Why live off grid?
I’ve lived off grid for 8 years and in that time I’ve lived in campervans, yurts, geo-domes, a double decker bus, a hand built cabin, renovated a ruin, upgrades a tiny house, started several gardens from scratch, taken over existing gardens, cleared decades worth of overgrown land, lived in community, with a partner and by myself. Why?
Because of the freedom, privacy, peacefulness and purpose this sort of life gives me.
Of course it depends where in the world you decide to live off grid, but here in central Portugal, at least when I first arrived you were pretty much left alone to get on with clearing land and rebuilding your ruin.
Almost all farms had plenty of water, even if that took a lot of work to clear waterways and dig out ponds/wells etc. Why? Because at one point all this old farms were working farms for old Portuguese families, before the new generations moved away to cities and other countries for work etc.
Because many off grid-ers live down bad tracks, no one visits you, it’s peaceful and quiet, apart from the sound of the odd chainsaw, strimmer or heard of goats across the valley.
Once you are set-up you can live a life that’s much cheaper than most others, there are very few bills (maybe phone, internet and taxes), but animals and vehicles is where most of your cents go.
Many of the farms here have beautiful old stone walls, ruins, wells and ancient fruit and nut trees if you are ready to do the work to clear the land of the brambles that often love and engulf old farms.
Life off grid can be intense, especially if you come with the same mind set you ran away from your previous life with.
Living off grid will teach you (if you allow it)…
- Not to by superman/woman
- To work with your community
- To connect more deeply to our self, food and nature
- To appreciate the small/simple things
- To bend and move with the seasons (especially the weather)
- That living like this helps the land, planet, and our health
- That there is no such thing as sustainable (because you need things like solar and water systems etc)
- That we need to have animals to have healthy farms
- How to simplify, let go of control and be guided by nature
I am a totally different person now from when I arrived 8 years ago and there has been a lot of blood, sweat and tears along the way and I wouldn’t change a single second of it.
I truly believe this is the way I (and in fact we all people) are designed to live, closer to nature, food, animals, community, and self.
I feel we live off grid because the call to connect finally outweighed the call of the ‘comforts’ of our previous lives.
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