It was brought to my attention recently that, at a social gathering at our farm, an acquaintance had the audacity to gossip to other guests, behind our back, that my family “isn’t really ‘off-grid.’ They’re just relying on the grid that everyone else is paying for.” Since this is a common refrain heard by off-gridders, I thought I would discuss this, as well as some of the reasons why moving towards a more off-grid lifestyle is—I believe—a key aspect within preparedness. To begin with, we need to establish some definitions, so we have parameters within which to frame the discussion. “The Grid,” generally, refers to the electrical grids that provide electrical power to the nation. Using that impeccable journalistic resource (notice my tongue firmly planted in my cheek!), Wikipedia, “…and electrical grid is an interconnected network for delivering electricity from suppliers to consumers. It consists of generating stations that produce electrical power, high-voltage transmission lines that carry power from distant sources to demand centers, and distribution lines that connect individual customers…” In that context then, anyone who doesn’t have their home connected to the industrial electric grid can accurately be said to be “off-grid.” More generally however, “can refer to living in a self-sufficient manner without reliance on one or more public utilities…Off-the-grid homes aim to achieve autonomy; they do not rely on one or more of municipal water supply, sewer, gas, electrical power grid, or similar utility services.” While neither of these really encompasses my personal definition of “off-grid,” particularly well, they’ll do to start the conversation. To do this, very briefly, I’ll discuss which “utility services” we do without, and what we utilize instead. 1) We are not tied to the electrical grid. The power line ends at our property line. We generate all of our household electrical needs from our solar panels and battery bank. We have a 1.4Kw solar array (with twice that in extra panels still in storage), a 60A charge controller (the highest level of commercially available MPPT charge controller apparently, a 5KW inverter, and a 13KwH battery bank (which means we’re practicably limited to about 6.5KwH of power from them, to avoid more than 50% depth of discharge, in order to maximize battery life span). That runs our chest freezer, lights, television and DVD player, a radio, as well as charging cellphones, laptops, flashlight batteries, etc (our refrigerator is a propane model from Dometic. I hate it. It’s a propane hog, and is going down the road soon, to be replaced with a standard electric model. This will require additional batteries in the bank though). We also have a 5KW gas engine generator that I use to run power tools for various building projects, when I’m in a hurry, and cannot afford the time to use my more traditional hand tools (although, I have to admit, in many cases, I’ve found the hand tools are actually faster than the power tools!). 2) We’re not on public sewage. We use a composting toilet system, which I’ve written about before, and we use greywater disposal for bathwater and dishwater. I’m working on that system’s improvements, so the greywater nutrients are more efficiently utilized than the current hole they go into under wood chips. 3) We don’t utilize municipal trash service. First, we live well outside city limits. Second, while there are commercial trash collection services locally, we don’t use them. Burning trash is illegal in our county, according to county regulations. So, we don’t burn trash. What we DO have however, is a fire barrel next to the rifle range table… for warming fires….It’s just most efficient to fuel it with waste products, rather than firewood. For waste items that won’t burn, I built a large wooden dumpster on the farm. It is 4x4x4, for a total volume of 64 cubic feet. That gets filled about every 2-3 months. Then, I load it in the back of the truck, and haul it to the local dump. Each load weighs between 150-200 pounds, according to the dump scales. While dumps are not particularly environmentally friendly, our wastage is so small that it’s a trade off I’m willing to make, in order to avoid having a dump on the farm itself. My more liberal-leaning environmentalist friends like to claim I am externalizing the costs of those wastes. They’re absolutely correct. Nevertheless, with five people, we produce less than ½ of the landfill waste of the “average” 3 person American family, so… 4) We’re not on the county water system. We utilize rainwater collection of the roof of our house for household water use, filtering cooking and drinking water through a couple of Berkey filters on the counter. Water is currently heated on the stove, because I’m still working on the plumbing system in the house. 5) We’re not on the natural gas system, even though it is present in our community. We DO utilize propane gas for cooking (and the refrigerator, currently). We transport the propane to the farm in 100# and 20# tanks, in the back of the pickup. A large 500 or 1000 pound tank with delivered propane would be more efficient, but the delivery truck couldn’t make it up our driveway most of the year, and the current system works well for us. We keep roughly 18 months of propane on hand, given current usage. 6) Our kids are homeschooled. We’ll get into this in more detail elsewhere, but suffice to say, while we pay the local schools tax, we aren’t getting fuck all benefit from it. —————— But, are you “really” “off-grid” if you’re driving on the roads, or spending money on things? How are we producing even the landfill waste that we are producing, if we’re off-grid? Again, it depends on how you’re defining “off-grid.” Every single society, in the history of mankind, has produced non-organic waste. Even the much-lauded “nature-centric” traditions, so-beloved of modern liberals (from a distance mind you…they’re not going to give up their SUVs and laptops, in the interest of “nature,” by any means), such as the American Indians and the European Celtic tribal cultures, produced wastes. You know how we know this? Because their trash heaps are a significant source of archaeological research material. Further, every single society in the history of the human experience, has engaged in external commerce. In my ancestral cultures, in Norway, Germany, Ireland, and Scotland, archaeological goods from trash dumps and grave finds have been found with clear origins in Asia and the Middle East and Africa. While some of those were undoubtedly the result of post-conflict looting, much of it was also—according to other source material—the result of peaceful commerce. In North American Indian culture, there’s a really interesting example I first read about when I was in grade school. The finest bowmaking wood in North America is the Osage Orange, or Bois D’Arc tree. Planted across much the Great Plains as windbreak hedges in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this thorny tree is native to the Ozark Plateau of Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. Yet, bows made of Osage Orange have been found in archaeological sites as far away as the Pacific Northwest, and Hudson’s Bay, in Canada. The bow of this wood was so highly prized that commerce routes for its trade were established the width and breadth of the continent! How’s that for commerce? There are other suitable bowmaking materials pretty much everywhere in North America. From horn-backed bows, to Pacific Yew in the PNW, to hickory and cedar…nevertheless, Osage Orange was desirable enough to make the effort to get it, much like the best yew for English bows in the middle ages was imported from the Mediterranean. This idea that being “off-grid” means giving up anything that you cannot produce on your own, with your own effort, off your own property, flies in the face of reason and history. Someone with a 1-5 acre homestead on reclaimed cow pasture doesn’t have the same resources as someone with a 40 acre homestead in the mountains of Idaho. Someone with a 160 acre homestead—or a 200 acre homestead, in Appalachia has far more native resources on his property than the dude in Idaho does on his 40 acres. —— So, how do I define “off-grid?” What makes our farm different than what my neighbor who is grid-tied? The most important distinction, to me, is that we are reducing our DEPENDENCE on outside resources. There are things that we WANT, that we cannot produce on our own place, and there are even things we NEED that we cannot produce on our own place. What we’ve done is reduce both of those, as much as possible. This serves two important purposes, from a preparedness perspective. 1) By reducing our dependence on outside resources, we’ve reduced how much capital we are expending on those things. This means we have more available to procure those things that we cannot—or will not—give up, except under the most dire extremes. 2) By reducing our dependence on outside resources, and concentrating effort on finding alternatives or work-arounds for those things we cannot—or will not—give up, we are increasing our resilience in the face of the decline. Even those ties we still have to the “grid,” are—for the most part—things we could work around pretty easily, given the requirement. Switching totally to hand tools would be more time-consuming, and potentially limiting, but our farm is also a designated “bug out location” for a number of people, most of whom have contributed effort to the building process. They have a proven record for being willing to do work that is necessary, and multiple vested interests in seeing the place succeed. So, while switching to all hand tools BY MYSELF would be limiting, with a proven work force on hand, it actually accelerates how much can be done (as I mentioned, in many cases, I’ve actually found hand tools are faster than power tools. An example? Turning a hardwood log into a square building timber, it turns out, is actually faster with my ax and broadax than it is with my chainsaw and Alaska Mill. Granted, it took me a couple of beams to get to that point (and I suspect the chainsaw and Alaska Mill work considerably more efficiently in softwoods than in hardwoods like oak and walnut), but it did turn out to be the case rather quickly. Using a No5 Stanley hand planer turned out to be faster at planing building timbers than using a power planer, when dealing with knotty oak and hickory, and considerably faster than using a power sander. I will admit though, a worm-drive circular saw is still faster than my antique, one-man crosscut saws, and my Stihl chainsaw is WAY faster than my two-man crosscut saw, although both are actually far more pleasant to use than the chainsaw. Switching from the propane stove to cooking in a wood-fired stove or wood-fired oven and an outside open fire (in summer time), is a pretty simple switch (I’ve had a LOT of experience cooking on wood stoves and open fires). Eventually the batteries in the battery bank will die and not hold a charge anymore, but that gives us time to adapt to the changes in circumstance. It’s a “cushion” that is far more desirable than the sudden transition from “All is well, we’re watching American Idol (or whatever the fuck the Bread-and-Circus Show of the day is….) and surfing PornHub!” to “Oh shit! The Lights Just Went Out, and They’re Not Coming Back On!” Ultimately, “off-grid” for us is about choices, and options. Because we are mostly self-sufficient (and the stuff we DO buy, we could probably do without, in a pinch, although, if the grid does go down completely, one of my very first priorities is reestablishing commerce with South Texas, so I can still have oranges. I fucking love oranges!) One of my favorite “collapsitarian” authors (other than myself, of course) is John Michael Greer, of the EcoSophia blog, and formerly of The Archdruid Reports. One of Greer’s books is titled Collapse Now and Avoid the Rush. While I certainly don’t agree with everything Greer writes, I do agree with a lot. More importantly, the title of that book jumped out at me the first time I saw it, as a practicable, actionable step I could take. We haven’t “collapsed” to the point of “let’s live in a bush hut, and eat rodents we can hunt and snare with primitive technology,” but we’ve collapsed a lot, by choice. This softens the inevitable fall, considerably, as things continue to fall apart, and gives us breathing room as others are scrambling. It’s a piece of advice I suggest to everyone. The degree to which you choose to “collapse” is up to you, but it’s worthwhile advice. I was talking with one of our people the other day, and he made the comment that it was “frustrating,” because “I have to keep doing the ‘normal’ 9-5, in case there is no SHTF, but I still need to be prepared, because I know it’s coming.” I’ve never particularly understood this, which is why, in my entire adult life, I’ve never really stuck to the “norms.” If you KNOW that shit is falling apart around us–and I would, and have, argued that everyone does–then you have zero vested interest in continuing along doing the ‘normal.’ Quit worrying about that 9-5 and the 401K, and etc. Start looking at ways YOU can “collapse now, and avoid the rush.” Start small, but start today. Look for alternative sources of income. Look for ways you can reduce your external dependencies. Look for ways to become more self-reliant (within your community). Collapse now, and avoid the rush. Continue reading...
