Off Grid Living

In many many ways Off Grid Living is a very rewarding experience. Renewable Energy can really enhance and improve your life. Off Grid Living does not have to be difficult either, as some of you may believe. Many people associate Off Grid Living with hardship and doing without-nothing could be further from the truth today.

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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. Yes you can do it

According to our latest research the main thing holding people back from Off grid Living 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 off the grid living. We first buy the things we need, only then do we buy the other things that we want.

Anything is possible while off grid living it,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 Off grid living is really worth it-there is real joy to be found in it.

Why just a couple months ago we built our own wind generator

We found these great plans and just did it. Find the time, your kids will have a blast

HOW WE GOT STARTED Off Grid Living

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.

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.

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.

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.

HOW OFF GRID LIVING Online Magazine STARTED

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. Off Grid Living is definitely worth it