Posts from — April 2012

Happily married couple with 12 year old son and beloved cats looking to move off-grid and/or into a eco-village/community. Husband is a hard worker who can build just about anything (has been doing flooring with tile, ceramic, etc. for 15 years) and has experience with construction. Wife is a stay at home mom whose skills have been counseling, researching, advertising, typing, sales, and fingers flying over a keyboard. Loves to cook and eager to learn “the old ways” of doing things.

We no longer want to be a cog in the wheel, but instead be self-sustaining.

Gul: Wants to be alone

India is one of the world’s most off-grid countries – mainly because so many of its inhabitants were never on the grid in the first place.  As hundreds of millions struggle to get connected, Bollywood actress Gul Panag will throw open the doors of her weekend home, one of the first in India to be built to eco standards.

Indians say it’s a leg up for the green home movement, and in that upwardly mobile culture, want to move away from just the symbolic rain-water-harvesting-and-solar- panel installation design to an expensively laid out vision, capped by a system of evaluation, rating and certification. (more…)

Art and Nan Kellam bought an uninhabited island off the coast of Maine in 1949 and lived there for more than 35 years, content with little more than each other’s company. They had no electricity or running water, and heated the house they built with firewood from their forest. To fetch supplies, they rowed a dory several miles to the mainland and back.

New Jersey native and avid conservationist Peter Blanchard III tells the unusual love story of Art and Nan Kellam in “We Were an Island,” a book based largely on journals kept by the Kellams. (more…)

Fred: Greens make him see Red

Canadian Country singer  Fred Eaglesmith is our kind of environmentalist.

“I’m not part of the trend. I’m not part of the Green Revolution,” he tells the Globe and Mail. “I don’t like the green revolution. Fashion is always a bad thing. It is very fashionable to be green right now. That means it will go away.”

He’s pushing a new album at the moment – needs to be a bit controversial, but we’re liking it.  Nick Rosen wrote an article a couple of years back – Brown is the new Green, and Eaglesmith is echoing that philosophy when he says ”Corporations love it. Now they are marketing green. It’s just horrible. Green will go the way of the wide-legged pant. (more…)

Government may not heed it – when do they ever listen to the people?  - but big business is getting the message.

Zillow, a division of Forbes, is celebrating the off-grid housing boom in a blogpost titled “Stories of People Who Are Doing it: Living Greener, Off-the-Grid.” Here is an excerpt:

“Off-the-grid” may conjure images of die-hard survivalists, but the term actually has a spectrum of meaning.
“Now more people are starting to understand how quickly we are driving toward the edge of our ecological capacity on the planet,” said Katrina Morgan, principal architect for Fermata Consulting, a green building consulting firm. “They are not just fringe types anymore.”Many of those disconnected from the electrical grid are living in homes powered by renewable resources like wind and solar. Some eschew other public utilities, like municipal water and sewage systems. Others forage for building materials. Many live communally. Here are a few of their stories. (more…)

Off-Grid TV is casting for entertaining communities or families for our planned documentary series.

We are searching throughout North America and Europe for  committed, entertaining,  off-beat, unique, outgoing communities, families or couples living Off the Grid or about to start doing so. (more…)

Im a 29 year old GWM, nurse, veteran, very laid back. Ive been running the rat race for to long now, I feel like I should be living the ideal life for me, which means one that is sustainable and at peace with nature. I’m Native American, and an all around Okie, if you have any suggestions or can help me to get OTG please get in touch with me, mwbannister@gmail.com or text 9185049238

Living off grid and making very little money, dental and health insurance is pretty much out of the question, so being proactive about my dental health is something that has really become something important to me. I know that many health issues are directly influenced by the state of your dental health, mainly from bacteria and infections that might be simmering just below the surface. (more…)