Living Off The Grid

In this post Mr. Roensch discusses some of the problems you may encounter while searching for off-grid property, including water rights, land orientation and the unavailability of proper real estate search tools.

Once I realized how important oil was I decided it would be well worth the effort to figure out a way to make it myself. With a bit of searching I found a hand crank oil expeller and have been making all of my own vegetable oils ever since.

The active ingredient in Draino and similar drain cleaners is sodium hydroxide. It sounds scary – and it can be – but most of us know this stuff as plain old caustic soda or lye, which I use in my homemade soap since it saponifies (turns into soap and is no longer lye) once mixed [...]

Every family should have an emergency preparedness kit. In fact, we should all have several kits: One for the home, one for the car trunk…

What is it about Berkey Water Filters that makes them so popular among survivalists, off-grid folks, and even third-world aid programs? I asked myself that exact question not long ago. I wondered if it was just good marketing, or if the Berkey (I thought they were called Berkley water filters at the time for some [...]

To be snowed-in without phone or power and to see that I have season’s worth of dry wood; several months worth of multi-colored jars of home-canned and dried food in the pantry; a root cellar stocked with potatoes, cured cheese, carrots and apples…

If you live off grid, have lived off the grid in the past, know a lot about renewable energy, or just have a story or how-to you think our readers would like – let us know!

Looking for online solar training resources? Look no further – here is a list of some of the best websites and companies offering PV design and installation courses online.

Our friend Arthur from the Denver Urban Homesteading Group shows us how to make soap using lye, lard and coconut oil.

Microbusiness Independence also discusses everything from idea conceptualization and budgeting to shipping rates and taxes. It has to cover a lot of ground so is more broad than deep.

I think when it gets warm I’ll go out there with him and try to calculate the flow and head. Not being a microhydro expert, I had to do a bit of research on how to figure out the flow and head of a stream.

Those first old-timers – like the wise, hardened and completely lovable Aunt Arie and the cantankerous, ornery moonshiner Simmie Free – were already on the verge of extinction back then and can only be listened to and learned from in the pages of those first Foxfire books.

We’re not expecting this to happen any time soon, but the knowledge that we have a great property in a beautiful location makes my workday in the office that much more enjoyable.

But if you think Denver is expensive, try buying a home in California. Even in this economy, when real estate prices falling more every day, a friend emailed me about a home for sale in Piedmont, CA that she’s looking at. The price? Ahem…

If you are a self-reliance blogger and would like another venue on which to publish your content, please consider the following opportunity…

Your ten minute credit card sales pitch couldn’t wait until descent? It had to happen two hours into the flight and two hours from landing? How considerate of your flight crew to wake me up from a MUCH needed sleep to talk about credit cards and frequent flyer miles.

If there is one thing every (sane) gardener can agree on, it is the importance of compost. But where we all differ is on the details. Gardeners have different composting philosophies on things like…

We purchased a 15 acre mini-farm in Hillsville, Virginia. We are not ready to move there yet, as both of us like our jobs and wish to remain in Denver working for the time being so we’re looking for a caretaker who wants to get out of the rat race for awhile and live in the beautiful Blue Ridge mountains.

Below is a video of me checking out the Global Sun Oven solar cooker first hand. This product honestly deserves to be singled out for it’s overall quality because it really is a great solar oven.

The geography and Blue Ridge Mountain culture had a visceral effect on me that I can’t quite explain, except to say that it just felt like… home.