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US road-trip video – Eustace Conway

August sees the release of my new book, Off the Grid: Inside the Movement for More Space, Less Government, and True Independence in Modern America

Over the next few months, I will be sharing the inside story of my journey around the US, the people I met, the places I visited, and why America is the best country in the world to live off the grid.

As I travelled, I took video of the people I met and will be uploading it, along with excerpts from the book closer to publication date.  Please let me know your thoughts and comments, and feel free to send in your own video clips – you can upload them to the off-grid YouTube channel, or  FTP them, or even snail mail them if you want.…

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June 3, 2010 2 Comments

Christians Unplugged

Summer Lake, Oregon (CNN) Looking at this beautiful lake in the western U.S. state of Oregon is to understand the meaning of the phrase “God’s country.” And that’s exactly why Brother Gregory lives here.
He is part of a an off-grid movement of conservative Christians who are choosing to live their lives on the edge of society, unplugged from civilization as much as they can, living under basic biblical principles.
Brother Gregory — the “Brother” is more of a nickname than an occupational title — ministers from the Oregon desert where he lives with his wife, some of his grown children and grandchildren.…

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May 31, 2010 2 Comments
Communities

DIY washing machine and homemade laundry soap

What do you get when you combine a 5 gallon bucket and a toilet plunger? An off-grid washing machine. Well, maybe not a machine in the traditional sense, unless you consider my hands the motor. This is something I have been wanting to make for quite some time now. The other day while I was in town, I saw a toilet plunger on the shelf and put it in my cart. I also picked up 3 bottles of Mrs Stewart’s bluing, I’ll explain more about that in a bit.…

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April 22, 2010 136 Comments
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Communities

Off-grid play is global hit

Success of smash hit play Jersualem has focused minds on off-grid themes in a way no other medium could. now it transfers from London to Broadway…

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April 18, 2010 No Comments

solar panels- group buying

After 20 years without electricity, I have off-grid solar electric power system up and running for a year-and- a–half.

Want to add to my solar array, see great prices on PV panels in pallet lots. Need two more panels, approx 300W @ 24V. Would like to buy together with others not too far away(West Vrgfinia USA) to get better price.
Also have eight 1650 A-H 2v lead acid cells new dry-charged never filled but twelve years old to sell or trade, unless you have four more to sell me.

Happy to chat about solar power systems, off-grid ultimate frugality, even politics an survival.

John “magneticanomaly@yahoo.com”…

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April 5, 2010 1 Comment
Communities

FP&L block attempt to secede from the grid

COCOA BEACH — Florida Power & Light has along history of anti-community, anti-environment behavior. Now Cocoa Beach officials say FPL has not responded to their request for information needed to make a decision on whether to sever ties with the power company and start providing their own electricity services to city residents.

With the city’s 30-year franchise agreement with FPL expiring next year, the city commissioners must decide whether to sign another long-term contract or to buy the company’s lines and equipment fromFPL and provide the service as a municipal electric utility.

City attorney Skip Fowler told commissioners that FPL has not provided answers to questions needed to help them decide how to proceed. A lawsuit may be the next option, he said.…

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April 2, 2010 No Comments
Communities

DIY-Loom knitting

Round loom knitting, have you heard of it? This is a type of knitting that uses a loom instead of using knitting needles. I never learned to knit with needles, my mother like to crochet. She always had something going on her lap. Mostly baby related, baby blankets, baby booties, baby sized hats and outfits. I think it was an unfulfilled wish that she had to be surrounded by babies.

She taught me how to crochet, though it was a challenge for both of us, she was left handed, I being right handed. But I learned, thanks to a patient mother. I learned the chain stitch and the next stitch after that. Unfortunately, being young, I had zero patience, it just didn’t go fast enough for me and I was not able to appreciate the zen like qualities of just working on something and watching it grow.…

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March 31, 2010 10 Comments
Communities

Daryl Hannah reveals second off-grid home

Hollywood icon Daryl Hannah is already a poster girl for the off-grid revolution. The interview she gave www.off-grid.net in 2005 made her Colorado staging post the world’s most famous off-grid address.

Now Hannah has revealed she has a second off the grid property, this one in California.

Hannah told an obscure Santa Cruz community TV station that she lives  in a solar-powered Southern California farm she refers to as “misfit circus,” home to abandoned and disabled animals.

She arrived at the studio in her 1979 Pontiac Trans Am she drove in ‘Kill Bill.’ The actress and environmental activist appeared live with local ecologist David Blume on Community TV’s live call-in show “Eco-Review” to promote ethanol as an alternative energy source.

Here is footage of Hannah showing us round her protest tent at The Farm.…

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March 24, 2010 6 Comments
Communities

Video-clips from “How to Live Off-Grid”

217y2ofkoil-_sl160_-2242775The Off-grid channel on YouTube has a growing collection of clips showing real people living and working off the grid.  Please send us your clips for inclusion, or send links or embed codes.

When Nick Rosen travelled the UK, interviewing off-gridders for his book How to Live Off-grid (UK edition – click the cover image to buy in US), he filmed them as he went, and a selection are now available on the channel. Here is one example, from Hillholt Wood in Lincolnshire. Nigel Lowthrop is one of the leaders of the UK off-grid movement. He succeeded in turning his 30 acre wood into a vital local resource,and won planning approval after a long battle. (Click “keep reading” to see the video)…

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March 23, 2010 2 Comments
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Communities

Off the grid living a “top ten” idea

Support from Reihan Salam

Time Magazine has called living off the grid “one of the most important ideas of the next ten years.”

Time  Managing Editor Richard Stengel, says of the article “this isn’t a matter of just scaling back but also of reconceiving how we live. “   Reihan Salam writes about how in the 2010s, more and more people will live off the grid, working in a new underground economy that will fill in the gaps of the old one. In a separate article in the special issue,  Christopher Hayes writes passionately that “it’s not just the market that has changed. The entire edifice of trust in authority that supported American life has been shaken.…

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March 13, 2010 4 Comments
Communities

Off the Grid and the prepared

So, just what does that mean? I can tell you from personal experience and from the responses I have received from people over the years that it definitely has different meanings to different people. From living completely without any utilities, no electricity, water or gas (think hunter’s cabin, wood stove, candles or kerosene lamps, no running water…), to generating one or more of these items on site yourself (think solar panels, wind power, methane digester…), I even had one person say that for him, living “off the grid” meant living so remotely that the government couldn’t find you, essentially hiding from the world. For some people it brings up a picture of a hermit living in a shack on a remote location, others envision a state of the art home that independently takes care of the needs of all occupants from food and water to electricity.…

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March 5, 2010 3 Comments
Communities

Fox buys John Twelve Hawks

Is there really a John Twelve Hawks?

The author of a bestselling sci-fi series called the Fourth Realm Trilogy lives off the grid, according to the New York Post and writes about the surveillance society. He has never met his editor or agent and uses a voice scrambler and satellite phone to communicate.
Recently,Fox optioned the film rights.  This success generated considerable envy from poorly paid scribes.
Twelve Hawks might be a pseudonym of James Frey, suggests one.
…
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February 28, 2010 1 Comment