Off the grid and free from control – or are we?

Well, that is the question of the day, are we still controlled???

As someone who lives totally off the grid, I have been musing about freedom from control, and the question that is floating around is….. ARE WE??

I have been living totally off the grid now for 15+ years, it has been tough, and there are certainly challenges to living this way.

However, I never pondered until recently the control question.

There is a certain amount of freedom to be had when you live off the grid, some of those are..

• Financial freedom
• Reduced bills
• More room to move
• Lifestyle
• Growing your own foods
• Cleaner air
• No chemicals around if your choose
• Having a debt free life
• Work hard for family goals
• Become your own employer.

This list could be extensive and built around your own lifestyle choices and goals.

Living completely off the grid has meant that when we had our family we could grow our foods and still live comfortably on a smaller income.

This became the clearest when my husband was injured in 2011 and needed an extensive period of time off work.

If we had of lived in town, rented or purchasing our home we would have been in serious financial difficulty.

This was because he was the soul income earner as a beekeeper and I was a mother of two and pregnant with our third.

This gave us freedom to struggle through the worst of our financial hardship because we could still live with the smallest debt on our home and survive.

Living off the grid isn’t the easiest option, especially when you need to service your own water, electricity and rubbish needs.

We pump from the river and catch rain water for our home, cook and heat water with gas, have solar power, have generator backup and have a dry toilet and septic system.

This means all our choices have to be measured so that our home always has power and water and we need to make sure we know how to deal with systems if and when they fail.

Yes, when they fail, because you can guarantee that the pump will not work or the power will fail with weather, or the river runs dry so you have to cart water in drought..

Things can and do go wrong, but this also makes you far more resilient to lifes ups and downs than having everything at your finger tips.

Yes, life off the grid is fantastic, and although we miss out on services that others enjoy, we are also more eco consicious because of our lives.

We have to make sure we have smart choices with shopping and keep rubbish to a minimum, that we always have spare gas and fuel for the home.

I personally, despite the challenges we have had couldn’t and wouldn’t live anywhere else in the world.

It is an amazing life and nothing is ever the same.

Take the plunge if you can to live self sufficiently and sustainably, take back some control of your life and enjoy the bounty that you yourself can make.

xx