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The Pantry Primer: Where to stash your stockpile

stash

Stockpiles: they aren’t just for pantries anymore!

You might be wondering where on earth you can stash all of the food required for a one-year pantry.  Unless you have a pantry the size of a master bedroom suite, it won’t take long to exceed the limits of your available kitchen storage.  But don’t despair! There are lots of little nooks, crannies, and storage areas around most homes that will allow you to discreetly put away a year’s supply of food for your family. Even those who dwell in apartments or other small spaces might be surprised to discover how many little hidden areas they actually have.…

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November 10, 2013 1 Comment
Downtown survivalists
Communities

Culture clash: Off-Grid vs. Detroit locals

Downtown survivalistsTwo years ago, residents of Goldengate Street in Detroit MI were scratching their heads as people with strange names like Coconut and Mars started moving into the street’s abandoned homes, decorating them in wild colors and planting vegetable gardens in empty lots.
It was a culture clash from the beginning. Establishing a utopian community in a rough area proved harder than expected.
There’s about a dozen or so of them now, along with waves of couch surfers who pass through. They live in houses with no electricity or water or heat. They warm themselves with wood-burning stoves and wash themselves outside with buckets of water on warmer days. Their toilets are outhouses.…

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November 5, 2013 2 Comments
Communities

The Pantry Primer: stockpiling grains

Stockpiling-grains

Food storage calculators recommend 300 pounds of grains per person for a one year supply. For a family of four, that is a whopping 1200 pounds of food that you should store if you are trying to build a one year pantry!

That sounds like a really daunting number until you remember that it is divided over many different items.  To name a few:

  • Rice
  • Flour
  • Wheat
  • Quinoa
  • Couscous
  • Cornmeal
  • Barley
  • Oats
  • Pasta

You should divide up your grain storage based upon your family’s preferences.  After all, if only one person likes rice, the rest of you won’t want to be stuck having it at every other meal if you must live off your stockpile for a year!…

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November 3, 2013 No Comments
Communities

Underground home in Cumbria

Underground house

From what I have read, the underground house is often considered the holy grail of off-grid living, it’s known to be warm in winter, cool in summer, making life more self sufficient for the occupants of the home. I ran across this video recently about a family creating an underground home, taking advantage of a former sandstone quarry, most of the “hole” their home would go in was already there.…

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November 3, 2013 1 Comment
Communities

Solar powered pyramid

Pyramid power

Ever see an off-grid pyramid? Well you are about to. This is the video story of Greg Grant, who began his off-grid existence slow and small.

He didn’t put a lot of money into his project. What he had was land, lots of natural materials, a great bunch of talented and helpful friends, and a unique vision. He chose to make his off-grid home out of short straw-bale walls, but with a steeply pitched, pyramid shaped roof.…

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October 27, 2013 2 Comments
Communities

The Pantry Primer: Stocking your supply of fruits and vegetables

The Pantry Primer

A major challenge when living from your stockpiled foods is getting enough fruits and vegetables.  Without produce, your family can be at risk for nutritional deficiency diseases like scurvy and their immune systems will be compromised.  A minimum of 5 servings per day is recommended, but during the long winter, how can you meet that goal with the contents of your pantry?

Supplying your family with produce that will provide the necessary nutrients that their bodies need to thrive is a twofold process.  Not only should you preserve the summer’s bounty for the winter ahead, but you should also come up with ways to add fresh greens outside of the growing season.…

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October 26, 2013 No Comments
Communities

More tiny homes, on wheels!

tinyhomeonwheelsWith the cost of living going up and up and our wages going down and down, one of the ways to cut back on living expenses is by going small with your home. I wrote about this a while back, https://off-grid.net/2013/10/06/tiny-homes-cheap/ one of the comments I saw was the fact that so many municipalities, even some rural ones, have restrictions on the size of homes, they have minimum requirements (boo!), personally I believe it’s all about being able to extract more tax money from the people. …

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October 20, 2013 No Comments
Communities

Marjory Wildcraft

 

marjroywildcraft

I just listened to a Coast to Coast am show featuring Marjory Wildcraft as a guest, I have heard her name before and probably watched a YouTube video or two about her, but after listening to her interview, I’m so much more impressed with her, if you aren’t familiar with her, I think you will be impressed too…  When I first heard about her, I thought she must be some kind of hippy tree hugger, not that there’s anything wrong with that :) it just wasn’t my cup of tea.  Turns out I was way wrong, well she may be a hippy tree hugger, but she is so much more than that!…

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October 13, 2013 No Comments
Communities

Could prepping become illegal here too? Venezuelan govt to detain “hoarders”

could-prepping-become-illegal

I’ve been talking a lot lately about prepping, getting ready for whatever is coming, whether it be a personal issue (job loss, cutting hours, illness or injury), to a local problem, a national or global problem, you need to be ready. Unfortunately our governments don’t tend to agree with this, it would seem that they would rather have us unprepared, reliant on them for everything. It’s easy to make people want to leave their homes voluntarily to go to FEMA camps when there is nothing to eat or drink at home. Some countries even have laws against so called “hoarding”, and believe me, this isn’t new, they can come into your home, search and confiscate your hard earned supplies if they believe you have too much. They can even do much worse than that……

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October 9, 2013 3 Comments
Communities

Tiny homes, cheap!

portablebuilding

I am starting to see more and more of these shed style homes, they remind me of Morgan buildings. They are a glorified shed that can be finished out to turn into a living space, perfect for the rural areas with fewer or no “codes”. I am seeing these cheap, really cheap and they will usually deliver them to just about anywhere. I see lots of potential, you could start out with one and add to it, or even have multiple units for the different parts of your living areas, living room/bedroom, kitchen/bathroom, guestroom/art studio… Many of these can be had for less than it cost to buy a car.…

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October 6, 2013 8 Comments
Communities

What’s wrong with my life?

PICT0017
Absolutely nothing! The sky castle, our fun little home, is fully off-grid, we have a fairly small system, turned out to be easier to start it from the ground rather than trying to convert an existing house to being off-grid…

Living in a small community, the things people say usually doesn’t take long to get around, I was talking to a friend and that friend told me that someone else had told him how they couldn’t understand how I could put up with living like this… honestly this isn’t the first time I’ve heard that sentiment. My reaction was “Put up with??? What am I “putting up with”???”…

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October 6, 2013 1 Comment

No pressure, cooking

No matter where I live, be it off-grid or in an apartment in a busy downtown area or anywhere in between, I would find my pressure cooker to be an indispensable piece of cooking equipment, in other words, I wouldn’t want to live without it! I use mine once or twice a week, sometimes more.…

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September 29, 2013 3 Comments