Helpful tips for living without electricity, without municipal water supply and sanitation services.
In today’s world, it is hard to imagine living without electricity. One of the biggest advantages you’d lose is electric lighting, something most of us take for granted. But what if there was a long-term power outage and you had to find a way to light your home? Or what if you were just living … Read more
It’s been snowing for three days straight, and it is impossible to keep my solar panels clear. Without my solar panels, I have no electricity. As you might expect, that’s a huge problem! For those living in houses connected to the grid, power is rarely an issue. However, there are countless people living off-grid and, … Read more
Solar panels are an almost free way to generate electricity, but in some cases, you don’t want to keep your panels outdoors. This could obviously lead to efficiency issues, which is what I want to investigate and test out in what follows. The question I’m trying to find an answer to today is: Do solar … Read more
Is it legal to live off-grid in the United States? In most cases, yes – but this isn’t a dream that will work for everyone. It’s a dream that many people have, though. In fact, if you mention to anyone that you live off-grid, most people will gasp and tell you how lucky you are. … Read more
When it comes to foraging, there are always plants out there that are important to recognize, but better left alone. On the top of any homesteader’s “hands off” list should definitely be white snakeroot. This plant, while it does have some purported medicinal uses, is a plant best left alone, or limited to some plantings … Read more
Preventing soil erosion in your yard, garden, or pasture is essential if you have a farm or homestead. Not only does limiting erosion improve and increase the amount of workable land that you have, it makes your property look a lot nicer, too. When we first purchased our property, we had a huge problem with … Read more
Bring a little nostalgia to your next backyard BBQ cookout with homemade ice cream made in an old fashioned hand crank ice cream maker!
The pros and cons of heating your home with a wood stove vs. a water stove. Which is best? I’ll help you decide.
An easy, step-by-step guide to installing a permanent clothesline. Plus, why we like metal t-posts better than wood. (Disaster story to follow!)
How I hang dry clothes indoors when it’s rainy or freezing outside. You only need a few helpful items, and a little time and patience!
Connecting a transfer switch to our breaker panel was one more thing we had to do before we could disconnect from the grid. It enables us to run our home on either a generator or solar power, alternating between the two forms of power as necessary.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here yet, but a few months ago we were finally able to afford to get a hand pump installed on our well. We went with a Simple Pump, because as I’ve mentioned in the past, they’re the only pump that would work on our deep well and deliver pressurized … Read more
Adding humidity back to the air when you burn a wood stove is really important. Here are a couple of ways you can do that.
Getting rid of our automatic dishwasher is one part of how we’re preparing to go off the grid. Here’s a creative way we filled the empty space the old appliance left behind.
Here’s the easiest way to convert a standard chest freezer into an energy efficient fridge which can be run on solar power. No re-wiring required!
Our solar panels are up and running! Let me walk you through our setup so you can see what we did…