Off The Grid News

silvertipgrizz
silvertipgrizz Posts: 1,990 ✭✭✭✭✭

Interesting articles as usual here.

Comments

  • nksunshine27
    nksunshine27 Posts: 343 ✭✭✭

    i have been reading a lot of different magazines lately for off grid thankyou for this it will be in my list to read tomorrow. my husband a while ago when to solar school. are you off grid?

  • ines871
    ines871 Posts: 1,283 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Thank you for sharing OFF the grid News, @silvertipgrizz 🙂

  • silvertipgrizz
    silvertipgrizz Posts: 1,990 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @nksunshine27

    Unfortunately, I am in waiting to rid myself of living in town and in a house way too expensive...I am a country girl, gardener and really want to start raising goats/mini, nubian and lamancha for their milk and I just love the little goats...I might even be able to handle them lol. But their milk mixed together is the best milk I have ever drank. I want to raise chickens too. If I was able, I want to be off grid so much but my goal and hope is to be headed out by end of summer next year.

    How does the solar school teach it? Or rather, what is the curriculum like? If I could learn how to use the battery back ups, and had the no how I would be totally off grid. One reason in particular, did you know that ONG gas company charges us where I live 32 $ and some change every monty to rent the meter that allows them to know how much to charge us? This month they moved my due date up almost 2 weeks and knocked the amount off what I had to spend for food. They are electronic so what diff would it make when they take it out....is auto pay btw. I would love to understand how to do solar but just getting out of town where they spray here and taint my plants and get off the grid is my dream. But honestly, I don not know that I am up to the task anymore. Of living off grid that is.

    I spend a lot of my day doing research. I am happy to look for stuff for anyone as i have time. I'm getting ready to send some more stuff on heart health, leptin, inuslin and so on, over the next few days.

    I did not know I was going to be so windy lol.

    You're welcome any time. I signed up for email from them so I don't even have to go looking for it lol.

    The best to you.

  • silvertipgrizz
    silvertipgrizz Posts: 1,990 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @rainbow

    You know you are always welcome rainbow 💐

  • ines871
    ines871 Posts: 1,283 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @silvertipgrizz - Since you WANT to live Off-grid, - I started a discussion here in TGN this year For folks Off-grid: how in your house do you daily use phone? & computer?

    it has had like 80 Excellent comments , (that we are still trying to Figger-out IF, or How we can put it into practice for our family, mostly financially. - But we can always Dream... right? Dreaming Positive dreams is, well, Good ) 🙂 You can get more INFO in that discussion from people Actually living... their OFF-Grid dreams.

  • merlin44
    merlin44 Posts: 426 ✭✭✭✭

    "Off The Grid News" offers lots of valuable articles and news whether one is on or off grid. Thanks for the post @silvertipgrizz

  • silvertipgrizz
    silvertipgrizz Posts: 1,990 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @merlin44

    I get that too, and lots more. I think many might like to see my list so I think I will start sending those.

    You're welcome and I really enjoy being a part of this group.

  • silvertipgrizz
    silvertipgrizz Posts: 1,990 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @rainbow

    Thank you for the info on the off grid group you started..I will check that out shortly.

    The best to you.

  • Ruth Reyes-Loiacano
    Ruth Reyes-Loiacano Posts: 12 ✭✭✭

    Thanks for sharing!

  • EarlKelly
    EarlKelly Posts: 230 ✭✭✭

    Thanks for sharing. Just signed up for newsletter.

  • silvertipgrizz
    silvertipgrizz Posts: 1,990 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @EarlKelly

    you're welcome. And since you are a master gardener, what do you think of this mans method of no till? I ask also because I have clay soil that was pounded throughout at a high rate of pressure so that I can hardly dig it to grow much anything. (A flood plain and their regs/builders).



  • nksunshine27
    nksunshine27 Posts: 343 ✭✭✭

    I have family in Washington that raise white lamancha goats and get a lot of milk from them i loved the milk when i was a kid(no pun intended lol)

    as far as solar school it was in Colorado. I know the feeling of attempting to own our own place and me still having an income . being off grid is optimal. i have had chickens for about 14 years now they are fun.

    as far as the no till method i do use this method but not because of the soil but because i pull less weeds that way. at least the non medicinal weeds lol. i havent used his cardboard method, but if there was a way you could get sand and horse manure from someone that would help your soil or you could even try the straw bale method

    best endeavors to you

  • nksunshine27
    nksunshine27 Posts: 343 ✭✭✭

    @silvertipgrizz also i am raising Jerusalem artichokes to help people with diabetes.

  • silvertipgrizz
    silvertipgrizz Posts: 1,990 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @nksunshine27

    I love idaho! I passed through there at least once on my trips back and forth from Alaska.

    On the cardboard, he says at beginning of second season some prefer to just add another layer of cardboard atop of previous year means no weeding and no tilling again and that year after year this method with all the worms do all the work of building the soil so doesn't that makek sense for my soil since it is very hard to work? And yes straw on top and then the plant planted through the straw and cardboard, with compost in the planting hole for first couple years til the residen soil/clay is healthier and with more microbes? I"m out of options x for the big cattle mineral tubs I plant in, I would have little of a garden here and really want to put in okra and much more.

    Don't you just love the noise that chickens make? To me it is so soothing.

  • EarlKelly
    EarlKelly Posts: 230 ✭✭✭

    @silvertipgrizz finally got a chance to view the video. Excellent talk and demo. Have used the cardboard method when I am making new raised beds. Easy to do and great vegetable production. Highly recommend this method.. thanks. For the info.

  • silvertipgrizz
    silvertipgrizz Posts: 1,990 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @EarlKelly

    My ground is hard packed due to flood zone the house is built on. Make it almost impossible to plant. I have many tubs and plant in that but I too will use this method next spring and look forward to it.

    I'm glad you enjoyed it.

    Do you know anything about growing moringa?

  • nksunshine27
    nksunshine27 Posts: 343 ✭✭✭

    @silvertipgrizz i so want to visit Alaska. what i was trying to refer to was you actually use the straw bale to plant your plants right into.

    yes chickens are soothing except when the rooster decides to crow at 3 in the am way before the sun is up her in Idaho lol. i'm curious how chickens would do in Alaska with all the daylight during the summer months.

  • silvertipgrizz
    silvertipgrizz Posts: 1,990 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @nksunshine27 Yes I agree the roosters can be a pain. When I was a child, about 11 or so, me and my brother would chase the chickens when our parents weren't aware of our deeds. We were flogged more than once lol.

    People in the Fairbanks area which is where I lived raise chickens and it gets as cold as 60 below not often but during the winter -45 was common. I would imagine the people who had chickens kept dark curtains, special made to block out the sun like many of us used in our houses so we could sleep during the day to work at night...then made sure that the chickens were outside and inside according to normal circadian rhythm with those dark curtains blocking out the light when they were inside to sleep.

    I have seen the bale planting method before but over this winter I'm going to do a combo of cardboard and straw over the area to be planted and partially use the Ruth Stout method. My back and shoulders totally rebel if I try to use a shovel. I need enough space to grow enough food as the upcoming growing season may have to be the main souce of food due to the food shortage some are proclaiming and increase in what we might see in food costs might be quite ugly.

  • ines871
    ines871 Posts: 1,283 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Without a barn for them to warm self in straw & hay, how do chickens (say at 10 degrees for 13 hours) overwinter? - What do 4 of them at minimum need to stay alive?

  • EarlKelly
    EarlKelly Posts: 230 ✭✭✭

    @silvertipgrizz Sorry know of it but no experience with it. You trying to grow some? Would be very interested in how you make out. Any access to lots of leaves and mulch to start some raised beds with? Get some down now and will start to help you soil become more arable. Take a few years but you will see a difference. The more organic matter you can incorporate in to the soil, the looser it becomes. Good luck and keep me informed.

  • silvertipgrizz
    silvertipgrizz Posts: 1,990 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I really don't know how to tend chickens in Fairbanks or anywhere else with very cold temps. All I know is little and that was from what people would tell me but I never got how chickens could stand anywhere near the temps we had without a barn or building of some time that had space enough to reinforce with straw, lights, blankets or a coop inside a barn kind of thing. I did have a lot of fun learning to garden there. The huge pluse was the lack of so many bug types and numbers, and the amazing length of sunshine which did make up for a lot of the short comings of trying to grow a southern type garden with far north issues.

    I read recently where some thing ducks are better than chickens for egg size, less predator issues... I know that make good 'alarm' against predators.

    So much to learn...but I really want chickens and the smaller goats for milk as I do not think I could handle the normal size by myself.

    Sorry I know that was not of much help with the chickens in the cold. I just did not have the time or a place when I lived there as I spent all my time working, a little gardening and a few of my fav past times, one of which was traveling and see all Alaska I could while I was there.

  • silvertipgrizz
    silvertipgrizz Posts: 1,990 ✭✭✭✭✭