Living the half acre dream

Tosh recently joined the Cape Paterson Eco-village, near Phillip Island in Victoria, attracted by the holistic approach to sustainability adopted by developers Brendan Condon and Mike O’Mullane.

He said the project aimed to find ways to make clean energy more affordable than the alternative and his hope was that it would “catalyse innovation across the property sector.”

Key features will include large scale revegetation of natural habitat, re-establishing wetlands, new walking and cycling tracks, high performance housing, on site power generation, electric vehicles, community gardens and community workspaces. “Somewhere amongst the site will be 220 residential lots.”

Tosh’s recent report by the “Department of Energy Transition, Efficiency and Enoughness” shows a dramatic shift to localised, renewable energy production, made possible by radical improvements in efficiency. One in every three Australian households supplies its own electricity – whether individually, in clusters or small communities. (more…)

I read just the other day about some study “they” did that says people who take pictures of their food and post the pictures on social media MAY have a mental problem… well I am about to prove that I MAY have this problem, dinner tonight was special, something I haven’t made since we moved off grid over 5 years ago now. Eggs Benedict. I used to make this at least once a month. I wondered if the altitude might be a problem, it sometimes works against me, and sometimes a dish does not work out at all.
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Satellite telephones were the stuff of off-gridders’ fantasies – until now. The new SPOT Global Phone is a portable sat phone that will retail for $499 (solar chargers not included). And it handles data at claimed speeds that are relatively fast, compared to older models. (more…)

Britain’s Chelsea Flower show won plaudits today for its off-grid sustainable garden from Australia.
Prince Harry visited, and Chef Jamie Oliver said: “I’ve had a good look around and my favourites so far (include) the Australian garden.
The design features a lush desert gorge with huge boulders, a native wildflower meadow and a natural billabong (water pool) and waterfalls using recycled water from nearby buildings. (more…)

Little by little I have been actively working on removing GMO foods from my pantry, to make it more painless I focus on one food or one food group at a time.

I have always been an avid label reader, when my (now grown) son was a child, he had been diagnosed with ADHD, something that is unfortunately all too common, especially in boys. One of the things we did was to modify his diet by removing everything, and I do mean everything that was any sort of sugar, that meant every ingredient that ended in “ose”, the only exception to that was lactose, fortunately that didn’t seem to bother him. Some of the items removed from his diet was sucrose (table sugar), glucose, sucrose, dextrose, fructose, the hardest one was dextrose, that can even be found in table salt! As long as we kept his diet going, he behaved so much better, fortunately I was a prolific and adventurous cook, I had no problems making anything he wanted or needed, my son and the rest of us ate quite well. It’s my son’s birthday today, happy birthday Josh! (more…)

Summer’s coming, and our thoughts are turning to outdoor fun and relaxation. Here are some items you can find online that are useful or essential, either to a camping weekend or a full-fledged off-grid life.

BUNK COT
When it comes to stacking the kids friends where you don’t have that much room, try this bunk-bed cot:

The Disc-O-Bed Cam-O-Cot makes an instant bunk bed and holds up to 400 pounds. That’s two fit adults or several children.
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In a recent article, I talked about all the critters that poke, stick, sting and bite, one of those critters we deal with out here are the scorpions, and it’s the beginning of scorpion season now. A few years back, we had a rash of them inside the sky castle, we were killing one and two a night, every night. They become active after dark, coming out to hunt other insects, mostly crickets and such. I wouldn’t mind except for their nasty sting. When we had that bad rash of them, I had been sitting in front of my laptop one evening, it was warm, I was wearing shorts, I felt something on my leg next to my knee, I thought it was a fly and absentmindedly brushed my leg with my hand, that was the first time (and hopefully last time) I got hit by a scorpion, I have to say, it HURTS! (more…)

Great views

I sit looking out the window, my view is magnificent, I am looking down across a high desert mountain valley, words cannot describe the beauty of the landscape that falls below me, but this is a harsh beauty, full of plants, bugs and critters that poke, stick, sting and bite. Some might find this a torture, I find it to be my Heaven on earth.

PB and I moved out here 5 years ago this last December, in some ways it was a huge move, in other ways it felt like coming home. After buying up just under 6 acres on a mountain side, in the high desert of far western Texas, one of the first things PB did was build our cabin, what would become our sky castle. (more…)

Koones: a one-woman industry of kit-home publishing

Author Sheri Koones champions this alternative path – prefabricated housing – that she has been promoting for years in a series of books about this option. The latest is “Pre-fabulous and Almost Off the Grid,” which features more than 30 homes built using some sort of prefabricated components. (more…)