Insteading
Homesteading & Sustainability
For the vast, vast majority of time, humans lived and cooked without electricity or gas. Yet, within less than two centuries under the influence of electricity’s convenient grid, people in the …
Continue Reading about Cooking Off-Grid: Fire, Sun, and Earth-Powered Methods →
Country life (or rural life for some folks): What sort of images come to your mind at this phrase? The beauty of nature on full display? The fresh smell of grass? Large open fields of grain under a …
Continue Reading about Things They Don’t Tell You About Living in the Country →
A particular quote comes to mind when I think of the patience required for a happy, healthy homestead: “The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing …
Summer is here, the air is warm, and you may be feeling the heat! Where I live in the central valley of California, the temperature has been tipping the scales at 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Whether or …
Continue Reading about Off-Grid Tips for Staying Cool Without Electricity →
Now that we've covered how to find your land, build your home, and keep things warm or cold in the previous article, let's get into the nitty gritty of off-grid living and talk about how to get the …
As I type this, my husband Jaeger and I are finally and entirely off-grid. Woo hoo! It started with getting our home's heat off-grid, then our water, then our toilets, and eventually, hand-building …
Continue Reading about Off-Grid Lifestyle Considerations: From Housing to Location to Social Life →
When it comes to living and working on an off-grid homestead, there are a lot of different tasks people need to accomplish. Many of these tasks are in the area of land maintenance. Trust me, if you …
The story I’m about to tell happened more than three years ago, so I feel comfortable finally airing it out, knowing that the places and persons involved have forgotten this conversation and …
When I think of using a clothesline, I think of a conversation I had when I still lived in the city. While hanging my laundry, my neighbor’s little boy poked his head through the fence. ”Whatchoo …
Continue Reading about Why You Should Start Using A Clothesline →
In my experience, it seems that discussions about off-grid water systems only take place in niche communities of homesteaders or preppers. If you were to bring it up in “normal” workplace …
YouTube comment sections are not always the friendliest of stomping grounds. If you reveal that you live off-grid, or worse, you try to teach others how to get started living off-grid, the critics …
Continue Reading about Answering Some Questions About Off-Grid Living →
Lead contamination. Chlorine and fluoride. E.coli. Fracking pollutants. Toxins and pharmaceuticals. There are so many things that might be mixed in the water that flows from the faucet, that turning …
Continue Reading about Rainwater Harvesting: The Basics And Why You Should Start Today →
The first summer my family and I moved to our homestead, we were not able to get a garden into the rocky, wild ground, but somehow we had a fantastic fall harvest and started accumulating jars of dry …
Continue Reading about Eating Acorns: From Foraging To Cooking & Recipes →
Most of us were raised on flush toilets. You go in the bathroom, do what you’ve got to do, and then the press of a shiny lever flushes all your unpleasantries into oblivion, never to be thought of …
Continue Reading about 5 DIY Composting Toilet Ideas And Details To Consider →
Living off the grid - whether by choice or by chance - is all about efficiency. You need to learn to make the most of your land, your water, and even your food waste. That's where worm composting …
Continue Reading about DIY Worm Composting Solution for Under $20 →
Converting a school bus into a permanent residence is a bit like a coming-of-age story. You take a school bus, probably one very similar to the one you rode in elementary school, gut it entirely, and …
I’ve always loved camping, and one of my favorite parts is the outdoor cooking experience. Food cooked over a campfire is something you just can’t replicate at home in your kitchen. A lot of times, …
Continue Reading about 20 Dutch Oven Camping Recipes for Your Next Outdoor Adventure →
"So let me get this straight. You want me to pull the electric pump out so you can put in a manual pump?" My husband and I nodded at the man who had come to remove our broken electric …
When we moved from a city of 200,000 to a homestead in a hilly, Ozark town of 2,000 residents, my husband and I fully anticipated there would be an adjustment period. As I wrote in my first article …
Continue Reading about Moving from City to Country: The Long-Term Transition →
Coffee is something I really used to enjoy. In my memories, that roasted, dark liquid is synonymous with warm cafes, good conversation, and air perfumed with delicious aromas. But now that I'm more …
Continue Reading about Caffeine-Free Coffee Substitutes That You Can Forage In The Backyard →
It’s no secret that modern living is a bit of a morass of consumerism, waste, and debt. In a world where the latest smartphone debuts less than a year after its previous iteration, where the Joneses …
Continue Reading about Frugal Living: Everything You Need To Know →
In our modern day, with cable TV shows banking off of the "weirdness" of living off the grid, the very phrase "Off-Grid" images of end-of-the-world preppers stocking up MREs and ammo, wild-haired …
Continue Reading about Living Off-Grid: What It’s Actually Like →
There's a charm to underground homes and so-called 'hobbit homes', but many former owners of such buildings have moved out due to problems with moisture and related conditions. But, earth might be the …
Some earth homes take advantage of something called thermal mass, which basically means that the mass of a structure has some capacity to store heat. So the mass of a home can stay at a more constant …
Living off the grid might seem like a dream come true for some of us. No longer tied to electricity or natural gas coming for a utility, we have greater choices for locations and saving money over the …
As surprising as it may seem, you actually don't have the right to grow your own fruits and vegetables on your own private property. In some states- Florida, namely- people have been fined …
Continue Reading about California Passes Neighborhood Food Act →
Lightweight, waterproof containers are a miracle of modern technology. You might never know how much you'll need a bucket, or a water jug, or a few dozen little plant pots until you don't have them, …
Continue Reading about How To Grow Microgreens in Tupperware →
Keeping minor cuts and scrapes clean and avoiding infection is just as important as steering clear of disease-carrying mosquitoes in a disaster/survival situation. More often than not, it's the little …
Continue Reading about DIY Hand Sanitizer That’s as Good as Store-bought →
Do you know how much water you'll need to survive if you're ever caught truly off-grid? The US government says you need 1 gallon of water, per person, every 3 days, just to survive. Their recommended …
Continue Reading about How Much Water Do People Need to Drink in a Day? (w/ Video) →
More and more people are turning to the "grow food, not lawns" movement for a variety of reasons. Some of us are urban farming revolutionaries, some of us are preppers, and some of us are just …
Continue Reading about Families Getting Fined for Growing Food Gardens →
If you're in Florida and hope to live a more sustainable lifestyle free from the influence of energy companies and massive agricultural conglomerates by adding solar panels to your home, harvesting …
Continue Reading about Florida Law Makes Living Off The Grid Illegal →
This isn't the first time I've covered DIY teardrop trailers. Over on Gas 2, we even published a how-to manual from Mechanix Illustrated a while back. This, though, is the first time we've seen one of …
Continue Reading about DIY Teardrop Trailer for Camping and Survival →
Solar ovens are long-lasting, zero-emission cooking tools that use no fuel - making them perfect for both off-the-grid cooking and developing countries that don't have access to a reliable grid to …
Italian architect Renzo Piano has come up with a small, simple-living home design that is less of a shiver shack and more of a one-person, off the grid castle - and, if you’re in the market for a …
Continue Reading about Renzo Piano Builds a Haute Shiver Shack For Off-the-Grid Singles →
In most homes and apartments, cooking takes place on a stove, in an oven, or, on those nights when you're just too tired to think, in the microwave. But these aren't the only ways to prepare a meal, …
Continue Reading about Sustainability 101: How To Build A Solar Oven →
When someone mentions living "off the grid," what do you picture? Most people see a remote location with a small, ultra-efficient house and no one else around for miles. For many years, this was …
Continue Reading about Off-Grid vs. Grid-Tied Home Solar Systems →
