LIVING OFF THE GRID
In many ways Living Off The Grid is a very rewarding experience. Renewable Energy can really enhance and improve your life. Living Off the Grid does not have to be difficult either, as some of you may believe. We have created a website that will help you along the way, and we will try and answer every question too. Check out our free newsletter
www.off-grid-living.com
Many people associate Living Off the Grid with hardship and doing without-nothing could be further from the truth today. Off Grid Living is about having plenty, yet living responsibly. Most people have a hard time during the early stages of planning their Off Grid move but that part can be easy with proper planning
You can learn about Living Off the Grid at the following link.
www.off-grid-living.com
According to our latest research the main thing holding people back from Living off the Grid is the fact that they are heavily in debt. Get out of debt Live off grid has become a common phrase around our home. It isn't hard to see why this is. If you can eliminate your monthly bill to the power company and some other bills as well you could very well be on your way to getting out of debt.
Along this line of thinking, Jane and I have for years embraced a need and want structure while Living off the Grid. We first buy the things we need, only then do we buy the other things that we want.
Living off the Grid opens up many new avenues for creating employment from home as well. If you have always wanted to write for magazines or websites but didn't quite know how link up to our website and we will show you how. You will soon see that Living Off the Grid is really worth it-there is real joy to be found in Living Off the Grid.
HOW WE GOT STARTED LIVING OFF THE GRID
During the days of skyrocketing interest rates in the late 1980s, my wife, Jane, and I realized that our dream of owning a home was slipping away. For the first eight years of our marriage, we lived in a rented house in Norwich, Ontario, and we just couldn't save fast enough to buy our own place. Then, a friend gave us a box of 80 back issues of old homesteading magazines like Mother Earth News and Harrowsmith. That box opened up a whole new world for us. Reading those magazines, we realized other people looked at the world the same way we did. In 1992, we purchased 20 acres of forested land in Northbrook, a hamlet in eastern Ontario about 150 miles from Norwich. The property was on a plowed back road with school bus service, but it didn't have electric power. We were determined to live without the "monthly mortgage," as my wife calls it, to the electric company; our Off Grid dream was born.
The same friend introduced us to Living the Good Life, the classic homesteading book by Helen and Scott Nearing, and I discovered self-sufficiency. We began corresponding with Helen (Scott had died five years earlier) about our move and our worries. In her motherly way, she patiently guided us through our fears through many letters that we still have.
On May 5, 1994, we moved to our property, determined to build our house before the first snow. We lived in a tent trailer that I had bartered for when working with a local carpenter. By June, we had the land cleared and the concrete footings and block walls done. A local contractor put in the septic system and well, and cleared the land.
Early June saw us agonizing over the high price of lumber. The next week I was at our chain saw dealer to pick up oil and a new chain when I casually mentioned the price of lumber. He asked, "Have you seen these mill attachments that fit on your chain saw? You make your own lumber if you've got trees." Excited, I told him, "I've got 20 acres of trees. Keep talking!" He explained how it worked and I ordered one. When it arrived the next week, I set it up and went to work. The mill attachment cost $250, but it literally paid for itself the first day. Throughout June and July our oldest son Andrew and I cut lumber. I'm proud to say that not one piece of store-bought lumber makes up our house frame. We cut studs, 6-by-6-foot floor joists, 10-by-10-foot beams, 19-foot-long roof trusses and 12-inch-wide roof boards, all with the chain saw mill. Granted it was smelly, hot and dirty work. But the chain saw mill proved indispensable to this "cheap Scotsman," as my wife calls me.
We only cut mature trees, and we used dead and damaged trees whenever possible. Because we cut the lumber right where the trees fell, all the waste was left to break down and fertilize the forest, there is no need to replant; simply let natural regeneration take place.
Building the house turned out to be a slow process. Soon October was closing in on us and we only had the second floor done. A roof was two months' work away. What should we do? After working for nearly five months without a day off, we took a trip to my parents' home in southern Ontario. While we were there, my dad mentioned a large greenhouse grower who suffered hail damage to half his plastic greenhouses and he had lots of 200-by-400 rolls of used plastic to give away.
After thanking the greenhouse owner we loaded two rather unwieldy rolls of plastic into our full-sized van. The children sat on the plastic for the five-hour trip home. The next day we installed two layers of plastic over the second floor to create a makeshift roof, crossed our fingers and moved in. It was Sept. 25, 1994. Thankfully the roof didn't leak.
Finally we were warm and happy and we lived in the house like that for three years. During those years we started a market garden business and began selling organic produce just like we had before we moved. That provided most of our income, along with part-time jobs. We built a 60-foot greenhouse with cedar (cut with the chain saw mill) and the leftover plastic. We spent the off-season cutting roof trusses and boards for the house. March 1997 was unseasonably warm and sunny, so we decided to put the roof on. We worked 22 days straight, and at 10:30 Sunday morning of the next day we pounded down the last shingle nail. Then it started to rain.
Jane and I stood on the hill overlooking the house, holding hands and rejoicing as water dripped off the eaves. We were done. Our completed house is 1,400 square feet with eight rooms. The children sometimes complain about the kerosene lamps, or no electricity and video games like their friends, but we know they're happy. From the start we had hooked up solar panels to run a computer and lights. Nearly nine years without a utility bill. Hallelujah! During slow times, we work on other projects. In 1998, we built a root cellar from field stone, a wonderful building material. It's free for the taking and it looks tremendous when the project is done. It's also a great challenge to master a new art. Believe me, it is an art putting irregular stones together and imagining what they will look like when you're finished. After the root cellar, we tackled our fireplace. It looks beautiful and is the focal point of our first floor. Everyone remarks on how ell the fireplace fits in with our timber design.
When we're asked why we live the way we do, one event always springs to mind: the ice storm of 1998. Two full days of freezing rain put most of eastern Ontario, southern Quebec and the northeast United States in the dark from downed power lines. It virtually paralyzed the area for weeks. In contrast, our children were ready at the school bust stop the day after the storm ended, but the school was closed for two weeks. We were relatively unaffected. The hubbub that followed the storm included a gigantic cleanup effort in the affected areas. Our 90-year-old neighbor flatly refused to be removed from her home and placed in an emergency shelter, unequivocally telling her would-be rescuers, "I've lived more years than I care to remember with just my woodstove, my hand pump and a bucket. It's you people who have the problem." She promptly went back into her house, closed the door and proceeded to fire the woodstove to make her supper. Our neighbor really makes us laugh; our lifestyle is similar to how she grew up more than 80 years ago. She smiles when she talks to us because we can relate to each other.
I know that anyone with a modest amount of energy and perseverance could do what we've done. I owe a great deal to the people who have gone before me and shed light on our own journey to self-sufficiency. Special thanks go to Helen and Scott Nearing. I hope they're smiling at our accomplishments, wherever they may be.
HOW OFF GRID LIVING WEBSITE STARTED-Living Off the Grid- Teach others
After a few years of building and clearing land for gardens etc. we discovered that our little project in self-sufficiency was of interest to almost everyone that we met. Many others shared our dream. We started to correspond with people we met and built a list of names of Off grid home owners and many "want-to-be's" (about half). Since I was doing so much writing anyways, correspondence and such, my wife encouraged me to take a writing course and write for magazines. I completed the 12 lesson course of the North American Outdoor Writers with 10 of the lesson assignments being published in North American magazines. My very first lesson was published in Reader's Digest- with others published in Outdoor Canada, Bob Izumi's Real Fishing, Cabelas.com and many others.
Then I wrote an article for Mother Earth News about the building of our home and living off grid, most of that article is in the preceding paragraphs.
The article was so successful that Mother Earth printed it again the same year in their Guide to Homes issue. We received an amazing 568 letters about how our story had inspired readers to build their own home off grid. The seed of the idea was right there. We already had several hundred names of people we knew and these letter writers, so why not our own magazine. Obviously other magazines were not targeting this group; these people had no one to help them. So Off Grid Living was born. We share our dream with thousands of other families now. Living Off the Grid is definitely worth it
For 13 years we have enjoyed Living Off The Grid. Come and visit our website and enjoy our informative free newsletter at www.off-grid-living.com
About the Author
We have been Living Off the Grid for over 13 years. It feels good to be free.
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