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Blogroll
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.
Taxes are going up in 2011! - Jul 23, 2010
Think times are tough now? Wait till you see this article on tax rate increases of all types beginning in January of next year. Investors Business Daily has done a good job of touching on some of the main tax increases scheduled for January 1, 2011. They include tax increases due to the expiration of some Bush tax cuts, as well as new ones passed through legislation in the last few years. They affect individuals with respect to earned income, dividends, capital gains, and other tax return items. They are on....
On Hurricanes and Oil Disasters - Jul 22, 2010
The Weather Channel has a very good article today on the effects a hurricane might have for the Gulf Coast given the current BP oil tragedy. It comments on many issues, including a possible oil/water spray for those on the coast but states that no oil will fall on those living people living further inland. It does say that the oil in the Gulf will move inland with the storm surge. How much oil is moved around depends of course on the strength of the storm and how large it is. This all becomes relevant very soon to all....
The BP disaster's effect on human health - Jul 21, 2010
The Gulf of Mexico oil disaster continues to unfold. BP has said they have capped the well and this was supposed to be good news for all involved. But the reality is that it now seems oil and gases are seeping through the sea floor in places other than the one well. No one knows, or more likely no one is saying, how serious this issue is, and how much additional oil and methane are moving into the Gulf of Mexico. We all know how devastating this disaster has been to the people and environment all along the Gulf coast.....
Federal government limiting access to GOM blowout - Jul 02, 2010
Success at self reliance comes in no small part from having access to solid information. Here in the US we have believed that for the most part we have a free press. While the main stream media has always been more beholden to big business than the average US citizen, there are enough other resources available to the curious mind that we can find the truth when it comes to most issues. That is why this video of Anderson Cooper on CNN is so disconcerting: It seems that not only is BP putting great limits on the media as....
Radical Self Reliance Comes from Within - Jun 17, 2010
Skills and practices that have been with mankind for centuries – gardening, keeping small livestock, preserving food, and so on, sort of disappeared for the past few decades when conveniences made them unnecessary. As we became a society of consumers, homemaking became a dirty word. Consumption caused homemakers (both men and women) to lose their place and forget their skills. It makes sense then that homemaking was considered useless. You could accomplish more outside of the home. But now we are on the cusp of....
Keeping Chickens an Act of Civil Disobedience - Jun 16, 2010
Keeping backyard chickens is illegal in many cities. In Richmond, VA, people are keeping chickens anyway. Is this an act of justified civil disobedience, or are people wrong to think they are above the law? Residents in the Richmond, VA region are joining the nationwide movement to increase food security by keeping backyard chickens . Zoning laws in Richmond require chickens to be kept 200 feet from the property line. In greater Henrico County, chickens must be kept 400 feet from the property line. The article....
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 expensive. Fifty cents a bunch is probably average. I read somewhere that you can plant the root of a green onion in some dirt and it will sprout, and that you can cut what you need and the onions will perpetuate themselves....
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 disruptor connected to obesity, breast cancer, type 2 diabetes, and other health problems. This Reuters article explains that BPA is found in the epoxy resin lining of virtually all canned foods and that unlike plastic bottles,....
Did Spain Do the Right Thing by Cutting Wages? - Jun 10, 2010
To avoid becoming another Greece, Spain announced an austerity program that would save 15 billion Euros from its budget. Part of the package included a wage cut for public sector workers. The figure for the pay cut appears to be between 5% - 15%, although other figures say that 5% is the average. . It’s just enough to provoke a mixed reaction from Spaniards but the consensus seems to be that the austerity program is too little, too late. Spain has suffered a 2 year long recession and has one of the highest unemployment....
College Grads Must Let Go of Dreams & Face Reality - Jun 10, 2010
Countdown to reality in 5... 4... 3... 2... Times are tough for college graduates. Not only are they graduating with a ton of debt, they can’t find jobs to begin paying it off. Their ideals and dreams are being dismantled. Let’s examine the higher truths embedded within this debacle which seem to call upon the real need for personal self reliance among our young people. This CBS report in a series called “Children of the Recession” revisits 2009 graduates and their experiences looking for work after graduating . Most....
Lifting Chicken Bans a National Work in Progress - Jun 10, 2010
You're creating quite a stir, little chick. One great thing about living in America is that many of us have huge houses with pretty big yards. A little piece of land we can call our own. You can put a pool back there, or keep the grass perfectly green and trimmed. You can build a shed, let the dog run free, and install a swingset for the kids. It’s so neat to be the caretaker of a little postage-stamp sized plot of earth. With urban homesteading becoming a more prevalent idea, people are now dreaming about transforming....
A Glimpse of Europe's Austerity Programs - Jun 09, 2010
We keep our eye on Greece and Europe because many of the things happening there could be the model for our own financial, economic, and perhaps political future. As New Hampshire governor Judd Gregg put it, “If we continue to spend much more than we take in ... we'll double our debt in five years and triple it in 10 years and essentially be where Greece is in about seven years .” It’s not just Greece, but Hungary, Spain, Italy, and more that are struggling to find ways to cut back on their “unsustainable policies.” The....
Self Reliant Health: Learning to Enjoy Exercise - Jun 09, 2010
In addition to adopting a healthy diet , exercise is the other obvious thing to do for good health. However, if you’re exercising on your own it’s necessary to avoid jumping into something that can injure you. Americans love to exercise hard. We think that if we’re not breaking a sweat we’re not working hard enough. When I lived in Korea, I noticed that most Korean people saw exercise as a form of leisure and it was supposed to be therapeutic, not punishing. After a long day of work, people would go walking with their....
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Latest news and resources in self reliance - Good primer on urban chicken farming
Good primer on urban chicken farming
2 months ago
Category: Animals/Livestock
Category: Animals/Livestock
This is a very good article on urban chicken farming. As times change I am sure we will all be looking at certain ideas and concepts in quite a different light.
