Transportation Off The Grid

There are a variety of ways to have self-sustaining transportation when you are living off the grid.

#1. Walking, jogging, running. Great if you love exercising regularly.

#2. Cross Country Skiing. Good for in the winter.

#3. Bicycles. You will need to perform regular maintenance of your bicycle, thus brushing up on your bicycle mechanic skills is a must. You might even consider taking a bicycle mechanic training course.

#4. Boat - Sailboat or rowboat or canoe. Really only good if you have a large body of water or a river that is going in the direction you want to go.

#5. Horses - Nothing like equine power to get around in your local community! I personally love horses, it is my dream to one day have a horse breeding farm / ranch with a bed and breakfast.

#6. Dog sleds - Really for more Nordic regions. But totally doable if you love Huskies and dog-sledding.

Outside of these options you get into the realm of electricity powered and gasoline / diesel powered engines. Or hydrogen, but hydrogen cars are currently too expensive because they're mostly experimental models.

There are electricity powered bicycles, known as e-bikes, which produce more power and speed than a normal bicycle and look like a scooter.

Then next step up would be a diesel or gasoline powered scooter. (In which case, you aren't really "off the grid", are you???)

The next would be a diesel motorcycle. But be forewarned, diesel engines don't start very well in the winter.

Then diesel cars which can be modified to run on leftover cooking oil. And again, the problem of slow starts in the winter.

And lastly gasoline vehicles... In which case you're not really off the grid at all.

Thus it all goes back to bicycles. Simply the most energy efficient way to travel relatively short distances. The average cyclist goes about 19 kmph (12 mph).

Competitive cyclists can get over 32 kmph (20 mph), which is great if you live only 10 or 20 km from everyone or everything you need to visit.

For longer journeys (over 50 km) you may want to get a head start or resort to public transportation (buses, carpooling, subways, trains, planes, ferries, etc).

Admittedly, depending on your needs, you will sometimes need to compromise and use what is available.

Which brings up an interesting topic... In the TV series "Revolution", why aren't they using bicycles more? Horses and steam trains, yes, they are using those, but bicycles seem like a very easy solution.

How To Feed Your Kids Off The Grid

Making and maintaining a garden will be a mandatory part of your daily living if you want to live off the grid and be self sufficient. You could of course hunt and fish, but eating fish and meat all the time isn't very healthy for you - or your kids.

Children need lots of vitamins, a variety of them, in order to grow up healthy. This means lots of fruits, veggies, berries and nuts.

Now depending on the season and where you live in the wilderness you can gather nuts and berries. But be sure to learn which berries are edible and which are poisonous. Same goes with mushrooms, although to be fair less than 1% of mushrooms are poisonous.

Also, in addition to nutritional value, you can't always rely on hunting or fishing. Sometimes there is very little game available, during the winter months. Or maybe the fish just won't bite. Either way, you are going to need a more reliable source of food.

Here is some tips for growing your own garden!

#1. More is Better. Why? Expect some of the food to spoil. It is better to have more than enough than not enough.

#2. Pests and insects will be a nuisance. You need to find a way to deter pests and keep your plants insect free. Now you might think that pesticides is the easy solution, but another easy solution is to either plant something which is poisonous or repels numerous insects. For example, Chrysanthemums are poisonous to bed bugs... So if you get a bed bug infestation go buy yourself some Chrysanthemums potted flowers. A variety of insects all have vulnerabilities to certain plants which either kill with poison or repel them due to their smell.

#3. If possible build a greenhouse. You can regulate the control of water and sunlight, heat and cold, more easily inside a greenhouse. For discounts on heating lamps / daylight lamps if you have excess electricity, go try police auctions because the police seize equipment from grow ops and later sell them. So its a cheap way to get extra stuff for your greenhouse.

#4. Variety - You can't live on potatoes alone. Try to get as much variety in your planted veggies as possible. For fruit this will be more difficult as apple trees / etc take decades to grow and produce lots of fruit.

#5. Storing fruits and veggies. You will need to learn how to store your food for the winter. Some of this may require canning, or you may need to make a cold cellar where you can store food in a dry environment during the winter. Do NOT store onions and potatoes next to each other! The onions do not react well with other vegetables, causing them to grow rot on them.

#6. Weeding is a necessary part of growing a garden. You will need to weed it regularly so your plants grow efficiently and aren't losing precious water and nutrients to rival weeds. Plan to weed your garden every 2 or 3 days, because weeds grow very quickly.

NOTE: Weeds would be ideal for terraforming Mars for an oxygenated atmosphere because they grow quickly, are hardy plants, produce oxygen, reproduce quickly and could turn Mars into a green planet in a short number of years.

2nd Note: Reminder to Self, write a post about settling Mars / terraforming Mars / Living Off the Grid on Mars.

#7. Get input from your kids about what foods to grow. Try and grow more foods that your kids like and will eat. But try to keep a variety at the same time.

#8. Think yield per square foot. Try to allocate equal space to plants based on yield per square foot so you get a roughly equal amount of various foods. If you eat more of one type of food, try to plant more of that so you have adequate amounts.

#9. Learn patience. Gardening is a great way to learn patience, but you also need perseverance to stick with it. You reap what you sow!

#10. Get your kids involved in the planting, weeding, watering and harvestingn process. They will enjoy the food more if they know they helped grow it.

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