Category Archives: Off Grid Living

Gardening, Off Grid Living

Save Your Seeds, Save Your Life

We are told that everything begins with seed. Everything ends with it, too. As a chef I can tell you that your meal will be incalculably more delicious if I’m cooking with good ingredients.

But until that afternoon I’d rarely considered how seed influences — determines, really — not only the beginning and the end of the food chain, but also every link in between. The tens of thousands of rows surrounding me owed their brigade-like uniformity to the operating instructions embedded in the seed.

That uniformity allows for large-scale monoculture, which in turn determines the size and model of the combine tractor needed to efficiently harvest such a load. (“Six hundred horsepower — needs a half-mile just to turn her around,” joked the farmer sitting next to me.)

Satellite information, beamed into the tractor’s computer, makes it possible to farm such an expanse with scientific precision.

The type of seed also dictates the fertilizer, pesticide and fungicide regimen, sold by the same company as part of the package, requiring a particular planter and sprayer (40 feet and 140 feet wide, respectively) and producing a per-acre yield that is startling, and startlingly easy to predict.

It is as if the seed is a toy that comes with a mile-long list of component parts you’re required to purchase to make it function properly.

We think that the behemoths of agribusiness known as Big Food control the food system from up high — distribution, processing and the marketplace muscling everything into position. But really it is the seed that determines the system, not the other way around.

The seeds in my palm optimized the farm for large-scale machinery and chemical regimens; they reduced the need for labor; they elbowed out the competition (formally known as biodiversity). In other words, seeds are a blueprint for how we eat.

We should be alarmed by the current architects. Just 50 years ago, some 1,000 small and family-owned seed companies were producing and distributing seeds in the United States; by 2009, there were fewer than 100. Thanks to a series of mergers and acquisitions over the last few years, four multinational agrochemical firms — Corteva, ChemChina, Bayer and BASF — now control over 60 percent of global seed sales.

Source: Opinion | Save Our Food. Free the Seed. – The New York Times

Off Grid Living, Prepping

Best Long Term Storage Foods

When you live out in a very rural area, you quickly learn to have supplies on hand in case you can’t or don’t want to go into town. (Fifty miles away.)

Beyond that, one knows that if things got dicey in the cities, we would be on our own here for a while for sure.

It’s always good to have food on hand. Here’s a great article on things that can just last and last. Be sure to click the link, it’s a good one.

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Best Survival Foods: Non-Perishables That Can Outlive You

Whether you’re sick of throwing out food that’s long past its expiry date, or are working on preparing a food stockpile in case of an emergency, consumables that practically never spoil can be a huge asset to your household.

This article lists non-perishable food items that not only have long shelf lives, but if taken care of properly, these foods stand a chance of never going bad within your lifetime.These ideal survival foods will of course need to be stored the right way in order to retain their practically never-ending shelf life.

The absolute best place to keep a food stockpile is in a dark, cool, and dry spot, free of humidity, moisture, direct sunlight, and extreme temperatures.

Keeping consumables in an air-tight container, or better yet, vacuum packed, is also very important to increasing shelf life.

Although many non-perishable survival foods may change flavor and/or texture over the years, they remain edible and perfectly safe for consumption over indefinite periods of time. Use your senses to judge whether or not food with long shelf life has expired. If it smells off, has become too soft, or has developed mold, it’s better not to eat the item.

Source: Best Survival Foods: Non-Perishables That Can Outlive You

Off Grid Living

Tips for Tiny Houses (or any off grid living)

There are plenty of benefits that come with living the tiny lifestyle. Flexibility,  freedom, and ease are the advantages that usually come to mind, but reducing your environmental footprint is another big bonus. Reducing living quarters doesn’t automatically make your lifestyle more eco-friendly, though. There is plenty more to it. That’s why it’s important to develop some of these green habits while living life on the tiny side.

Source: Sustainability Tips and FAQs for Living Tiny – 84 Tiny Houses

Click the link for some common sense tips for off grid living

It’s especially important if one is to be off grid to learn to think in terms of power usage.  Solar power enables us to live far from the city, but one is now the power plant manager.

While using energy efficient appliances and lights is very important, it’s vital to pay good attention to which appliance use the most electricity. For example, one should generally stay away from anything electrical that produces heat. Those electric space heaters are death in an off grid system. Likewise, pumps, microwave ovens, toasters, electric coffee makers etc. will draw a lot of power and need to be used sparingly. Replace with propane whenever possible.

At home we have a propane/electric refrigerator. It’s not terribly efficient when on electric, so it will always stay on gas, unless we have power to spare. It’s a Godsend on those cloudy days though.

 

 

Off Grid Living, Prepping

25 Most Popular Survival Books: Survivalist & Prepper Best Sellers

Knowledge is the most powerful survival tool you could ever possibly possess. A knife and a fire steel will do wonders in the wilderness, and a hefty stockpile will be a huge asset in case of an emergency situation, but nothing will ever come close to helping you survive like the knowledge and skills you possess.While we all already know this, we also simultaneously realize how difficult attaining knowledge can be. The learning curve can be steep, mastering skills often happens slowly, and the material we need to learn can feel broad and overwhelming. Sometimes, too, it can be hard to determine whether a source of information is even reliable enough to help us on our quest for valuable knowledge.That’s where this list comes in handy. The survival books below are some of the most read, rated, and reviewed on the web. These books are written by some of the most well respected and knowledgeable industry leaders. It’s vitally important to get your information from trustworthy sources – after all, you never want your facts wrong when your life is on the line.

Source: 25 Most Popular Survival Books: Survivalist & Prepper Best Sellers

Odds & Ends, Off Grid Living, Real Estate

Tiny Houses from None Other than Amazon

We all know you can find almost anything on Amazon, but did you know that includes a house? A dive into the online shopping giant shows that they actually have a fairly wide range of kits and prefabricated tiny homes for sale. What could be better than getting the tiny house of your dreams with free shipping?

From basic shipping container homes to rustic cabins, prices range from just over $5,000 to more than $50,000, allowing you to select the kit that fits into your budget. A quick search for “garden house” or “cabin kit” will pull up most options, with these tiny dwellings perfect for guest houses or extra office space if you aren’t looking to permanently downsize.It’s worth noting that many of the kits are sold through third-party vendors, and most will need you to get inventive when it comes to a bathroom and installing insulation, but isn’t improvising part of the fun with a tiny home? You’ll also want to check local building codes, as laws vary state by state about acceptable structures. Once you’ve done your research, it’s just click and go.

Source: Prefabricated Tiny Homes Available for Sale on Amazon

Gardening, Off Grid Living

Start Your Garden Revolution Today

Came across this one. As Charles Hugh Smith says, “A home cooked meal is a revolutionary act.” So too is producing your very own food. There’s nothing like an amazing tomato, or the crunch of fresh lettuce. Yum!

Sometimes I think that the next Revolutionary War will take place in a vegetable garden. Instead of bullets, there will be seeds.  Instead of chemical warfare, there will be rainwater, carefully collected from the gutters of the house. Instead of soldiers in body armor and helmets, there will be back yard rebels, with bare feet, cut-off jean shorts, and wide-brimmed hats.  Instead of death, there will be life, sustained by a harvest of home-grown produce.  Children will be witness to these battles, but instead of being traumatized, they will be happy, grimy, and healthy, as they learn about the miracles that take place in a little plot of land or pot of dirt. Every day, the big industries that run our nation take steps towards food totalitarianism.  They do so flying a standard of “sustainability” but what they are actually trying to sustain is NOT our natural resources, but their control. (to read more, click on the link)

Source: 10 Ways to Sow Revolution in Your Back Yard – The Organic Prepper

Off Grid Living, Prepping

Tips for Keeping Backyard Chickens – For Beginners

Having a new flock of chickens can be a roller coaster ride of ups and downs, especially for beginners. It takes years to learn the ins and outs of good chicken keeping. If I could go back and start over, there would be a handful of things I wish I would have known as a beginner. These ten tips will help prevent confusion and heartache for the new chicken owner.

Source: 10 Tips for Keeping Backyard Chickens for Beginners

(Thanks to Wirecutter for sharing this one.)

Arizona, Gardening, Off Grid Living

Rainy Saturday at the Ranch

It’s a rainy Saturday morning, so that means gathering up every available 5 gallon bucket, pail, and even a plastic garbage can or two in the hopes of collecting the coveted premium –  rain water.

Although our well water tastes great, it does have about 350 parts per million of mineral content. This tends to give the water a slight alkalinity. For the most part it hadn’t seemed to hinder growth, but we were amazed at the difference that filtered or rain water made with our indoor plants.

In addition to rain water, we’ve been using a Berkey filter for the times when there is no rain. We also add a balanced liquid supplement varying between more nitrogen based, and adding potash & phosphorous as well.

At the moment inside, we have Black Krim & Yellow Pear tomatoes started, lettuce, Aji peppers, Peruvian Kiowa, Turmeric, Cilantro, and tobacco.

In the garden, we have three kinds of lettuce, cilantro, asparagus (soon!,) and I hope to start peas, spinach, and arugula this weekend.

We have a lot of seeds, and my darling spouse is always complaining that I buy too many seeds, but if we had to live off the garden, they would be a Godsend.

Yesterday, the Yucca food bank had big bags of spinach, so today it will be pureed and frozen for later use. Spinach is excellent and makes a great part of many ranch meals.

Here’s some pictures of last Falls’ indoor Yellow Pear tomatoes: