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Off-Grid.net

Off-grid brings you news, knowledge, discussion, and classifieds from the off-grid world. What seems like a tiny niche is growing in popularity as people seek a life outside of the city. Off-gridders must find ways to produce their own energy, food, water, shelter, and other necessities. Connect with people who live off the beaten path or begin the search for your own property on this site.

Build It Solar

Dedicated to do-it-yourself renewable energy projects, Build It Solar provides hundreds of ideas and plans for any kind of home energy endeavor. New to renewable energy? Start with the "Half Plan" that uses a variety of energy saving projects to cut your energy usage in half. New to solar? Look for the do-it-yourself site survey to understand your property's solar potential. Not limited to solar, Build It Solar also includes tons of projects for wind power and biofuels.

Earth2Tech

Energy self reliance is a big topic for environmental, political, and individual reasons. Earth2Tech posts news about technological developments that can affect us on personal and societal levels. Stay on top of the news about electric cars, the smart grid, the bloom box fuel cell, solar power applications, and LED lightbulbs.

Wisebread

Wisebread is well-known for its advice on real personal finance. It's a community of bloggers who write about frugal living, lifehacks, careers, and other financial wisdom. Being smart with your money isn't supposed to inhibit you: rather, Wisebread's advice helps people worry less about money, allowing you to focus on the really important things in life. They also feature an active forum where you can ask questions and interact with other people who are trying to live within their means.

Instructables

Do you want to know how to build a vertical garden? How about your own solar panel array? Maybe you're looking for ways to reuse a linen closet full of old pillowcases. Instructables is a community based site that allows anyone to post a how-to project complete with photos and instructions. The result: a lifetime's supply of projects that can help you save money, recycle, or simply satisfy your appetite for making stuff.

Survival Spot

Disasters are a reality that shouldn't be ignored. That's the reason Survival Spot was created - to share information about a variety of survival and preparedness topics. Topics cover many aspects of survival, including gardening, food storage, health, and self defense. Also read about getting by in the wilderness and reviews of essential gadgets and gear. Like any other type of self reliance, preparedness is something to get into gradually and this blog can give you ideas on where to start.

Self-Reliance-Exchange

Written by a group of self reliant people, Self Reliance Exchange is quickly building an enormous database that covers a huge range of categories on self reliant practices and philosophies. Anyone interested in self reliance will find something useful to take away from this blog - recipes from scratch, emergency preparedness, and personal finance are great categories to start looking into here.

Simple Self Reliance

This writer explores the concept of self reliance and how self reliance fits in this modern society. How far can you realistically go down the path of self reliance? How can you stay on track with your priorities? He also writes on the grandaddy of self reliance, Henry David Thoreau. We can't wait to see how this blog unfolds!

American Preppers Network

For information and news from the world of emergency preparation, American Preppers Network is a great resource. Learn about food storage, what to expect during a natural disaster, and about other survival techniques. You can also connect with other preppers in your region and all over the world in the forum and through the numerous links to other prepping blogs on the web.

Food

Nutrition is a key aspect of self reliance, and it's one that can get you into other areas of self reliant living. Many people start their path to self reliant nutrition through cooking, and take it from there. There are several powerful methods to grow and raise your own food: gardening, raising small livestock, preserving, and canning the food for later use in your food storage pantry.

The easiest way to get into self reliant nutrition is by cooking. Look for simple recipes using minimal ingredients and use these for cooking from scratch.

These easy recipes can help you decide what kind of food you might want to grow in a vegetable garden. Through cooking, you'll learn what you prefer and therefore, what would be worth cultivating. Even if you live in a small apartment, you can grow a few ingredients in a windowsill garden or try container gardening on a balcony or fire escape. Other excellent beginning gardener methods include square foot gardening and raised bed gardening.

Gardening is a skill that takes a lot of time to get right, so start out with small projects and move up from there. When you get the hang of things and your kitchen garden is really producing, you can get into food preservation. By canning, freezing, pickling, and dehydrating the harvest, you can enjoy your homegrown produce after the summer ends.

Self reliant nutrition is a cyclical process that begins with cooking and ends with food preservation. But it is up to you to figure out what you like to eat first! So get cooking!

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Latest Additions

Call For Action: Families Forming Partnerships with Farmers
The CSA concept is a trend growing more popular among farmers and consumers who want organic or chemical-free, fresh produce. Greenleaf Farms now has 50 families subscribed to its program, which is only a couple of years old.
Community-supported agriculture delivers direct sales
Growers are finding partners in offices, where workers revel in having produce delivered and bypassing the need to shop at a grocery.....
What is an urban homestead?
An urban homestead is based on the very old idea of homesteading in the country. The difference is that it is done in the city, or the suburbs.
The once-popular kitchen garden is making a comeback
Fresh is the food mantra of the day. And it doesn’t get any fresher than digging up dewy lettuce and pearly onions from a plot outside your back door or plucking sprigs of aromatic basil and thyme from pots on a sun-drenched patio.......
10 Tips To Reduce Your Food Waste
A few weeks ago, after serving up some sobering statistics about food waste in America, the Lantern put out a call for your best tips on how to avoid refrigerator rot. Nearly 200 of you responded, with some big suggestions (move to a place within walking distance of a grocery store) and small ones (grow your own herbs). Here are 10 key lessons that emerged from your letters and comments.......
Prairie Crossing in Illinois: The ‘urban’ farm of the future?
It takes almost an hour to drive from downtown Chicago north on I-94 to the town of Grayslake, Ill., home of the Prairie Crossing residential development -- "A Conservation Community" -- and its core farm, Sandhill Organics........
Growing your own food in an easy fashion
This author does a great job of pointing out that even a little bit of food grown in the home or in the yard is a good thing. It doesn't have to be a major project, and you can start small. Chives and parsley are two examples.
Windowsill Gardening: Free Green Onions Forever! - Jun 15, 2010
Some people call them onions. Others call them scallions. On my path to eating more healthy foods, I discovered that green onions add something to a dish that really needs to be there. They taste fresh and slightly spicy. They remind me of summer. The other good thing is that they’re not very....
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BPA Lurks in Virtually All Canned Foods - Jun 11, 2010
A few years ago people became aware that BPA – bisphenol A – a carcinogenic substance – was leaching into their drinks from plastic bottles. Now it is becoming known that BPA is also found in the lining of canned food: Soups, baby formula, canned vegetables, milk, everything. BPA is an endocrine....
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Delicious Spinach Feta Omelette - Homestead Letters
I love simple, wholesome, healthy things to eat. This spinach feta omelette covers all of those bases. Plus, if you have chickens and grow spinach, the main ingredients are already covered.
How to Cure and Smoke Your Own Bacon! - Planter Tomato
Hungry for a BLT? If not, you will be after reading Planter Tomato's instructions for curing and smoking bacon. While the curing recipe requires a few specialty ingredients, the smoking process only requires a few hours on the barbecue over low heat. Making bacon would be a great way to utilize a big hunk of meat, especially if you'll one day raise and butcher your own pig.
How to Make an Earthbox for Growing Vegetables
An Earthbox is a self contained gardening system with many advantages: it has a built in reservoir so it waters itself, it's easy to make, and it's perfect for gardening in small spaces. The Earthbox is made from inexpensive, easy-to-find materials. One design calls for plastic totes/bins, and another makes use of 5-gallon plastic buckets. This PDF file features several Earthbox designs that you can make yourself.
Heard of Strawbale Gardening? - May 24, 2010
A lot of people may not garden because they do not have a lot of ground space available. But as they say, necessity is the mother of invention. This post from BackYard AquaFarms shows that strawbale gardening really can work for people in that situation. The article shows the steps needed to use....
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Ways to Garden Upside-Down Successfully - NYTimes
While some people question the viability of upside down gardening, enough people have grown tomatoes, peppers, and cucumbers upside down to show that yes, it works! This article profiles the different ways people garden upside-down. There are ready-made products such as the ubiquitous Topsy-Turvy, but you can also make upside-down gardens from plastic buckets, 2-liter soda bottles, and milk jugs. Check out the photos in this article for ideas!
Square Foot Gardening, Abridged - Instructables.com
This how-to project shows step-by-step how to build a square foot garden out of a few wooden planks and materials easily found at a hardware store. The advantage of square foot or raised bed garden is that the garden can be set up on grass or a deck, and you can control what kind of soil you use.
 
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