OFG-HowToFreeYourself.svg

2014

Wish list

wishlist

Everyone has a wish list, right? Although one of the secrets to happiness is being contented with what you have, you can still wish for more and better, just as long as those thoughts don’t take over your entire world.

Honestly, I’m pretty contented with my life, I have a place to live, have few and small bills, have a good vehicle to drive, have great family-friends-neighbors and pets… That being said, I do have a wish list, things that could be better-improved or changed, here it is.

Read More »
Community

New Slow City by William Powers

powersThe Slow Movement is slowly becoming mainstream.

Several years ago, William (Bill) Powers, after a decade in international aid work, embarked upon an experiment. He spent a year in a one-room cabin without running water or electricity in a farm in North Carolina, subtitled “off the grid and beyond the American dream”, he wrote a diary in his green-living memoir “Twelve By Twelve”. Now, in New Slow City, Powers decides to up the ante. While it might be easy to craft a simpler life far away from the neuroses of modern-day urban life, is it at all possible to live by the deeper principles of Twelve By Twelve smack-bang in the middle of Manhattan’s obsession with speed?

Read More »
Community

Livin’ large by goin’ small

large-small

I am fascinated by the tiny home or tiny house movement, I have lived in fairly small spaces for a number of years, first living in a single wide, 14×70 mobile home, that started me on my journey to living with and in less. PB and I are good at living in tight quarters, we rarely bump into each other, even with the 2 dogs, we get along pretty well.

Read More »

Living in a shed? Why not?

Food, water and shelter are 3 of the main requirements to live, today we will talk about shelter, your home. Many of us don’t have the finances to buy a house outright, personally I wouldn’t recommend getting a mortgage for a home, that is major debt. So if you want your own home, what are some other options? One option is to buy a shed or workshop type building and finish it out as a home.

Read More »

12% of population will go off-grid: Accenture

Consulting company Accenture forecast that 12 per cent of American households will be off-grid by 2035, and 11% in Europe.

Steady growth of distributed energy resources and energy efficiency measures could cause significant “demand disruption” and drive down utilities’ revenues by up to $48 billion a year in the United States and (EURO)61 billion a year in Europe by 2025, according to Accenture’s Digitally Enabled Grid research.

Read More »

It’s been 8 years now…

PICT0039sm

This week, we have many things to be thankful for, Christmas is fast approaching, we are healthy, there is food in the fridge and on the shelves, our bills are small and few. That last thing is very important especially right now, the job I had been working has slowed up so much to almost be non-existent, fortunately we don’t require much income to remain solvent and happy.

Read More »
Community

Should homeowners with solar panels pay to maintain electrical grid?

010201

The costs of solar energy are plummeting, and now are about on par with the electricity generated at big power plants. This new reality intensifies a long-running business and regulatory battle, between the mainline electric utility companies and newer firms that provide solar systems for homeowners’ rooftops. Sometimes the rivalry looks more like hardball politics than marketplace economics.

Read More »

Roswell Bunker for sale

ROSWELL, N.M. (AP) — An underground missile silo is currently one of New Mexico’s hottest real estate properties.
More than 40 people, some from out of state, have called about buying the silo near Roswell, real estate agent Jim Moore said Friday.
“This one of the few missile silos for sale in the United States,” Moore said. “It’s one of the more unusual listings that I’ve come across.”
According to KOB-TV (https://bit.ly/16fIPSr ), the silo is on the market for $295,000. The deal includes 25 acres of surrounding land and 280 acres of water rights.

Read More »
Community

Homesteading, the good, the bad and the ugly

hs2

Or, what could possibly go wrong?

I found this posted on a homesteading FaceBook page, this is probably one of the most honest assessments of the reality of a young family jumping in with both feet on a homesteading venture that I have seen. When you first start out, you have all these grand ideas about what you are going to do and how to do it, then as time goes by, reality sets in and quite frankly it’s hard, and that’s if nothing goes wrong, and believe me, things go wrong.

Read More »

Fugitive Family

America's Fugitive Family episode features cop-biter and his daughtersThe Irish Times reports on an American family being featured on Channel 4 TV tonight.

They have spent the last 14 years living in isolation on a 47-acre compound since granddad, John Joe, skipped bail and threatened to kill any law-enforcement officer who dared step onto his land.

Reaching into a cage, 16-year-old Bubba Gale grabs a pet chicken. But he has no intention of playing with it. Grinning, he lays it on to a tree stump and deftly chops off the animal’s head with his axe.

Read More »

Off-Grid in Terlingua TX

02

I remember, shortly after we moved to our off-grid life in far west Texas, one day we had the radio playing, we could only get (and still only get) one radio station, a public radio station, we heard an interview, they were talking to another crazy off-gridder who lived south of us (I say crazy with the utmost of respect and love). His name, John Wells. I quickly discovered his blog and started following him.

Read More »

Small town politics

feuding_edited

You have found the perfect piece of land, it’s out in a rural area, you don’t have many neighbors, as time goes by you get to know the precious few folk who live around you, then it happens… you begin hearing little snippets of gossip, there is some sort of feud going on and you are being pulled in, asked to be part of one of the factions. This may be a long standing problem, or it may be something that just started, so what are you going to do now?

Read More »

off-grid.net

Join the global off-grid community

Register for a better experiencE on this site!

Available for Amazon Prime