Off Grid Self Sustaining Lifestyle Documentary with Les Stroud
Les Stroud, probably best known for his Survivorman series, talks about living off the grid and chasing the dream of a self sustaining lifestyle in his documentary (Watch it below) Off The Grid. You can buy it online for $25 from his website here, where it is described as:
“In this poignant and personal documentary Les Stroud and Sue Jamison, along with their two young children, share their experience leaving a world of electricity bills and water problems and going ‘off the grid’ as they move to their acreage in Northern Ontario – escaping the clutches of government controlled electricity and water.”
Les Stroud’s Off The Grid Documentary…
Watch The Rest:
Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7
Man-o-man, do I know how he feels. Who can’t identify with that overwhelming pull to live ‘The Good Life’? If you couldn’t, I bet you wouldn’t be reading this blog. What I respect most about Les and Sue Stroud is that they are honest with themselves about the need to balance sustainable, rural living with modern technology and some of the basic comforts that make life a little easier. I also respect the way Les advocates – like I do – that people embrace the “right” technology to HELP them live a life less addicted to technology in general, as is implied when he says “Into the new progress“. After all, if pioneer homesteaders could do it over 200 years ago, it gives me hope that a self-sustaining lifestyle is achievable for me and my family in a time when we have solar power for our electricity, an internet connect for supplemental income and communication, and all of the wonderful technology that has been developed over the last century, including tractors, super-efficient wood burning stoves, refrigerators, microwaves, freezers, televisions, chain saws… The point I’m trying to make, and one which I was happy to see made in the Off Grid documentary by the Strouds, is that technology isn’t always a bad thing. It can, in fact, help us achieve sustainability on a single-family homestead. Moving forward in the RIGHT direction is better than moving backwards, in my humble opinion.
This is very good stuff. Going off the gird wiht Les Stroud. A very honest and straight docu. No bling bling here. The way it ought to be. The man is an inspiration to me, and should be one to all.
I have been off grid for about one year now…I press oil from sunflower seeds for my basic energy. There is such a lot to learn and I feel that there is really no hope for most people. Perhaps I have chosen a too complicated system but it does work….. but I worry about breakdowns with the machines and replacing them. Passive systems with lots of insulation are an answer as is working in a community. -mat
thanks for the video. I seen this on TV.Will Les put a update on TV ? The question is what will the kids do down the road.I have seen alot of kids who are bitter later in life and crave the city life very unprepared.It is hrd to know what the balance is…any thoughts ?
I really enjoyed your OFF Grid Show its the only program worth watching all week. With the depression and economic chaos ahead your idea to move to the bush is really smart. Can you explore methods of off grid clothes washing and drying because that seems to be the biggest challenge for comfortable off grid life with spending huge sums on Propane powered appliances. One of the biggest limitation to life up north is growing your vegetables in the winter maybe you can explore green houses for the bush that can handle the cold temps. Your the Ginny Pig for the rest of us Thanks
Dear Les, Sue and family
Thank you for the great documentary. My wife and I met 13 years ago at a historical reenactment in northern minnesota. I have had alot of military training in the marine corp on survival, I watch your shows religously and it takes me back with fond memories.. We have always dreamed of doing what you and your family are doing. thank you for all your passion and dedication to make this world a better place.
Erick, Marni, and Thorin
This is beautiful! This is my dream too. Thank you for sharing this.
I loved this documentary because you have the courage to make a difference in the experiential life of your children. Most people are too afraid, not of the elements, but of the independent thinking required by self-sufficiency. Parents benefit and enrich their children’s strength of character when they encourage them to remove themselves from the social grid enough to forge ahead on a unique path.
In addition, living away from modern conveniences provides the silences needed for growth of mind and soul which eventually result in innovative and constructive ideas such as those which powered pioneers on the frontier. Basic living is the natural milieu for man, out of which come mechanical innovation and natural harmony and which create a beauty and a music modern man has forsaken and no longer allows himself to reach. Bravo! If I were raising my family again, I would love to do what you are.
This is great stuff, what an inspiration!!!
Dear Less and Family.
Welcome to the “off grid lifestyle”. It is not for the meek. I have been off-grid since 1995 and I think you are off to a good start. I used the composting toilet for about 8 years but never got the hang of turning the waste into useable mulch. I had to haul it out in a bucket, after putting down a plastic carpet runner to protect the floor. Spills are just not an option. Now I have a septic tank and flush toilet. I spent a year or so planning before taking the plunge with a 12 volt system and a couple of year ago upgraded to 48 volts. Like you, I started with Trace inverters but now use Outback. For refrigeration I went with a Sunfrost 12 volt RF-16 which runs off two golf cart batteries costing about 1/3 of the Surrette batteries you purchased (Golf cart batteries have about half the life span but cost 1/3 as much). For your battery connections I suggest the shortest lengths of cable possible, say 4 to 5 inches between terminals to maximize performance and reduce line loss. I had a bad experience with propane refrigerators and found the low-voltage Sunfrost to be much better. Wind energy is good, but sometime it is better to mount it away from the house rather than to it, because in high winds the harmonic produced by the wind generator can be felt in the house. My well is solar powered also, but because of our drought in southern California, I have to have it hauled in. One good way to capture the rain is by installing roof gutters leading to large water tanks near the structures corners.(on my list to do now). Great books are available at realgoods.com and I recommend Michael Pott’s books as a great place to start for the basics and afordablesolar.com is one of our best sources for the hardware. For the kids and family I highly recommend satellite TV, so that you don’t miss a single episode of Survivorman. Next time you are in so-cal , drop me a line and I will give you a tour of the place and show you around the neighborhood so you can meet and check out the neighborhood which has four other home running off the grid. Good luck and thanks for making such a great series for those interested in a sustainable lifestyle.
Got to go. I’m burning daylight.
Cheers,
Ed
Please send me a way to order the dvd’s off the grid with Les Stroud. ordering through mail. Thank you William Sweet 6210 Log Cabin Place Lenoir NC 28645
You guys are nuts. Living in city is environmentally much more viable. Just imagine one million people doing what you’ve done, it would ruin HUGE areas of land, everyone having his own wells and such. Helicopters flying around timber and, it’s despicable crap. Living there produces green house gases, wastes energy and social/mental retardation beyond anything acceptable.
Tuberg how many children do you have? Just curious. If it’s more than two, shut the fuck up.
To ED,
great advice, keep on blogging, people NEED your experience.
To Tuberg,
educate yourself FIRST. “Living in city is environmentally much more viable.” Viable? Wrong. Fact: every city generates over forty times the heatsink (carbon emissions) that a flat, rural community does. All cities are incredible energy hogs and huge wasteful energy applications. The high, glass canyons are absorbing much more heat -and releasing it- than any other habitat. ANY.
Going off grid immediately does three things:
1. Increased autonomy allows for better, more reliable systems in infrastructures, large, small scale and individual.Everyone who goes off grid not only helps themselves, but everybody else.
2. Off grid releases the burdens our utilities are faced with today. Less load to carry, less peak demand cycles, less over building. The reason today for the shift to smaller, local micro-utilities. greater diversity, greater system strength
3. obvious cost advantages and much, much lower carbon emissions. (what most do NOT understand is while there is great efficiency in large scale utilities, there is also huge amounts of production waste, harming effluent, etc. Most is found in the heat cycle, and related releases therein, toxic byproduct concentrations) Off grid uses what is needed, no more. Very, very little waste.
One other consideration for a typical septic systems and leachfields. Health matters, there is no substitute there. E coli bacteria requires separation from human interaction. Low flush toilets, tank and field offer this solution well. Using separate gray water systems for other usage is fine. Keep poop where it breaks down naturally, a few inches below grade. That’s great for the environment, btw.
The greater the diversity of a system, the greater its resiliency to outside factors. Consider that in the US we have forty eight days of oil reserves, should the constant flow/supply stop. Then, without oil and gas, everything stops, defense, transport of goods, energy grid, heating, cooling, communications, food, water, etc. All those generators we have as back-up everywhere, without fuel don’t work.
Imagine now, if you were an enemy, devout to destroy the evil empire, you’d try to deliver destruction to the 6 major US oil choke points- and watch a nation self destruct. After such an attack, nothing is rebuilt in two months, especially when there is no fuel to drive the machinery necessary for reconstruction and repair.
Go off grid as fast as possible. Diminish your load on the energy demands of this country. It’s really good for you, for me, for everybody else too. The Grid diversification movement and the technological broadband approach to energy conversion is the answer we are now trying to address as effectively – and quickly as possible.
I moved my family from a forty acre parcel five miles from a growing county hub that serves 30,000 plus people, to a very privet parcel on our own lake, with a half mile driveway to the nearest plowed gravel road. The kids have a half hour ride to school, with average class sizes around twenty or less kids. They were just entering fourth and fifth grade at the time. That was probably the smartest thing I ever did in my life. The kids adapted very well, and have had a much more enriched life both in school and at home. We still go to the same town for groceries and supplies as before, but it takes an hour instead of five minutes. We are not off the grid at this time, but would like to be in the near future. Educating and preparing your children for the world are no different here then there, and technology has made it even easier with satellite TV, and internet. I would rather live here and educate them on the ills and dangers of the city, then the other way around, for country kids will survive. Going off grid in the great white north doesn’t mean you have to go with out. It just means you might have to wait till the next trip to town.
At Peace in Northern Minnesota
I think Les is a good down to earth person and love his shows!!! Off the grid is the best and would love to do this myself someday!! great job and I would like to see all of it but haven’t fouhd it yet saw one episode!! thanks Tim
I am a fan of the Suvivorman series and I really enjoyed this documentary. I was raised off the grid in northern Arizona. I spent my childhood from birth until about age 14 in a house with propane kitchen appliances, kerosene lamps, and a wood-burning stove. Unlike a lot of rural homes, we had running water provided by a nearby spring.
My parents drove us to the nearest school, about an hour trip one way. As a kid, I sometimes missed out on doing things at school or with friends, but I don’t remember ever resenting my parents or the lifestyle they chose for our family. I was very aware of how fortunate I was to see wildlife on a daily basis, to walk in the woods whenever I wanted, to see the stars, and to get snow days when we couldn’t get out!
Today, I am struggling through life in a major city, and deeply miss the peace and pace of a rural lifestyle. I hope someday to return to this way of living.
I wish most people could do this. Anyone can live a sustainable lifestyle quite comfortably with a good knowledge base about how it’s done. Les could have taken a less hands-off approach with regard to learning the technology needed to make it it all work. We don’t need to use as much electricity as we’re accustomed to, and a few solar panels and batteries can give us all the electricity we really need.
Anyone knows about a status update on Les´s fantasstic project. I has been some time and it would be great to hear if they are doing alright and still living the dream.
Cheers
Bria
we have been living off-grid for over a year now with 6 children on a 40 acre farm. We left EVERYTHING to move here and love it so much! On the other hand, we are not trying to duplicate our old lifestyle with all of the modern conveniences that solar and wind energy provide. We use oil lamps, one pressure lamp an outhouse and an ice house. we cook with wood and heat with wood and the only “utility bill” we have is a cell phone.
We also farm with horses, a belgian team. We wouldn’t trade it for anything. I think it is wonderful you still can live like we do in a day and age like today.
Yes. Off the grid is not for the meek, and certainly not for the economically disadvantaged. I loved the show, love the concept, but surely would have been more enlightened if Les had included exactly how much all of this costs. Trucking in the cabin and workers, digging the well, buying the solar panels takes a major up-front investment, not to mention the cost of the land. How bout it Les — fess up.
Les, where are you now? Did you permanently move off the grid? We loved your show, but have not seen anything since this.
Debbie
I have seen this documentary twice. You can’t help but like Les and His family. Most importantly I like the technology that he uses and therefore makes the technology available to people that did not know it existed.
Mr. Stroud, thanks to you and your family. Cheers to your success, I am soooooo Jealous.
The series is interesting, but living off of the grid is just not for me.
I understand, to a certain degree, what living off of the grid means as I grew up spending my summers at the family log cabin on a lake with an outhouse and a fire-place for heat. The Fridge and stove are propane. No electricity and no running water. This year we are putting in a new outhouse with a Sun-Mar composting toilet. In a few years we also plan on putting in solar.
What I would like to see is the urban and sub-urban use of green energy technology. A great example of this is the Canary Islands. They are in the forefront of alternative energy. Every house has solar panels and the grid uses wind farms.
David
I watched your show with great interest. Did notice a couple of things that I would have done differently. Dig a septic and use the gray water to flush it. With a family of 4 you should have no trouble in keeping up with the water.
Second, you probably have found that mounting the wind generator on the house was not such a good idea because of the noise. I might suggest building a tower with the generator on the top of it. Putting a 250 gal water tank at the 25 ft level. During the day when the sun is out, fill the tank as needed, at night use the gravity flow to supply the water using no electricity. Saves the batteries for other things.
Are you going to make more shows about your “off grid” living? I hope so. You do a good job explaining things from a lay persons perspective. In addition, could you show some other “off grid” homes and what they have found that works and what does not.
I too am planning an off grid home. I want to do a partial dug in, partial berm home from shipping containers. Since I am looking at the desert southwest, this should provide me with a lot of insulation against the heat.
off the grid living is a huge undertaking from reexaming pioneering’s lost artform…to todays latest renewable energy engineering….all can be done thur grit ..study..trial an error…but my family of five wonders how do u guys earn money$$
Very good, Les Stroud. An excellent and interesting documentary. Is this available any where on DVD? Thanks. John.
Les you are awesome much better than bear grills i have enjoyed following your adventures in survival with my whole family we have incorporated some of your survival techniques into our camping trips. My daughter (7) has eaten earthworms, termites, cray fish and wants to try scorpions (cooked obverse). I just wanted to say keep up the great work.
PS. did you ever think about selling of part of your 150 acre to someone else for a off grid build maybe expand your acreage and start a sustainable community
u are building a cottage in Muskoka … u just bought crap land! At least by video taping it u paid for half. you are a great sales man…. selling it to the Green Channel
Dec 16th, 2008 at 7:17 am
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Jan 22nd, 2009 at 11:35 am
[...] Watch the documentary in seven parts here. [...]