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Energy

Reuters Foundation turns on to off-grid

Here is a recent Reuters Foundation report on off-grid real estate:

Often called survivalists or “preppers”, many escapees twin an expectation of impending doom – or outright social collapse – with a deep disbelief in the government’s ability to cope.

Buying land — or “bugout” property, derived from military slang for a retreat — is a priority, with real estate networks compiling national lists of “prepper lands”.

Most survivalist land purchases are in the mountains of the U.S. northwest, primarily Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.

In 2011, a blogger and former U.S. Army intelligence officer named James Wesley, Rawles – he includes the comma in his name – wrote a widely circulated post urging “freedom-loving Christians” to move to the region as a safe haven.

He dubbed the area the American Redoubt and urged followers to “buy land that will maximise your self-sufficiency.”

It is unclear how many heeded his call, but the Economist magazine estimated they numbered in the “thousands of families”.

Idaho in particular recorded a big influx, says Reuters Foundation.

The state had one of the top U.S. growth rates in 2015-16, driven in part by escapees from California and neighbouring Washington state, according to Boise State assistant professor Jeffrey Lyons.

Disaffected Californians make up a substantial number of clients for Black Rifle Real Estate, which says online that it helps people “Flee the City to the freedom and safety of Rural America and the famed American Redoubt.”

Broker Todd Savage said his business is at an all-time high, driven by frustration with how many U.S. cities are governed.

“Most of our clients are now looking to sell their postage-stamp size properties … and make what we call a ‘Strategic Relocation’ to a free state,” Savage said in an email.

Driven by new demand, the company is expanding outside of the so-called Redoubt — to Arizona, which Savage said enjoys lower taxes and far looser gun controls than liberal California.

“Arizona is the new Idaho for many seeking relief from the tyranny in California,” he said.

EMBRACE LAND

Conservatives are not alone in the new land rush.

Haynes said his clients in North Carolina are evenly split between survivalists and “homesteaders” — young, liberal, less affluent families seeking peace, quiet and a sustainable life.

“When I started out in 1973, the big thing then was the ‘back to the land’ movement,” said Neil Shelton with the Ozark Land Company, a developer active in Missouri and Arkansas.

What he is seeing now is a “new iteration” of that movement, he said, and one driven by innovation: the pre-built ‘tiny home’, typically 400-600 square feet.

Small structures have made home ownership more affordable,

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off grid showhome under construction in 2021
Community

Welcome To Our Showhome – Open Day 27th August

The off-grid showhome started as a lockdown project – a spur of the moment bid for some land in an online auction in 2020.

Now it is a full -fledged reality and our next open weekend is August 27th 2023 – we welcome local residents who want to see what is happening , and also anyone who  is considering a similar project and needs advice on how to build.  Contact news@off-grid.net for more info – You can also watch the youtube film which shows the building process. Go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95qqnOWnfk4.

In years to come, the wood will benefit the environment in many ways, and also benefit the local community.  After all – they helped to plant it after we put out a call on Facebook seeking volunteers. They will use the shed to make tea and shelter from adverse conditions.

Three local scythers turned up in a 1950s LandRover. They looked like the Detectorists from the BBC series starring Toby Jones, except that instead of metal detectors they had long handled Austrian scythes which they honed frequently, as they slowly scythed their way through bracken and overgrown grass without disturbing the earth beneath, saving all sorts of tiny wildlife from abrupt eviction.

Each tree required a stake to be pounded in the ground, then a spade-slit for the tiny sapling itself.  The tree-guard slides over the tree and is fastened to the stake and presto – add ten years and you have a mature English woodland.

It was laborious process and by the end of the first day we had only scythed half the field and planted 150 trees.  Out of 500

We headed back up the track expecting to return a week later.  But then came another lockdown. The second day of planting never happened a year later.

Now the woodland is beginning to take shape, the shed is built and our neighbours have erected their shelters as well.

Please come and visit – and help plants some more trees.

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Off Grid Home

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What you donate goes straight to Gaza the next day

Whatever your views on the Arab-Israel conflicts, and on the Hamas atrocities of October 9th, nobody can no doubt that the humanitarian crisis demands immediate action by all of us – especially now that UNWRA has been exposed as a deeply suspect organisation. Sending money to huge bureaucracies like Save the Children or UNWRA – you know for sure that much of it goes in admin, bribes and other priorities than your own.

So if you want to help Palestinians on the ground in Gaza, who are surviving on tiny morsels of food, limited water and intermittent energy, if you want all your money to go straight to those in need – then we have a way.

Our cameraman in Gaza, will spend what we send him on buying solar panels, and film himself donating them to ordinary families. He has already been donating cash this way – brought in via Egypt.

He shot our latest Youtube footage, showing him distributing donated money – 50 shekels at a time. You can see the ID cards of the women as he hands them the money. You can see they are innocent citizens and not terrorists. Watch the video on our socials, and tell your friends.

Insta
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C3SFn31IQld/?igsh=a3Nxa3R4YjFnNDZo

Facebook
https://fb.watch/qaYFhPNFqc/

Tiktok
Banned

Youtube shorts

But solar panels are more valuable than money – they are the gift that keeps on giving. We have found a supply of panels in Gaza, and any donations received will be used to purchase them and give them to communities in need of energy to power their lights and phones.

Please paypal to nick@off-grid.net and we will get the money straight out there the next day.

Mark your paypal: Solar Panels for Palestine.

All you need to go off-grid All you need to go off-grid

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Community

Bluetti Batteries Continue To Make Strides

Bluetti is one of the pacemakers in the home battery market, with an online following crowdfunding some of its latest products. Over the coming weeks at Off-Grid.net and our associated Youtube channel, we will be test-driving some of its leading products and comparing them to the competition – Jackery, Anker, Allpowers and others.

The company styles itself as a pioneer in the clean energy storage industry, and is to showcase its new model EP900 and other power backup products at the upcoming CES 2023, the world’s biggest tech conference. It claimed to redefine home energy at the Las Vegas Convention Center, North Hall #9335, Jan. 5-8, 2023.

The upgraded EP900 & B500 feature a 9kW inverter and expandable capacity that starts at 9kWh with a single B500 LFP battery and ends at 79kWh when paired with 16 batteries. The system can be integrated directly into most solar panel systems, allowing for up to 9kW max solar input. Besides its peak-load shifting mode to reduce electric bills, it also acts as an uninterruptible power supply (UPS) that switches instantly to battery power in 10ms after the grid power fails.The stellar combo of the year will also hit the stage. A month earlier, it raised $11 million from more than 4,000 backers on Indiegogo, another record in BLUETTI’s history.

The 16-outlet solar generator pumps out 5kW pure sine wave power and can be charged via 8kW AC+ Solar dual input. The AC500 can handle anything from home blackouts to outdoor camping when teamed with one to six B300S LFP batteries for a maximum capacity of 18,432Wh.

BLUETTI has a diverse product range that can be classified by size, usage, or design. It has a lineup of portable generators called the EB series, such as the popular 10-pound EB3A. The AC200MAX, AC200P and EP500, EP500Pro make up the best all-in-one power giant collection. Options for power stations are growing in number as BLUETTI’s R&D team continues to roll out products based on customer demand.

 

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Landbuddy>I Want To Go Off-Grid

Seeking Landbuddy To Go 50/50 on Land

Hello my name is JB and i want to start an offgrid homestead in the wilderness of western Canada, i am looking to live a self sufficient lifestyle where i grow and raise my own food, I’d like to find someone else interested in living a similar offgrid life in the wilderness, my plan right now is both of us pay $5000 each for land totaling $10,000 allowing us to get more land for our dollar, i’d like to farm a small flock of 30 sheep, several other farm animals and a vegetable garden so i am in need of atleast 10 acres. My plan for developing my land is to move onto the land in a wall tent early summer(June) to create a temporary encampment while i clear trees to form sheep pastures and mill the logs to create a small cabin to live in year round, of course living in Canada the cabin would need to be ready by mid September.

Having a Landbuddy living nearby on their lot would be beneficial in many ways, as much as people want to be isolated from civilization a small community is pretty handy, helps mental health but 2 people working together to survive in the woods, hunting, fishing and cooking together along with lending an extra hand with construction and yard work increases the chances of successfully creating a settlement in the forest.

I am 27, since i was 14 I’ve wanted to build a home in the woods and live an independent low costing life, ive always enjoyed being in the woods growing up and bonding with animals, i have lived in the forest before for 15 months in a tiny cabin i built, so if i find a landbuddy interested in going 50/50 on land i can also help you create your house and get you setup on your land, i played team sports for over 12 years so i enjoy working as a team. Feel free to contact me if you’re interested, 

If you’re interested how i would setup my homestead ill continue to rant,  The cabin will be created out of milled  lumber from the first trees i cut down, id like to start with a 16’x16′ cabin with room to expand in the future, a well for drinking water would be luxurious but until then boiling water is an okay alternative or perhaps a nearby spring. A woodstove would be my source of heat for the cabin, solar panels for small electronics like cellphones, laptops and dewalt batteries, maybe a small coffee maker lol for appliances id like to get things running on propane, so for electricity id use solar, propane and for emergencies a generator. My food will mainly come from my land, like the vegetable garden, farm animals like chickens and sheep but being in the woods creates a great opportunity to hunt …

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Land

Easy Off-Grid Living in Panama (Central America)

Live off-grid in a community of 24 homes with like-minded, friendly people in a very safe, fun, beautiful setting.
You don’t need to be a hardcore mountain man or mountain woman. These are fully set up off-grid homes complete
with solar, water, sewage, and your own farming plot, and it’s absolutely beautiful.
We have One, Two, and Three Bedroom homes available starting at only $100,000 fully set up and ready to go.
Visit our website at www.offgridpanama.com or call us at (904)236-4737

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How We Went Off-Grid – Book and eBook

Hi – this is the page for our new book, which tells you exactly how to get yourself a warm comfortable home, and a 3-acre market garden for under £50,000, in Wales and certain other parts of the UK. Please contact us with any questions – news@off-grid.net

You Can Buy The Book Here!

For those who already have the book – you can download the Objections Appendix here, and you should already have the password stated in the book.

PRESS RELEASE

HOW WE WENT OFF GRID deserves a place on any “Energy Crisis bookshelf” – pub date Sept 15th 2022 – written by a couple who appeared in two episodes of NEW LIVES IN THE WILD (C5). Stuffed with technical detail on how to survive the coming downturn, and a passionate description of a planning battle against NIMBYs to build their eco-house in Pembrokeshire National Park.

The authors live by the maxim that “growing your own food is like printing your own money,” and the book is a technical/business manual about how to legally get a home for under £50,000, that is warm and heated with a large market garden.
The cover line”Easy-to-follow business plan for simple living.” shows how you can turn that garden into a business. Some of your readers/viewers/listeners may have dreamed of cashing in the house, but others may only have £20,000 to spare. This business plan is scalable, from the 3 acres that the Watkinsons bought, up to 30 acres if a larger group wanted to live this way.
About half the book is taken up by the planning application – a huge amount of work, and a high bar to cross if you are just two people without an expensive planning consultant..
Very unusually, Chapter 2 is by the planning officer who granted the permission, detailing how she was victimised at work because of her support for eco-development in a National park.
Chapter 5 is a blow by blow account of the locals’ “Objection campaign” opposing permission.

MORE INFO FROM news@off-grid.net

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Community

From Burning Man to Burning Van – Nomadland author Jessica Bruder talks to off-grid.net

It seems amazing to the off-grid and van-dwelling communities that a low-budget docudrama about life on the road could be about to receive a large handful of Oscars at the ceremony later this month.

The movie Nomadland even has a scene about how to go to the toilet when you are living in a van with a kindly, elderly lady demonstrating the size of bucket you need.

The Director, Chloe Zhao is the daughter of a Chinese self-made billionaire, and it’s even more surprising that a woman like her would want to make a movie like this.  Zhao’s previous two films were reinterpretations of the classic Western, and “Chloe had been looking to make a movie about young van dwellers”, said journalist Jessica Bruder, author of the book Nomadland on which the movie is closely based.

Bruder is a burner – a regular visitor to the annual Burning Man festival.  She found the theme for her book in the nearby town of Empire, when the sole employer closed the factory, and the community scattered to the four winds. Even the zip code was cancelled.

Her 2017 book was optioned by a couple of producers close to Frances McDormand (of Three Billboards fame), and when they approached Chloe Zhao, says Bruder, Chloe switched her focus from young van-dwellers to the older generation of vandwellers in the USA – the ones who call themselves Snowbirds – because they flock down south together in the winter months.

The film is about the sense of community, and the loneliness, and the constant search for work which makes them analogous to the cow-pokes of old, who would head where the work was.  But for this generation (at least in the movie), the main employer is Amazon, rather than a cattle farm.  And the seasonal work is mainly in the run-up to Thanksgiving.

These modern cowboys and girls are people of what used to be called retirement age – 60-somethings who through bad luck or bad judgement had ended up outside the safety net of pension and medical care – the film is stuffed with characters played by real people who really live on the road, and their stories are mostly to do with divorces that decimated their savings, or an illness that reduced their ability to earn. At that age, it’s understandable that very few opted for this life out of choice. Most feel it’s something they were forced into.  It’s only the younger age groups where two big things have changed. Firstly, the idea of a job for life and a mortgage for life are just not on the radar for many young people.  And just as important, – the technology has enabled a different mindset, mobile technology means you can be warm and comfortable anywhere you can locate some solar panels and a battery.  And the internet means you can work from anywhere …

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Community

Make a fresh start – find a new life with Landbuddy 2.0

Have your circumstances changed recently? Have you realised you’re no longer tied to an office, or even a city? Has your boss agreed you can work from anywhere? Or are you contemplating a new life without a steady salary?

Millions across the country are thinking the same thing – what happens next?

Moving to a piece of land somewhere, living in a tiny home or an RV, might be the right answer. Cut your costs, enjoy clean air, end the commute, anywhere with a broadband signal. City living, mass transit, bars, clubs, offices just got old.

RENT LAND HERE

Landbuddy.com is a match-making service. We help unite the global community of people who love the land, who live off the grid, or are thinking of doing so, who own land & want to share it so it’s used and enjoyed by more people.

We serve particularly those who want to earn a living from the land.

We offer a seamless environment for owners and renter to come to an agreement; we act as a clearing house for all the services needed for improving and living on the land. and a place where the community can share ideas and support each other and itself.

If you are a land owner you can go here and offer your land for rent. It might be for farming, or camping, or making art, or mending fishing nets – or living off the grid. If you own land that is up to you to settle with the people who contact you – and it depends what you want your land to be used for.

If you are a seeker after off-grid land you can go here to register and search our database.

If you just want to help, or find others to move in with, or find a more informal deal, go to our old

Landbuddy service which already has over 1000 postings from people who are looking to create new off-grid communities or offering land where communities can form.

If you just want to help, or find others to move in with, or find a more informal deal, go to our old Landbuddy page which already has 1000 postings of people who are looking for others to create a new community or offering land for communities to form

you can buy and sell land on our free classifieds here.https:// Off-grid.net/classifieds

Here is a quick guide: https://landbuddy.sharetribe.com/en/infos/how_to_use

Explore New LandBuddy Go To Old LandBuddy

If renting is not your thing, you can buy and sell land on our free classifieds here.

Here is a quick guide:

https://landbuddy.sharetribe.com/en/infos/how_to_use

– please check out our new Landing Page and let us know what you think of it.

You can register and offer your land for rent to like-minded folks in just a few minutes – GO HERE.

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Second Sleep – Book Review

The Second Sleep by Robert Harris – Buy it on Amazon US – an elegant, post-apocalyptic thriller
A priest investigates a vicar’s untimely death in a future Britain where reason is banished by dogma

The title of the book refers to the once common practice of having a period of wakefulness in the middle of the night, before returning to bed. It’s a powerful image that posits the current climate, in which much of the country enjoys relative health, wealth and freedom from outdated superstitions, as a brief, lucid window between two long stretches of darkness.

The Second Sleep: the Sunday Times 1 bestselling novel

One of the ways you know a good novel is by the other books you reach for as comparisons. Robert Harris’s latest, The Second Sleep, is a work of speculative fiction set in Britain 800 years into the future, after a “systemic collapse of technical civilisation” known as the Apocalypse. Into the void of the “Dark Age” steps a rejuvenated and dogmatic church, whose authoritarian rule and obsessive suppression of heretical “scientism” ensure that people live in brutal and backward conditions.

Harris’s bleak imagined world issues a clarion call to the present, urging us to recognise the value of progress, the importance of woolly concepts like liberalism and the rule of law, and all the other ideals we’ve spent generations fighting for yet seem prepared to sacrifice on the altar of populism. For make no mistake, this novel may be set in a Wessex that’s at once futuristic and quasi-medieval, but it’s very much about the here and now, about Trump and Brexit and the Govian rejection of experts.

Christopher Fairfax is a newly ordained priest who serves under the sinister Bishop Pole of Exeter. He has been sent to a village, Addicott St George, deep in a valley often cut off by the violent storms that beset this future England. The vicar of the village, Father Lacy, has recently died, and Pole has dispatched Fairfax to bury the old priest.

Harris is a master of plotting and, in elegant, understated third-person prose, he ratchets the tension ever upwards. A mysterious figure appears at Lacy’s funeral, casting doubt on the accidental nature of the priest’s death. There is a strange tower in the woods – the Devil’s Chair – around which human bones are discovered. There’s the Proceedings and Papers of the Society of Antiquaries, the records of a heretical movement. There’s a letter from a Prof Morgenstern, winner of the 1999 Nobel prize for “physic”, which notes that in the pre-Apocalyptic past “London existed at any moment only six meals removed from starvation” and that “society has reached a level of sophistication that renders it uniquely vulnerable to total collapse”. Sure enough, the Apocalypse hits in 2025, with thousands dying from previously preventable diseases, and more killed in brutal internecine wars.

There’s the echo …

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Community

Send us your footage and photos

This is a shout-out to our readers to ask – please send us thousands of your off-grid photos – hundreds of minutes of video footage of you and your off-grid life. C’mon down to our YouTube channel – you can even star in it – we are looking for off-grid communities or individuals to become our next YouTube stars.

With the amazing Smartphones most of us now possess, we can all make photography and videography a part of our life. We are all citizen journalists.

lease send us your stills or videos using photo and video apps, via Google docs or Wetransfer.com.

You can email news@off-grid.net for more guidance on what to send and how to send it.

If you do not live off-grid – you can still share videos of yourself talking about why you want to live off-grid – especially at this difficult time, when Coronavirus confines so many to their own homes.

We know from emails we receive from our readers how many of you want to flee the city now, and start a new life of self-sufficiency.

We also understand you want to look great in every picture you share on our social media platforms. You can even hire a professional to edit photos, for example using On Click.
But we can also edit the footage for you and please ret assured that whatever you send us will be used to best effect. We want you to look good – when you look good, then we look good. So don’t be shy – send us your most revealing moments and most interesting off-grid technologies and we will take care of the rest.
And it really is very easy to film and shoot stills on a phone camera these days – the only limitation is he amount of memory and the bandwidth to send it to us being included in your tariff – but will all-inclusive phone plans even this is within the scope of many. And if not, just wait until the next time you go into town and then jump on the bandwidth in a cafe or library.

Photo and video apps are a boon, allowing you to edit with just a few taps on the mobile. Stills editing apps can change the look and feel of the photographs, from cropping unwanted objects to the addition of stickers or background. There are a few advanced photo editing apps which allow you to remove imperfections on the face, such as wrinkles, dark circles, and white spots.

Video editing apps can be used to do a basic edit – try Vidtrim, Quik, and Adobe Premiere Clip.

There are multiple reasons to use photo editing apps:
Add stickers
If you want to capture yourself standing outside your off-grid home, you can do it. There are various ways to add and remove elements that are in the …

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