Tally on off-grid living?

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I've been considering this a bit more seriously lately and was curious how many people on here might already be doing it. Would you mind sharing a bit, for example, to what extent you are off the grid (obviously you have some kind of access to internet), how does it compare to your living situation before hand, do you eventually get over loneliness/replace it with other things, do you still have a source of income, etc...

A few lucky people actually live off-grid. But, for the rest of us, such a life is found in degrees and can be experienced by reducing one's grid footprint as much as possible. Lifestyle changes can be accomplished like extracting oneself from Big Banking by finding a neighborhood credit union and learning to love a cash-only existence without the datamining and other risks of plastic-card purchases. Other changes include avoiding Big Medicine, Big Pharma, Big GMO, getting off direct-mail lists, learning how to become virtually invisible to social media and other Internet activities, and, above all, keeping your OpSec private.

In the 1970s, people learned to protect their privacy by choosing to have their telephone numbers unlisted and unpublished. Today, protecting your privacy involves a lot more personal diligence.

unemployment and foreclosure forced us to our retirement land several years early. we spent about a year with no phone, year and a half without electricity. those are still the only public utilities we have. we catch & filter rainwater, compost our waste, heat with a woodstove. one 20yr old vehicle, gets crappy mileage but 4 wheel drive is a must where we are. one disability income gives us just over $800/mo. it's doable, but only because we live in a low-income rural area - if we were still in the city, no way.

you ask about loneliness... "off-grid" does not equate to "out of touch". granted, many areas where you would be off-grid by necessity are far from civilization or even neighbors, but you could go off-grid in the middle of the city. not nearly so pleasant there, i'd imagine, but possible.

My husband and I live pretty much off the grid in a low income rural area in New Zealand.
It's not lonely, we live on a piece of land with several parties, we share one broadband
phone connection with the others and we are all using solar panels and 12V batteries.
We are cooking with gas bottles, the water comes from a spring.
We are self-employed beekeepers, but we still have a bank account to run our business with,
so it's not totally independent.
We also do a lot of bartering here. I like this kind of lifestyle, especially when they have power outages in the
area and we don't get affected by it.
Also nobody can poison the water with fluoride or chlorine and such chemicals,
something which is causing anxiety and depression, because it replaces the iodine in the body.

Good point, off-grid can mean many, many, many different things. Lots of variety there. Though not explicitly suggested, it sounds like it would be a good idea to gradually move off the grid. Good info!

I'm fed up with dealing with bureaucratic obligations, societal norms and expectations. Being away from that as much as possible is becoming more and more of a dream every day. That's what I had in mind when originally posting. I'd have to get rid of some student debt first, but Gods, I can't wait!

UtahA, I'm less concerned about being untraceable and more interested in being self-sufficient (and isolated), though I realize the one kind of leads into the other.

Bob, did you build your place yourself? sorry to hear about your unemployment and foreclosure, that's sh***y .

Birdsleep, so do you live in an intentional community? Is the beekeeping a communal ownership?

Could any of you see your lifestyle being liveable by yourself? as, getting all the chores done, etc? How physically demanding is it? What kinds of things do you run into that you wouldn't otherwise if you weren't a bit aways from 'civilization'?

BROTHER!

We must be related (j/k) because I too want an off grid life. I'm looking at the woods of south Oregon. Propane for heat and cooking, solar for electricity, chickens and rabbits for food. I have my debt almost paid, after that I will start saving. I live with my mom, but she doesn't charge me rent. Still, I'd rather be alone. I am what some would call a "survivalist" or "prepper", I believe that Bad Stuff is coming down the pike, and while I don't foresee the total collapse of order, I do foresee bad times for city dwellers. Food supplies and water supplies are under incredible stress, one hiccup and 1/5 of the world starves. I have long been a fan of self-reliance.

It's more of an accidental assembly of people here, we live on the land of a friend who likes to have his friends living nearby.
It's all a little bit ramshackle but very affordable. I don't see my next door neighbors very often, because I'm a total recluse,
but my lovely husband is doing the socializing for both of us. The bees are our own venture, not a communal thing.
You should have a bit of a practical streak and be ready to get the hands dirty. Things tend to break down at unexpected moments
and need to be fixed or maintained. Best to have friends and neighbors around who like to help or to be technically minded yourself.
I learned a lot about plumbing, electric stuff and how to improvise. If you are comfortable with tools in your hands and have fun
learning new skills, it could be the right thing for you.
Maybe you could find a place where people already live off the grid and join them for a while to check it out and gain experience?
That's how I did it, I started as a Woofer (willing worker on organic farms). That is a system of people providing food and accommodation
to travelers who work for a few hours a day in return, while learning new skills for alternative lifestyles.

You took the words right off of my keyboard (not jk! all the way down to the rabbit and chicken farming ). Once scientists start getting seriously cynical about the effects of global climate change and businesses emerge and become successful off of making strategies to help other businesses deal with the oncoming effects, you know things are gonna get real (or looking at the data, coz it kinda speaks for itself). So far, not much more optimism with how U.S politics works (ie, it doesn't ). New Zealand has actually been on the top of a list for dream places to live in for the last 2 years now, so it was nice seeing success replies from someone on that side of the world . It sounds like you've got a nice situation going on! Good for you .

Will look into Woofing. I've got certain physical limitations, but I'm determined to make this work. Btw, do you raise your own food?

Yes I tried growing my own organic food, but getting on top of all the pests and diseases was very difficult.
Also it's immensely time consuming and I'm surrounded by people who do so much better at gardening than myself.
My husband is a keen fisherman and we make lots of honey with our little apairy, both can be easily bartered for fresh fruit
and veggies in the neighborhood, so I'm not trying to grow all the food myself anymore, just the stuff that I find easy to grow
(beans, garlic, pumpkins and herbs).
I occasionally catch rabbits and possums for food as well, but my neighbors don't want to eat possum, although it's very yummy.

There is no evidence to support that claim. Iodine deficiency can cause hypothyroidism which can cause depression, but other recognisable symptoms are usually also present. Don't worry about fluoride!

Now fluorine, that's nasty stuff, but it's not something most people will ever come into contact with.


That seems incredibly foolish. Modern medicine has drastically increased lifespans. I can understand being concerned about privacy, but I don't see why you'd throw away the better things about modern life that present next to no threat to privacy anyway. Best to campaign for better data protection laws rather than risk cutting years off your lifespan to pursue "privacy".

My use of the euphemistic qualifier "Big" was a nod to the "Big Brother" rebranding of totalitarian governments in George Orwell's book, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Of course, I amn't opposed to government, just the totalitarian kind. In the same way, my reference of "Big Medicine, Big Pharma, Big GMO" attempted to bring this description of unyielding authority to currently centralized industries including the medical industry, its partner the pharmaceutical industry and the now-failing GMO industry (with producer after producer agreeing to exclude GMO ingredients from their food); all of which effect the health of their customers, and not always for the better.

The medical and pharmaceutical industries love to describe how their invention and, now in some jurisdictions, required use of vaccines reduced disease dramatically in the late-20th century, but argue that the even larger overall effect of reducing disease that came in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when water-sanitation and personal-hygiene practices were encouraged within hospitals, physicians' offices and crowded urban areas http://scholar.harvard.edu/cutler/files ... cities.pdf didn't really have the effect that they did; as if it were some kind of turf war in a morality play.

The bottom line is that I believe that these industries have shown thelmselves to have forfeited any respect that they might have had coming to them especially when they have frequently teamed up with government agencies to conduct, cover-up and lie about such medical scandals as the "Tuskegee syphilis experiment" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_ ... experiment and the "Guatemala syphilis experiment" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala ... experiment , and even the "Contaminated haemophilia blood products" scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contamina ... d_products where Bayer Corporation's Cutter Biological division internal memorandum proved a cover up.

So, again, it isn't professional healthcare that worries me, it is the consistent unyielding authority and intentional harm to others that they exhibit.

The big pharmaceutical companies do a lot wrong, that is true. Most worrying is their selective publishing of evidence, and their "me-again" drugs.

Vaccines clearly work (see [url="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/Rubella-us-1966-93-cdc.gif"]rubella[/url] and measles as examples, as well as the eradication of smallpox and near-eradication of polio). Regardless, vaccine-treatable infectious diseases are just one form of disease. HIV/AIDS, cancer and heart disease are some areas where medicine has drastically increased life expectancy, heck HIV is already nothing like the death sentence it once was.

If these companies did more harm than good, they'd be out of business and we'd be dying earlier. They don't and we aren't. Don't refuse chemotherapy because some people were infected with syphilis or some kids were given anti-depressants that made them kill themselves.

BTW - for those going off-grid, i highly recommend Lehman's (www.lehmans.com), a store primarily focused on the amish community. they are a wonderful source for hand tools, non-electric appliances, all sorts of things to make "the simple life" a bit more convenient.