre has embarrassed the organisation by running up the huge losses on money markets. The cost helped push Greenpeace into a loss for the year of €6.8m on a global budget of €300m Euros.

It raises the question,why they have $5 million sitting around? Surely the environmental emergency they are always fighting requires spending the money we gave them, not sitting on it?…

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June 16, 2014 No Comments
Communities

Happy Father’s Day

Dad

My Dad is much of the reason why I am getting to live my dream, he gave me a sense of adventure from a young age, as a family we would watch nature and science shows on PBS, we also watch Grizzly Adams, now THAT was how I wanted to live, in a small hand built cabin, on a mountain side, with few neighbors, a few good friends and independent.…

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June 15, 2014 3 Comments
Communities

Short cycling? Problem solved :)

1x1placeholderShort cycling, it makes me think of riding a bike a very small distance, or someone riding a really short bike…. actually it’s when a motor or compressor runs for a short period of time and is off for a short period of time. This will shorten the life of said motor or compressor.

We have had our current/new freezer to fridge conversion for a couple of months now, as the weather began warming up, I noticed the box ran more often than I thought it should, so I really started paying attention to the cycle. I didn’t officially time anything, but I estimated it was coming on for only a few minutes at a time every 5-10 minutes, that was definitely wrong. Of course this was during 100 degree days, it was also happening that way whether I opened the lid or not.…

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June 13, 2014 No Comments
Communities

Spring in the Sky Castle

Sky CastleI do my best to see the bright side of life and everything in it, take winter for instance, the cold temps means there are no bugs or other creepy crawlies out and about, it’s nice to snuggle up next to the wood stove. Now spring hits, the warm weather is great, don’t have to worry about bundling up over night, but with the warmer temps comes the critters, snakes, squirrels, mice and bugs.…

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June 8, 2014 1 Comment

Nova Scotia bans new off-grid homes

Dear Off-Grid,

I live on the south shore of Nova Scotia and I want to build a tiny, off-grid homestead. So far, it is proving to be a near impossibility.

The building inspector says I have to have 3 radiators and an air exchanger and these must be powered by electricity (as per the National Building Code). He says I must be able to maintain a temperature of 22.5 degrees Celsius in my home at anytime during the year! Who keeps their heat that high anyways?…

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June 5, 2014 24 Comments
Communities

Lost Faith in the System

hagopianJoachim Hagopian voices the feelings of millions of Americans

The forsaken American population finds itself more in poverty (46.2 million people) as well as more in debt ($57 trillion) now than ever before in history.

Young generations of the college educated are having to pay off mounting college loan debts ($1.2 trillion and rising) that without jobs they can never even hope to repay. Rather than marry, have kids and buy homes like generations before them, we worry how to pay the light bill and avoid eviction. Sometime in the last century, when we weren’t looking, the American dream died. Foreclosures and unpaid debts are now sucking the lifeblood out.…

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June 5, 2014 1 Comment
Communities

Tiny home in Hawaii

Tiny home in Hawaii

I think we can all appreciate Johnny Sanphillippo’s situation, he worked hard at a job he loved that unfortunately didn’t net him a large salary, of course if you were to ask him, I’m sure he would tell you that money isn’t the most important thing in the world, not something to run after at all costs.

Johnny cleaned houses, he painted homes and gardened for a living, he lived in California, there was no way he was going to be able to qualify for a mortgage on a home of his own, something he really wanted. He decided that going small would be the best thing for him, he purchased a lot in Hawaii and began working toward building a small home, one that he could afford, and one that allow him to retire later on without having to worry about having a pension or major money coming in.…

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June 5, 2014 No Comments