Category: Sustainable Living

Most OFF-GRID Homesteaders Get This Wrong




Someone I live with at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage calls off-grid homesteading a Ponzi scheme. I’ve often thought the same thing. Because our crazy consumer society is so destructive both personally and environmentally, because we are made to feel like just numbers working our lives away until we die, a lot of people are understandably attracted to this way of life that we’re told involves disconnecting, living off the land, living a peaceful, easier life in the country away from the hustle and bustle of society and the city.

And most of what we see in the advertising and propaganda about off-grid homesteading is praising a life of rugged individualism, making do by yourself, free from grid dependence, producing your own electricity, heat, water, and food.

But is it real? Can it really be done? Or do the majority of people fail at this or live miserable lives because they can’t produce all these things for themselves? Do they actually end up disconnecting from the grid, or do they just connect to the grid in a slightly different way? Are they being made to feel like failures if they can’t make it alone in the wilderness, or is this an unrealistic expectation set for them by the propaganda that attracts them to the life in the first place?

I think off grid homesteading is very possible, and a lot more of those who take the plunge into this lifestyle would succeed if they just stop listening to this one bit of the propaganda, if they stopped making this same mistake that is based on one major aspect of the romance of off-grid homesteading.

Do I Live In a CULT? | Google Thinks I Do

Why is  “Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage cult” the first term that comes up in Google when users search Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage? In this video, I’ll examine the characteristics experts use to determine if a group is a cult and see how my community measures up.

Do I live in a cult? Does my community meet the criteria to be a cult, or is Google misleading everyone who searches for my community?

Which Method Heats Tea Water Fastest? | It’s Not What You’d Expect

Unless you eat out every meal, you probably cook something every once in a while.

Have you ever wondered which cooking method is fastest and most efficient? If you can answer this question, you can not only make food faster, but you can use less power in the process and reduce your carbon footprint. Well, that’s what we’re going to do in this video.

I’m a big tea drinker and I’ve always wondered what was the fastest and most efficient way to heat tea water in the morning. Because water is universally used to measure things in science we’re going to use it in our little experiment. One gram is the amount of water in 1 cubic centimeter. A calorie is the amount of energy it takes to raise 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius. So we’re going to measure how much time it takes to boil 1 cup of water using 6 different common cooking methods.

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We Built the Tesla of Backyard Pizza Ovens In 4 Days

Ever tasted artisan Romano pizza baked in a cob oven? It’s one of the most delicious foods there is, and you can build your own cob pizza oven pretty quickly on the cheap and with a little sweat equity. We built one last year in just 4 days during a workshop at Sweetwater Farm in Tampa, FL. And this isn’t just any backyard pizza oven. This is the Cadillac, or should I say, Tesla, of cob ovens, with extra insulation and a fire brick floor and hearth.

We sourced local white/gray clay, sand, and straw to build the bulk of the oven. The foundation was constructed from reclaimed landscaping blocks and broken concrete, so most of the oven was built from local, natural, and waste materials.

The oven is now used by entrepreneur and pizzaiolo Greg Seymour to bake his highly sought after, award winning Romano-style pizza. The oven gives the pizza crust delicious charred bubbles that add a whole new dimension to a pizza. Turning garbage into gold.

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Incredible Rusty Wood Stove Transformation and Renewal

Throughout last summer, my wood stove was inexplicably getting rustier and rustier. It was only about 4 years old, but it was starting to look like it was 20. I decided to make it a late summer project and with a little elbow grease the rusty wood stove underwent a transformation and renewal to almost like new. Here’s how I did it. #woodstove #woodheat #castironstove

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Making Milk Paint Straight from the Cow

You’ve probably heard of milk paint. It’s a much more sustainable type of paint than acrylic paints for indoor applications. It doesn’t offgas, contains no petrochemicals, and is biodegradable, unlike acrylic paints, which contain plastics. You can buy milk paint premixed or in powder form, but in this video, I’ll be making MILK PAINT straight from the cow. I go through the entire process using raw local milk as the base, and mixing in only slaked lime, and earth pigments. It’s that simple!

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