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.
In this segment I meet Eustace Conway, subject of a classic book about masculinity- The Last American Man
, by Elisabeth Gilbert. Eustace was not what I expected. I thought he would be an arrogant Alpha male, full of his own opinions, and I was delighted to find a thoughtful, bushcraft guru – modest, humble at times, and although he does have very strong opinions of his own, he is as much a listener as a talker.
Eustace is also something of a businessman, having amassed close to 1000 acres of prime land in his beautiful part of North Carolina. But he does not recommend others to adopt his approach, even if they could afford it, saying that the number of sleepless nights and hard working days he has suffered were not realy worth it. He says if you want to grow your own food, you could consider doing it on land you don’t even own – Federal land or State land, hidden away in forests or on the Mesa.
2 Responses
Hi Elnav – of course there are many “conventional” families living off the grid. Will soon put up video of them, but I had to start somewhere, and chose to start with the wonderful Eustace.
Bests
Nick
Nick there is a whole other class of off-grid people who live in normal houses, drive ordinary cars and even hold down ordinary jobs. however they are off-grid because they found cheap non serviced land and moved in by trucking a mobile home onto the lot. At least hereabouts lagoons are still legal on property sizes over a given size and for water you can truck in water. In many small communities where wells have to go deep for sweet water the fire department will deliver a tanker truck load to a cistern.
Both our volunteer fire department station and the community hall have public taps with sweet, clean water from deep wells. It is not unusual to see a pickup truck filling 100 gallon tanks in the back. Some of these people live in the middle of the village.