Tag Archives: off grid

Hacking Our Way to Garden Prosperity

  In our 37 year off–grid homesteading adventure, we’ve had the tough chore of taking woodland and converting it to gardens. We’ve never had the luxury of driving into a new homestead that had cleared land with an established garden. … Continue reading

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Mid-Summer Homestead Update.

We wanted to take a little time to show you what we have accomplished since our last update. We’ve made some real progress. I especially, am results driven and things don’t always look like they’re progressing fast enough. But when … Continue reading

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Squeeze a House into a Tent

Most of us live in some form of traditional home complete with the typical layout. We probably have a living room, dining room, bathroom, kitchen and utility area. Unless a person is a tiny home enthusiast, most homes are of … Continue reading

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Wall Tent, Our Temporary Home

Have you ever heard of a wall tent? You may be familiar with backpacking and family camping tents put out by various companies but there is another breed of tent used by hunters as well as the mineral and oil … Continue reading

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Digging Our Water Well On Our New Off-grid Homestead

Gather round and let me tell you a story about magic. And water. Hard to believe they can be associated. I’m going to give you all the details on digging our water well on our new off-grid homestead. And a … Continue reading

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Road Building and Preliminary Orchard and Garden Preparation

We’ve come a long ways in a relatively short period of time. In my last update post, we had selected our property and were clearing a homestead site by manual chainsaw work. Johanna was piling all the brush into large … Continue reading

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Our Off-Grid Refrigeration and Battery Choices

I have a more comprehensive update post coming in the next few days regarding how things are progressing on the new homestead but for now I wanted to pass on some preliminary info that others might find of use. As … Continue reading

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Our New Off-Grid Homestead is Underway!

If you’ve been following along via facebook, you know we arrived safe and sound in Nova Scotia. We haven’t stopped since arriving. We own two properties along the coast and we had the hard decision of which one would be … Continue reading

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Farewell Hockley Lake!

I wanted to give an update on our life. As some of you know, we’ve been on one big, long adventure. We’ve homesteaded off-grid for the past 37 years. The last 17 have been spent alone in the wilderness of … Continue reading

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Floor Plan For The Perfect Homestead Dwelling – Part 2

Welcome back! In this part of designing the perfect homestead dwelling, I’ll discuss more factors to consider when developing your floor plan, beginning with the workshop. At the Maine homestead, the workshop was attached to the barn. This was convenient … Continue reading

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Floor Plan for the Perfect Homestead Dwelling Part 1

Designing the floor plan for the perfect homestead dwelling, whether it be on or off the grid requires careful thought and consideration. Let’s face it. You’ll be engaging in activities most people have never dreamed of doing. Certainly modern houses … Continue reading

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Homestead Road Building

Busting a road through the woods is an expensive proposition. You may have to pay a logger to drop trees. You will have to hire a bulldozer to clear the roadway. Then you will need to pay for load after … Continue reading

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The Indoor Outhouse

In my last post, The Homestead Outhouse, I alluded to the fact that there is an indoor version as well. Composting toilet manufacturers probably wouldn’t be too keen on my characterization, but an outdoors outhouse is essentially a chamber that … Continue reading

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The Homestead Outhouse

Welcome back. I had a question from a fellow homesteader about outhouses. We used an outhouse for 20 years in Maine and I’ve used them in remote exploration camps too. To a degree, even in our current off-grid home, we … Continue reading

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The Homestead Plan – Part 2

Welcome back! Continuing on from yesterday’s discussion, I asked numerous questions and suggested ascertaining all the different attributes of your property and mapping them out. Now let’s start to lay out your homestead plan using that information. Laying Out the … Continue reading

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The Homestead Plan – Part 1

I’ve written numerous articles regarding the basics; what to look for in a homestead site as well as options for the homestead water supply. At this point, I’d like to tie things together a bit. Let’s call it the homestead … Continue reading

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Increase Your Chances of Homesteading Success

Since the start of our posting, we have made a logical step by step analysis of the many considerations a person needs to ponder when contemplating a move to an off-grid homestead. Having done this for 37 years, it is … Continue reading

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Homestead Hot Water – A Thermosiphon Loop

In my previous post on homestead hot water, homestead-hot-water-part-1/ I discussed the hot water set up we had at the Maine homestead, the most basic system possible. For 20 years, we lugged buckets of water in by hand from a … Continue reading

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Homestead Hot Water – Part 1

Running hot and cold water are taken for granted in this day and age and yet, it wasn’t that long ago, that all of our water was hand pumped and bucketed into the house by hand. For 20 years we … Continue reading

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Homestead Water Filtration

In my previous four installments, I explained how we’ve met our daily water requirements from a drilled well, a lake, and a hand dug well. Today, we’ll discuss homestead water filtration. Any open body of water, no matter how pristine … Continue reading

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