Tips about and stories of~Off-grid Living:Tell us what interests you!

[Farmfresh]

I'd mostly be intrested in true, yet humorous, ancedotes about actually living that way.

Follow that up with the following:
How to do certain chores without electricity?
How to cope without the world?
How to cook on a wood stove(can, bake, etc.)?
A typical day?

What she said!!!

I think the average person has a hard time understanding us. Why we do what we do. What motivates us to work so hard and have so little in material things.

The reader needs that personal story so they can be pulled into our little magical world and really understand what makes us tick. Some may be converted to our way of life (perhaps even find the Lord!). Some may drop the book and think we are all a bunch of crazies. But every so often ... some one might read the story and see themselves!!

Remember how excited you personally were when you found out there were other people that thought like and even tried to LIVE like you were?

I personally felt pure joy and then uncontrollable excitement when I realized I was one in a community of like thinkers and not a weirdo traveling the self sufficient path alone. Paint the picture and share the tale. We are all anxiously waiting for the book!

 

[Beekissed]

Washing clothes:

Water hauled from a spring about 100 yds around a hill, to two tubs on stands. There is a hand-cranked wringer between the tubs and a wash board in the soapy water. Shirts and good clothing go in first and are washed vigorously on the washboard.

Now, folks, this water is cold and pretty soon your knuckles get pretty raw from accidently being grated across the washboard!

Next come jeans and other colored clothes....in the same water.

After washing, the are fed into the wringer while the person rinsing the clothing aggitates the clothing with their hands in the rinse water. The wringer swings away from the tubs so that one can feed the rinsed clothing into it and they wring out and drop into a basket.

These then go on the line, overlapping the material so that you can use one clothespin for both items each time. This works best if you have the "real" clothes pins that do not have springs.

Whites get fresh water and bleach added.

In the winter time we only did laundry once a month. We bagged up several trash bags of clothing(sometimes up to 12), carried them a mile out to the truck parked at the hard road, loaded them and ourselves into the back of the truck (no topper) and drove 20 miles into town to do laundry. We usually did this late in the evening when the laundry mats were empty so that we could have many available machines.

Cold? YES! We piled the bags of laundry around us to stay warm...this was especially effective when the clothing was fresh out of the dryer. If someone did this to their kids now days it would be considered child abuse! It was just life to us, so we didn't think it out of the ordinary.

To walk a mile carrying 3 bags of clothing in the snow and ice? One in each hand and one on your head. I kid you not! We had one flashlight being carried out front by my dad. You kept up or you couldn't see where you were going.

If, between laundry days, you needed an article of clothing washed for school? You heated water, sloshed them around in a dishpan, rung them out with the help of your sister. This involved standing opposite each other and twisting in opposite directions until the water was squeezed from the fabric. Then you shook them out as best you could and hung them near the stove. In the morning, these jeans can stand up by themselves in the corner!

All my clothing could fit into one cardboard box under my bed, so my clothing had to be washed out in this manner quite often in order to have clean clothing for school. I had one pair of shoes for the whole year for school, so these were scrubbed on frequently to rid them of the mud from walking a mile back a deeply rutted road.

Ever hear that tale about walking uphill both ways to school? Well....my poor kids can joke about it all they want. We really DID walk uphill both ways....actually several hills. As one knows, if you walk up a hill, you must also walk down...and vice versa. WV, boys...what about the hills of WV do you not understand?

 

[Farmfresh]

We went (almost) off grid for ten days a few years back. Our city was hit by a massive ice storm. Our power lines were out which meant no electricity and no furnace. We did have a natural gas stove, gas hot water heater and running water however!

Since our power line only feeds three houses it was one of the last ones repaired. The other two families left their homes for the duration. Many were talking about eating only cold peanut butter sandwiches and freezing in their homes. They often had broken water pipes and spoiled food as well.

We did rather well in our old house! We have a cast iron wood stove insert in the fireplace and out house stayed toasty warm in the living room and about 60 in the rest of the house. Plus we actually ADDED to our wood pile during the aftermath by cleaning up fallen limbs and trees in the neighborhood. We had good hot meals, since I kept the oven going to help heat the house. Fresh baked bread and roasted turkey or beef. Anything I could bake low and slow. We harvested the ice from our garage roof and packed it into garbage bags then packed the chest freezers with ice, like a giant ice chest, and lost no freezer food! We have kerosene lamps, candles and my Geek son made a great little bathroom light out of an LED light, and a 9 volt battery! I was actually a little disappointed when the lights came back on.

If we were really off grid, I would still want a propane stove and, in addition a wood cook stove. I guess we would have to have a wind powered well pump as well. They have those for stock tanks all over Kansas and if you also had an elevated water tank (top of a hill?) you could still have a good dependable pressurized water supply. (dreaming again). All of the knowledge I have collected made this emergency very easy to bear.

So I guess I would have to agree dragonlaurel a good way to "get started off grid" is to have an emergency!

 

[dragonlaurel]

I 've got stove envy ! Our old one was tiny. The oven would fit two bread pans side by side or a normal dutch oven. You could fit a frying pan and a small saucepan on the top. It still made great blackberry cobbler.

 

[Farmfresh]

I watched my grandma Nettie wash clothes with a scrub board a wringer and a double wash tub for years! She also had a manual wringer washer that she used quite a bit. All with a modern washing machine standing right beside her!!

She said the clothes got cleaner when she did them herself. The only things she washed in the modern machine was my grandpa's work overalls and the towels and sheets.

 

[dragonlaurel]

We had a real bathtub somebody was getting rid of and put it under the springs pipe. We just put a plug in the tub when we wanted to fill it.
To do laundry, we filled it about halfway, with some Bronner's soap and then waded around in the tub, like we were stomping grapes to agitate the clothes. Wrung them out some to get the excess soap out and refilled the tub to rinse. Dance around (sorta) in there some more, wring them out again, and hang them up. In winter we either did this on a fairly warm day or went to the laundrymat in town. We normally saved the money for other things. The clay road was too steep (very poor planning there), bad in spots and worse after every rain. If that road was wet, everything would have to wait for a few dry days.

My Grandma had a old wringer washer that was still working for at least thirty years. I want one of those! She kept it in her basement and had clotheslines in the basement and the yard. Smart set up.

 

[Farmfresh]

We actually STILL have my grandma Nettie's old wringer washer. I am supposed to go pick it up from my sisters some weekend soon. I am not sure if it still works or not. I also have a double laundry tub that I found at a garage sale for $5.00 in perfect shape. Now I want a wringer!

 

[me&thegals]

My friend has a woodstove in her cabin with honest-to-goodness burners and regulated temp for baking. I would love to learn how to cook, bake and can on a wood stove like that!

Hmmm.... what else? How about soap and candlemaking?

 

[Beekissed]

We didn't get into soap and candle making back there. I guess we were too busy surviving to think about making those kind of things. We usually bought the cheapest soap or detergent available, just to make things easier. We didn't have any pots big enough to render fat or tallow, except our canner. Much later on we inherited Grandma's copper kettle...near the end of our sojourn off-grid.

I think, if I had to do it all over again, I would be doing those kind of things because it would save the money spent. I think my mother had enough things to do without making her own soap or candles back then!

 

[Beekissed]

This thread has gained more pertinence to me lately and I have enjoyed your feedback on this.

If you were to read a book about all this, how important are pics to you? Lots of pics or just a few, enough to show a glimpse? Back story to the whole adventure or just the adventure? Details of family or just details of living the actual life day to day?

Would you like it to be in the form of a journey from here to there, what was learned along the way, how we live now? Factual or conversational?