Hygiene while living off-grid, especially if you are living rough and/or just starting out, keeping clean can be one of the challenges. When PB and I first moved to our off-grid home, it was little more than a box on stilts, one room. We had a double sink on the “kitchen wall”, but it wasn’t hooked up to running water or even to a drain.…
As the nation’s housing crisis (also known as the nation’s house price bubble) intensifies, part of the solution is hiding in plain sight – cheap rural housing, on agricultural land, for people who are working that land. I wrote a story in The Guardian to bring them to public attention.
Tucked away down a farm track in Somerset is a project that could act as a catalyst for an era of low-cost, off-grid rural living across Britain.
A small group is aiming to join the population of Barton St David, a village of approximately 500 residents, 5 miles south-east of Glastonbury, with a pub, and a 12th Century church. Local residents are keen to make sure their new neighbours stick to the letter of the planning laws.…
Apparently it is illegal in some places, Florida makes off-grid living illegal – mandates all homes must be connected to an electricity grid.
It’s no secret that an opposition to sustainable living exists. Earlier this year, Texas state brought several SWAT teams to a sustainable community and threatened to shut it down. Each one of the community members were initially handcuffed at gunpoint. It was called “The Garden of Eden Community,” and was totally self sustainable. …
For those of you who have followed my writing for a while, you will notice I am frequently trying to get people to go beyond just dreaming about their dreams and actually DOING something about it. Dreams are nice to have, but take the steps to turn that dream into a goal and start working toward that goal.
I saw this article today, at first I thought, oh brother, another post about “10 things”, but once I began reading these 10 things, it really made sense, for everyone’s life, including those who want to go off-grid or live more independently.
Personally I think numbers 2, 5, 9 and 10 are very important, all of them are good… read them over and begin applying them to your life, whether you wish to live off-grid or not, these are great ‘ism’s.…
Mother’s Day passed last weekend, for me it’s a bittersweet day, I’m happy because I’m a mother, but it’s sad because my mother is gone. Be that as it may, my mother taught me many things, one of the more important things was how to cook from scratch, I can follow a recipe but I’m quite capable to straying from the recipe to improve it, or to substitute for something I don’t have. I can even cook by the seat of my pants, meaning I can take a few kitchen staples and make a dish, it’s not difficult if you learn some basics.
Knowing how to cook (and bake) from scratch has so many benefits, first off it’s going to taste better, it’s going to be cheaper, and it’s going to be healthier for you. Buying food basics rather than food products, you KNOW what is going into your dish and consequently what is going into your body.…
Sounds like something that should be discussed during October, it is scary, but not in a paranormal way…. a phantom load is simply electricity that is being used when an electrical appliance is turned off but still plugged in. These are thieves, they use up or steal electricity but don’t give anything in return. Much like vampires, they may look cool but don’t do anything good for us in the long run.…
One of the things many of us do is buy up deals and sales at the store or buy in bulk from the big box clubs, it’s a good thing as long as you can use what you have spent your hard earned money on. It’s no good if you buy up a lot of foods only to have them go stale or bad before you have the chance to eat them. I have found a way of dry canning for crackers, I’m sure you could do this with other foods like cookies, pasta, anything that is naturally dry, things that would go stale, rancid or get infested with insects would be a good candidate for this storage method.…
If This House Doesn’t Look Like Much To You, Wait Til You Go Inside. I Love Everything About This.
Uninformed media reports of the ‘DarkMarket’, tout it as a new system – a Silk Road the FBI could never seize. In fact its not new, and has been around for ages. But it is a useful tool for off-gridders.
DarkMarket works in a fundamentally different way to Silk Road or any other online marketplace. Instead of being hosted like a normal website, it runs in a decentralized peer-to-peer network: Users download a piece of software, which allows them to access the DarkMarket site. The really clever part is how the system incorporates data with the blockchain, the part of Bitcoin that everybody can see. Rather than just carrying the currency from buyer to seller, data such as usernames are added to the blockchain by including them in very small transactions, meaning it’s impossible to impersonate someone else because their pseudonymous identity is preserved in the ledger. …
Andy and Ceil Barrie chose a retreat property far off the beaten path. They spent time and money developing the early C19th cabin in the White River national forest. Making it their own.
Then the Forest service comes along and says, “Nope, we want this land – you’re out.”
Can they just take it, evicting you like they are the landlord and you are merely a tenant, despite your name on the deed?
Yes they can.…
The contrasting fortunes of two British smallholdings are a useful guide on how to succeed, and what NOT to do, if you are planning to grow your own food.…
