Spirit Archives - Page 11 of 26 - Living Off the Grid: Free Yourself

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History all around me

Going off-grid for us meant moving some 500 miles west of the place where I grew up, but I am fortunate to still have a piece of my childhood nearby. I sleep a few inches from it every night, and it’s right above my head across the room, it’s also out on my deck. This little piece of history started out life as a wooden fence, dog eared (the style of cut on the top). My dad wanted more privacy in our back yard so he went to the local lumberyard, purchased a stack of fencing and all the necessary hardware & parts to put up a 6 foot wooden fence.

I still remember him working on the fence after he had come home from work and on the weekends, digging holes for the fence posts, using a long piece of twine to keep the fence line straight… Within a few weeks, our backyard was enclosed and private. Years passed and that wood weathered to a silvery tan color, Dad didn’t stain it but preferred the natural color.

Eventually my dad replaced the fence with new wood, being a child of the depression, he couldn’t bring himself to throw out the old fencing boards that were still good so he stacked them behind the shed. PB was able to use some of them in his business over the years, he did restaurant repair and one of his customer’s decor used lots of weathered wood, that is something you can’t buy from the hardware store.

When we were about to move to our off-grid home, I remembered that old wood stacked behind the shed, there weren’t many pieces left, my dad was happy enough for us to take them. These old pieces of history have been used in various places in the SkyCastle, the headboard of the bed, as trim over the windows in the bedroom, as trim around windows on the deck. The wood is worn smooth, the nail holes remind me of my father’s hands pounding the nails through the boards.

My father is long gone, he passed away in 2012 and was instrumental in making a smooth transition to our life off-grid. I am happy to have a piece of my history so close by. How about you? Do you have a piece of your history in your life? If so, tell me about it below, I’d love to hear your story.

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November 12, 2015 No Comments

Community

Veterans forge a wild kind of peace

Relationships begun on rope courses, rock climbs and backpacking treks translate into an ease around the campfire where many US Army veterans start to talk about themselves, willing to share their stories about that most difficult of subjects for a male – how they feel.

Forty feet up in the air, eye-level with the autumn treetops, Rusty Achenbach felt his heart racing as he inched his way across the scariest part of the ropes course — a wobbly beam dubbed “Too Slack Jack.”∙”Watching, Rusty,” his spotter called below. Everybody in Crew 6 was watching, rooting for him. Strangers he hadn’t known four days before were now his trusted band of brothers and sisters.∙At the end of the ropes course, Achenbach found himself perched on the edge of a platform, stepping into thin air to swing in a huge arc back and forth through the bright leaves. “Awesome!” he yelled.∙Just another “aha” moment at the North Carolina Outward Bound School.

Achenbach and Crew 6 aren’t the typical teenagers or corporate executives who tackle wilderness adventures under Table Rock Mountain overlooking Linville Gorge. These military veterans have seen combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now they were fighting to find peace for themselves back home.

“I’m scared of heights. My boss won’t even let me get on a ladder at work. You guys getting me up there was pretty impressive,” Achenbach said, safely back on the ground as Crew 6 circled up for the debriefing. No adventure goes without a discussion of the emotions released and the lessons learned.

Every ropes course has its significant moment, explained instructor Shane Ambro. “You can feel the collective energy joining one person on part of the course.”

“The look on your face was priceless,” Army vet John Moder teased. “They ought to make you the poster child for Outward Bound. The motto could be ‘You’re dumb if you don’t come.'”

Moder was surprised to learn that the courses were free to military veterans. Outward Bound picking up not only the tuition, but also air travel and hotel stays.

“The vets have given for the country. We want to be able to give back to them,” said Matt Rosky, the veterans program coordinator for the NC Outward Bound School.

The Outward Bound School at Hurricane Island, Maine started a veterans program in the 1970s, working with those returning from the Vietnam War. The programs soon spread to other Outward Bound schools nationwide, but funding started to peter out by the late 1990s.

With the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the global war on terror with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, more veterans have gone on multiple tours of duty and cycled back into civilian life, some more successfully than others. With post-traumatic stress disorder, loneliness, depression, anxiety, alcohol and drug abuse, younger veterans are also less likely than older veterans to seek help or counseling

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November 11, 2015 No Comments

Community

Reminiscing and a blog update

Each autumn as the weather turns cool and the days get shorter, I think back on our first year living off-grid, eight years ago this month, PB and I had a final trailer full of the last of our possessions sitting in the driveway, we had closed down the last of our life in the city (Irving Texas), PB had shut down his one man business, I had quit both of my jobs, the house was nearly empty. PB had brought several loads of our stuff out to the property some 500 miles to the west, most of it was sitting under tarps to keep the weather and (hopefully) the critters from ruining it.

We were waiting for a break in the weather, that fall into winter seemed more wet and icy than usual. As it got closer to Thanksgiving, we chose to stay in town to spend one final holiday with our families. Again we waited for the weather to clear so we could leave. In the middle of the trailer of our belongings we had a large wire container with food, I worried about the can goods freezing so we placed a small space heater under the tarp, it worked well enough, our food made it just fine.

We finally got a break in the weather on December 21, the sun was shining, it was above freezing, the roads were dry, so we decided to make a run for it. As we were walking through the house one final time to make sure we hadn’t forgotten anything, we heard a loud crash, turned out it was PB’s son coming home for lunch. He made a left turn in front of a car that was going way too fast down that road, but since he had pulled in front of her, it was technically his fault.

Fortunately no one was injured, the vehicles however were not so lucky. As a result, our start time went from morning until after 3pm, we couldn’t risk staying another night, the weather could turn on us again and we wanted to get to our new off-grid home. PB drove a truck pulling the trailer, I drove his service van pulling the VW bug, everything was loaded down to the max.

It took us 12 hours to drive the 500 miles, stopping only for fuel, bathroom breaks and to adjust the loads as needed. When we arrived at the property, it was COLD, I found out the temps that night got down to 14 degrees F, and it was blowing a gale all night long. We hiked up to the box PB had build that would become our SkyCastle, climbed the ladder into the house and hung on while the wind threatened to knock the place down.

Well, I didn’t wait, I was too tired, I crawled into the tent that was inside the …

October 21, 2015 No Comments

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Homesteading with a family

Winter is just around the corner, I’m sitting here tonight, with drops of rain falling on the roof, it’s a chilly 55 degrees F outside, not much warmer inside, it’s not cold enough for the woodstove yet, though we have been enjoying the fireplace PB is building on the semi-enclosed deck.

This yet again stirred my interest in thermal mass rocket stove heaters, you know the one I’m talking about I’m sure, the one built into the cob bench, the idea is using a rocket stove for efficient burning, using less wood, heating a thermal mass (the cob bench)… I have little hope of having one in our current living space, mainly because of the weight, we “live” on the second floor of the SkyCastle. BUT there is a ground floor level that will someday be finished, becoming a bedroom, that space is perfect for a thermal mass rocket stove heater, I’m just biding my time until PB begins to finish that part of the house.
Rocket Mass Heaters
Lessons from Our Rocket Mass Heater: This book is bursting with photos, tips and resources all from our own build! A companion guide to the experts manuals you’ll get a personal look at a real build.

Meanwhile, I will watch and learn from other folk who build and use these, I REALLY appreciate the ones who post follow up videos or blogs showing their experiences over the years, the good and the bad. While looking for such a video, I found the most adorable homesteading family, a mom, dad and 4 kids. They moved from the city to the country, jumping in with both feet, I have enjoyed watching their videos, especially the ones from the kids, they are truly learning here and sharing this experience with the rest of us.

Here are the videos about cob building and thermal mass rocket heaters. Links to their YouTube and webpage to follow.

This first video shows a really interesting floor treatment as well as a thermal mass rocket stove heater

https://youtu.be/Yei0a6OeRbo

This shows the thermal mass rocket stove heater with cob bench.

https://youtu.be/NYJyxptclos

This shows the thermal mass rocket stove heater some 3 years later, an improvement they made and how well it is doing.

https://youtu.be/nG9-hyg7r4k

MyLittleHomestead YouTube page
MyLittleHomestead webpage

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October 3, 2015 No Comments

Living off-grid deemed illegal?

You would think that being independent, being more self sufficient, being able to take care of yourself, especially in this day and age, would be considered a good thing. You would think that relying less on the government for help would be considered a good thing.

It would seem that more and more states and counties are making that impossible for families and individuals to live their dream, to own private land and to be able to live on their land in the way they see fit. But with codes and zoning, the powers that be are making it illegal to live without being hooked up to the grid, electricity, water, gas and the such.

There are some places that are apparently making it illegal to CAMP on your own property, some areas “allow” you to camp for a certain number of days per year, other places will not allow it at all. I’m not talking about deep in the city, or in a bustling suburb, I’m talking about rural areas, places with acreage, places where you might not even see your neighbors, yet it’s still illegal to live in the manner you wish.

Some states made it illegal to capture RAIN WATER, that one really irritates me, how can anyone regulate what falls from the sky? Just do a Google search about illegal living off-grid and you will find many examples.

Of course, here in the USA, we still have many more freedoms about property ownership and what you can do with and on your property as compared to other countries, it is getting more and more difficult (to impossible) to find areas with few codes and zoning laws, even where I live, there are some laws, mainly having to do with water (wells and septic systems), I find that reasonable, I don’t want the neighbor up the road mucking up our underground water source.

What prompted this rant was an article I read earlier today, https://www.activistpost.com/2015/10/camping-on-your-own-land-is-now-illegal.html, I’m sure much of what is written has been hyped up, or maybe not so much. At any rate, go read it for yourself, honestly I think it was a case of too many people moving there to live off-grid, it got the attention of the local powers that be, perhaps they considered the taxes and income they weren’t receiving from those living this way, I don’t know, I do know that it is a sad thing for those who are trying to get started living off-grid, especially families, they seem to be especially persecuted.

What say you?

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September 30, 2015 No Comments

How the Do It Yourself World came to be

Several years back, I found a YouTube channel featuring Troy and his Do It Yourself World, he posted videos about going off-grid on the smallest of budgets, I suspect his budget was even smaller than ours was, and that was pretty small.

Troy seemed to struggle quite a bit, he lived in a small, run down camper, things went wrong more often than they went right, winter was particularly hard on him. But he persevered, he kept trying, he didn’t give up, I think perhaps he didn’t really have anywhere else to go so he had to make it work, it’s amazing how motivating that situation can be.

He has come a long way since that time, he recently created a video explaining his history and how he got where he is now, it’s quite the interesting tale, I’m not sure most folk would have lasted as well as he has. One thing I do know for sure, he is extremely thankful and grateful for his followers on YouTube and on his website.

Watch and enjoy

https://youtu.be/SL2Fl7Sw8Io

Troy’s YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/techman2015
Troy’s websites https://www.thedoityourselfworld.com/ and https://www.theoffgridproject.com/

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September 16, 2015 1 Comment

Community

Updates in western Texas

Lately I have been working like a mad woman, and I’m not complaining, much ;), I would like to have a little more time around the SkyCastle, especially with the latest projects that PB has been doing. This blog post is an update on what has been going on, with summer sliding into fall, the nights and mornings are getting cooler, almost cold, it’s funny how 50 degrees F feels so cold right after summer, yet next spring that same temperature will feel quite nice. The picture above is a volcanic plug, the hardened material that stays put as the rest of the softer material (dirt & rocks) washes and erodes away over the eons. My friend calls these thumb buttes. I like the dead tree in front of this butte.

This is a picture of a building PB started a couple of years ago, he tends to be a little ADD on projects, starting things then getting distracted by another project, eventually returning to the first one to finish it. The idea is to use this as a guest house, and for us to live in it while the SkyCastle gets an overhaul, mainly the roof and perhaps rearranging some of the living spaces that are more easily done when we aren’t LIVING in it. :)

This is a late evening picture of the SkyCastle, just under the peak roof on the left side of the picture you can just make out the windows PB installed.

My drive home, I’m in my “neighborhood” here, we have 70 something miles of unpaved road, I’m a couple of miles from the SkyCastle here.

A rare picture of myself, PB snapped the picture in the fading light of evening time.

Here are some pictures of PB’s chicken rotisserie in action, of course this is still very much a work in progress, but as you can see, it has actually cooked a chicken, and we ate it. The fire in the box needs to be hotter, something that is about to happen very soon. He also improved the tick-tock clock pendulum mechanism, I’ll write about it soon.

Some of the views I get to see when I’m out on the road traveling from town to town doing my job. I pulled over, jumped out of the truck, crossed the highway and tramped through the grass to squat down in front of this prickly pear cactus encrusted in tunas. This is a well known mountain in my area.

The sky out here is magnificent, we are at the tail end of our rainy season, it clouds up every evening, sometimes it rains, sometimes it stays dry, either way, the sky is impressive.

One of our “neighbors”, a big bull, he kindly posed for me when I whistled loudly to get his attention. I have no idea what breed of …

August 29, 2015 No Comments

Underground housing guru

How many of you remember Mike Oehler and his “$50 & Up Underground House Book“? I have a copy of this book and if I didn’t already live in a Sky Castle, I would want to live like this, since we have a mountain side we live on, it would be perfect!

I found this recent video, I am excited to find he is still alive and kicking and his mind is still sharp.

https://youtu.be/8B6xR3T37gI

I was quite excited to see how he is living now, underground, and it’s clear his design is still relevant and stands the test of time.

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August 19, 2015 No Comments

Community

Here I am

My dream, it’s something I have had more or less since I was a very little girl, I’ve always loved nature, wild places, as a young child I traveled through the desert with my family on our way from California to Texas on 2 separate occasions. We traveled over the road so I had the opportunity to watch as miles and miles of untamed, wild land slipping past the window. We would stop to take breaks, to eat, to stretch our legs, and to allow 3 young children to get some pent up energy out before the next leg of the trip. Not having a lot of money, we fixed sandwiches and slept in the old Dodge van my dad converted into a camper van the summer before.

Being a nature child, I hated wearing shoes, my mother was convinced I would step on a scorpion or even worse, a snake as I ran, barefoot across the still hot asphalt in the dark, once I hit the hard packed sand I was in heaven. The sky was vast, the stars innumerable, the cool desert wind blowing my curly hair back, yes this was the life I wanted. And no, I didn’t step on anything :)

As an adult, I had the opportunity to visit and play in the mountains, these were the Pacific Northwest mountains, juicy, wet, green, alive with more life per square foot than anywhere else I had been before. Well that nailed it for me, I wanted to live in the desert AND mountains.

Some 8 years ago my dream came true, my hubby and I shut our life down in the city and moved 500 miles west, in far western Texas, on a mountain side, in the high desert, a paradise like no other. It’s rough and tumble, but a paradise for me none the less.

Today I look back upon my life, all the bumps, all the good and bad times, all the seeming dead ends and U turns, and here I am, I still have contact with that little girl who so desperately wanted to live in a wild place, she is happily living inside of me. Today I turned half a century old, I feel so blessed to have good health, good family, good friends, a great church and I get to spend it here, living like I want to live.

I think one of the things I learned about life is how to be content, how to be happy, no matter what is going on around me, I cannot control all of the exterior things, but I have absolute control over how I deal with it between my own two ears. Being content doesn’t mean settling for less than, there is nothing wrong with reaching for better, reaching for more, but it’s good to have a contented attitude about …

August 8, 2015 4 Comments

Community

What are you doing?

Where do you see yourself next week, next month, next year, in a decade? Are you actively planning your life or are you merely floating through the flotsam and jetsam of your daily grind? Far too many of us are living like the latter, just trying to get to that next paycheck so you can pay your rent (or mortgage), pay your car payment, pay your utilities, pay your credit cards, for some folk just buying food can be a penny pinching challenge.

No this isn’t an infomercial, but this is guaranteed to be the first day of the rest of your life, you can spend it like you have been doing it, or you can make a change. I see so many people here on this site, posting comments, saying they are sick of the rat race, the are tired of not really living, they want to be free. Besides posting comments to strangers online, I have to wonder what else they might be doing to actually make a change for themselves…

That sounds tough hearted, even mean, but if they, or perhaps you don’t make some hard choices, then your/their life isn’t going to change. I also wonder if living free (to some) might actually mean living for free, the dream of living off the land sounds like a great thing, living without money. But the reality is, living totally without money just isn’t something that can be done IMHO, sure you can barter, and maybe you can even live off of someone else, but you still need basic necessities, food, clothes and shelter, either you are going to BUY them or someone else is going to BUY them and provide them to you.

I am not picking on those who post comments and replies here wanting to go off-grid with someone else, it’s a nice dream, a nice start, but don’t allow that to be your only action, if you truly want to do something, then it’s up to you to figure out how you are going to achieve this dream, you are the one who must make your dream a reality. It takes perseverance, hard work, and yes, it’s going to take some money.

It’s possible to get yourself setup to not have to need much money, PB and I have done that for the most part, but it wasn’t free, it wasn’t easy, it took hard work for many years, saving and planning. We purchased raw land in an area with few building codes (ie we could build our own place with little interference from the powers that be) and a place with low property taxes, we didn’t do a lot of improvements on the property so our taxes stay low. We paid for everything up front using our savings so there is no debt. We don’t do things that incur debt, no credit cards, …

July 28, 2015 2 Comments

Community

Going tiny with a family

You take one ratty camper, tear it down to the frame, then rebuild it, now it’s transformed into a home, and not just for one or two, but a family with young but growing boys. As I watched the tear down stages, it didn’t look like it was going to really turn into anything useful, that’s what we call the “ugly” stage, and ugly it was, I couldn’t figure out why he even bothered. Then I saw the finished home, and this can truly be called a home, it is quite magnificent.

Here are two videos showing the beginning and finished stages. He did this with very little building knowledge, he just did it. Much of what he used was either free or near free, recycled, Craigslist and getting chummy with the manager at his local Lowes. Altogether, it cost less than $5000.

https://youtu.be/6XTPM5IQo2Y

https://youtu.be/70o4anfivRo

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July 9, 2015 No Comments

What is “off-grid”?

“How can you be off-grid and be on the internet?”
“You use propane, that’s not off-grid…”
“You go to the grocery store to buy food, how is that off-grid?”

These are just some of the questions I have been asked from people, sometimes it’s an honest question, other times I feel the twang of jealousy or even hostility from people who don’t seem to know any better, certainly not from other off-gridders-no matter the “level” of off-grid’edness they live. Most of the time my reply is we don’t have to live in a cave, wear skins and eat worms to be considered off-grid :)

There are different levels of being “off-grid”, different people have different definitions of what off-grid means to them, personally I would not judge another person’s level of “off-grid”, especially when compared to how we live. It’s a very individual thing, for me-for us, I consider off-grid to mean we aren’t hooked up to any utility, ie we don’t have city water or sewer, we don’t have city gas, we don’t have a land line (phone), and most important to me, we aren’t hooked up to the electric grid.

We haul water, we are working toward getting a rain catchment system that would fill 2-3000 gallon water tanks, that would last us all year with no problems. We generate all of our own electricity (solar power), we do buy propane, we use the small BBQ grill size tanks that we take to town to fill, we cook and heat water with that.

We do have internet, it’s a wireless WIFI system that services our rural neighborhood, it’s our only source of communication and entertainment, we did live without internet for the first few years, I would go to my neighbor’s house once a week (+/-) to check my email, then a company brought in wireless WIFI internet, we decided it was an important service for us to have.

I just recently got a smart phone, only because of my job, honestly it doesn’t work at my house, it’s pretty much only used while I’m out on the road doing my job.

So that is my definition of living off-grid, we don’t have a utility pole on our property at all and as far as I’m concerned, we don’t plan on having one. The only monthly “bill” we have for anything resembling a utility bill is our internet and now, perhaps, the cell phone bill.

I am not in a competition to see how primitively we can live as compared to others, we chose to live at this level of “off-grid”, we are comfortable living this way. I think sometimes it’s all too easy to confuse living off-grid with being self sufficient. We are certainly MORE self sufficient that we were when we lived in town, but no one can claim to live 100% self sufficiently, we don’t …

July 2, 2015 No Comments

All you need to go off-grid

Spirit

History all around me

Veterans forge a wild kind of peace

Reminiscing and a blog update

Homesteading with a family

Living off-grid deemed illegal?

How the Do It Yourself World came to be

Updates in western Texas

Underground housing guru

Here I am

What are you doing?

Going tiny with a family

What is “off-grid”?

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For films about individuals and technologies for living off the grid

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