Here are my favorite self-sufficiency blogs, along with links to content I particularly enjoyed. Note that I continue to expand this list whenever good articles hit my RSS reader. Last updated 06/26.
This is my favorite read right now. The author is terraforming 7 acres in Idaho into a paradise for wild game and writing about it along the way. Criminally underrated.
There are two kinds of people in this world: those who know they want to someday build a log cabin innawoods and those who haven’t yet seen Alone In The Wilderness. If you’re in the second category, consider this your homework. Once completed, you’ll be ready to join the rest of us in enjoying one of life’s finer things: the second-hand satisfaction of a good cabin build.
We are building a log home without a mortgage, using our own hands, out of materials on our own land, and planning to get it done in 2-3 years.
In northern Alabama, too, a fact I find sorta jarring, like it’s too temperate. My cabin fantasies near exclusively take place in Alaska, Maine, and your mom’s place.
This place is nicely remote, and off the grid, relying on solar power. I only get 50 amp-hours of juice on a sunny day, and often less than 15 amp-hours on a bad day. So the whole house runs on 12 volt DC power to avoid the overhead of an inverter; my laptop is powered through a succession of cheap vehicle power adapters, and my home server runs on 5 volt power provided by a USB adapter.
When power is low, I often hack in the evenings by lantern light.
In the present, we raise our family on our farm; unseen from the nearest road, unseen from the nearest town, unnoticed by the world. In this way we are anonymous, and wish to remain so.
I’ve been mulling over whether or not I want to raise meat rabbits and really enjoyed the Agrarian’s piece about their 12 year old son doing so. Very encouraging, being a 12 year old trapped in an adult’s body myself:
Our Mission: The Natural Building Blog is committed to providing free information that will improve people’s lives in a sustainable and affordable manner. This includes architecture, homesteading, gardening, appropriate technology, renewable energy, Permaculture principles, and ecological living.
“We live in an era of glitzy buildings and trophy houses: big, ugly, show-off monsters that stand — or I should say stomp — on land stripped bare by the construction work and replanted with toxic green lawns,” he said. “If the buildings could talk they would be speechless with embarrassment, but most of us see nothing wrong with them, and would, given the opportunity, build others like them, for few of us realize that there’s a gentler way to build.”
I’m an off-grid homesteader in rural Vermont and the author of Practical Self Reliance, a blog that helps people find practical ways to become more self-reliant.
/u/Atalung recommended this blog to me on reddit after I asked if anyone had suggestions for this page, a-a-and I’m sort of envious, really, of her dope place in Vermont:
She has a house attached greenhouse. I want it so bad.
I enjoyed this guest post on off-grid living near the Arctic circle. I also asked /u/Atalung about his favorites. He writes that “She has a lot of good articles on food preservation, her series on small batch wine is how I found it.”
This comes to me by way of recommendation on reddit, again, this time thanks to /u/BinLeenk. I’ve definitely heard of Geoff Lawton before but where? Was it in a positive context?
First I thought maybe I’d read one of his books but, skimming his Wikipedia page, I know: I’ve watched his “Greening the Desert”documentary on YouTube, []26back when I was looking at moving out to the desert–now that the Alaskan homesteading act has ended, the only remaining federal free land in the United States is via the Desert Land Act. You can have a piece of the desert, free, if you manage to irrigate and grow crops on it.
Hence my interest in Geoff’s “Greening the Desert”: he uses “permaculture” (hippy farming) to nigh magically grow stuff on ten acres of (salted!) desert in Jordan. Mind-blowing. Great watch. Highly recommend.
(I cooled off the desert thing because 1. desert land can already be had for around $250 an acre, no strings–check eBay–and 2. I sincerely doubt that the current power structures controlling the commons will honor a law passed in 1877.)
I asked /u/BinLeenk if he had any specific recommendations. He shares, “pretty much his permaculture design course and general sharing of awesome concepts around the world that are doing amazing restoration and abundance creation across the world.”
There is no place on earth where you have more freedom and ability to act on your will and participate in the “game of your choosing” as in your own home
I found another agorist homesteader! There are dozens of us, dozens!
Alright, so this is not technically a blog but Kris Harbour and his DIY house are so cool that I’m including his YouTube channel as an honorable mention.
Dude built his own house, sourced out of materials from his land, for something like 9 grand, and it’s a suh-weet house too. He even generates all of his electricity with a hydro-electric setup over a small stream.
