Not a How-to. More a Why-to

The grid is everywhere, sending power to the light switch on the wall and water to the faucet in the kitchen. But is it essential? Should we depend on it and the giant corporate structure behind it? With energy prices soaring, the housing market in shambles, financial institutions collapsing, and unemployment hovering at devastating highs, up to a million Americans have already freed themselves from dependence on the Utility companies. More are joining the movement every day.

In Off the Grid: Inside the Movement for More Space, Less Government, and True Independence in Modern America, award-winning documentary filmmaker and part-time off-gridder, Nick Rosen, takes readers on a fascinating and complex journey through a seemingly simple lifestyle. Nick, who is Editor of this web site, traverses the US, encountering both luxury hideaways and harsh environs, to investigate the growing trend for off-the-grid living. His adventures take him from one overlooked part of the country to another, in rented cars that often double as hotels and on public transit when his subjects demand it. He spends time with all sorts of individuals and families striving to live the lives they want— bathing in hot springs, forgoing municipal power and amenities—in the ultimate search for freedom from government and its far-reaching grasp. (more…)

Dutch John works on his gasifier

Whenever Dutch John goes into town, which is as seldom as possible, he tends to walk or take the bike.

He describes himself as a “low profile anarchist and an off-gridder in the broadest senses of the word”. But it’s not just his environmental beliefs that prevent him from taking the car.

Every time he uses his twenty year old Volvo 240, first he has to clean up the cyclone bin, dump the char dust on the compost, fill the fuel bin with sixty pounds of wood, stacking a few sacks on the back seat for extra mileage, spark up the gasifier with a diesel glow plug, wait four minutes for it to heat up,  flare off the surplus carbon monoxide and hydrogen. And then he’s off. (more…)

Off-Grid.net is crowdsourcing

–if you live or work off the grid (ie without utility power or water), upload a video to help build a global portrait of an off-grid day.

Upload your video here.

Your crowdsourcing contribution to the “Off-Grid Life in a Day” could be a brief think-piece like this clip of Beans of Maine author Carolyn Chute.

It could be a guided tour of your smallholding. It might even be a glimpse of the tasks your household performs during a typical day, from chopping wood to pumping water to relaxing quietly on the back porch (more…)

Where to next?

As the Banksters continue to draw their massive paychecks, the rest of us are hunkering down for what looks increasingly like the end of economic growth in large parts of the country.

Everybody knows that the wealthy have in fact been bailed out. Sales of luxury goods continue to soar. At the same time, Jeff Weniger from Harris Private Bank estimates that over 9m Americans without jobs are receiving no support.

Jim Juczak  is located at the Woodhenge Sustainable Community: “The Center for the Study of Things Practical and Not So Practical.” Jim looks 40 but is in fact about 50. He is quite simply the best scrounger in upstate New York. He is one of the stars of Off the Grid

Jim scrounges building materials, clothes, food, junk, guns – just about anything. He lives to scrounge. Or rather he lives for free – his life is dedicated to not paying the market price for anything, and he loves to share his knowledge with others. (more…)

If you can manage to camp away from the water sources, and from the established campsites, then the many wonderful advantages of stealth camping will be yours. Stealth camping (also known as “wild camping”) is a cleaner, warmer and quieter way to camp, and it offers a much better connection with nature. In all likelihood no one has camped at your impromptu stealth-site before, and the ground will be pristine. (more…)

Not endorsed by Batman

Generator noise is one of the main problems – especially on quiet summer nights. Subaru’s inverter technology reduces the sound level. (more…)