Posts from — October 2010

VOLUNTARY SIMPLICITY: The Poetic Alternative to Consumer Culture (24 min) from NO WAY Productions on Vimeo.

Samuel Alexander, the Walden fan who we wrote about in an earlier post has been in touch with a copy of his essay, titled: “Deconstructing the Shed: Where I Live and What I Live For”. In December it will be published in the journal Concord Saunterer (dedicated to the works of Henry Thoreau).

Samuel has given us permission to include the essay in the next newsletter, in a few days. Here is a summary of the essay so you know what to expect. If you are not already registered, why not do so now? (more…)

Solar peaks can swamp the system

According to the Berliner Zeitung, the head of Germany’s energy agency DENA is warning that there is a real danger that solar power, could crash Gemany’s ageing electricity grid. (more…)

In December I plan on moving from an apartment into a van. I plan on gaining experience and hoping one day to get a very small efficient house off the grid.

ARCO's furry business partners (Dave Katz far right)

On balance its a good thing the pot industry may be taken out of criminal hands, but it will be a wrenching change for the pot-growers of Northern California, and with that change a-coming its a good time to tell the story of how those same pot growers helped save the planet……. by enabling the birth of the solar panel industry. It goes back to a deal many years ago between an avid pot smoker and a young, eager oil industry executive interviewed exclusively in this article for the first time. (more…)

Hi, and thanks for your comments on the previous section. In the latest excerpt from Off the Grid: Inside the Movement for More Space, Less Government, and True Independence in Modern America – (Penguin 2010), I visit an Amish community in Kentucky. Look forward to your comments:

Possibly the best-known off-gridders in the United States today, besides Daryl Hannah, are the Anabaptist Christians, also known as the Amish or Mennonites. Every morning TV show, at one time or another, has featured these quaintly dressed, anachronistic Americans going about their business in a horse and buggy, or making cheese the old-fashioned way. (more…)

Who would you want on your team?

The conventional wisdom is that if the system breaks down for reasons of economic collapse, or some sudden natural disaster, then the best place to be is the countryside, in a rural community with provisions and the means to grow more.

However a few folks on different discussion boards have been questioning that – wondering whether actually the city might be a better bet…..I have opened a discussion about that over in our forum.

Here are two views from the off-grid Facebook page:

Noreene Bailey-Treece says: I am in the country and would prefer to be there (in an Emergency. I have medical training. am used to going without so called vital services. i feel i would fare better at home in the country. As for shelters.. as a parent i would not take my children to one. there is too much risk and danger there for them. ie the superdome in New Orleans. (more…)

Nice...but not real nice

An Australian design company has won a local eco-building award for its huge Convertible House, which looks like an upmarket Nissen hut, with a curved, corrugated iron exterior; the wrinkly tin is ubiquitous in Australia — think water tanks and sheds. (more…)

ustralian paper The Melbourne Age has a big article featuring four individuals living off the grid in the Melbourne area and asking “What would you do if your water mains were shut off? Could you live with no electricity?”

After losing their home, this Kinglake family decided not to reconnect their phone, internet or television.

All it took was a single airborne ember. That was enough to spark the flame that destroyed the mud-brick Kinglake home of Daryl Taylor, his partner Lucy Filor, and their daughter, Maggie, on Black Saturday almost two years ago. Taylor fought the flames for 20 hours that day but the remains of their house are still uninhabitable – one of hundreds of homes in the Kinglake Ranges region that succumbed to the firestorm. (more…)

I plan on getting a truck with a camper shell and living in it starting in December.