Category: Local Food

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.

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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A TRICK to Get HUGE Second Broccoli Heads

Gardeners who love broccoli wait months to get that big delicious head. And broccoli plants take up a LOT of space in the garden for what they produce if you are only going to harvest one head. But once you’ve harvested that first head, you don’t have to pull out the plants, and you don’t have to be relegated to tiny little side shoot florets that are mostly leaf. In this video, I show you a trick to getting HUGE second, third, fourth, etc, heads throughout the season off the same broccoli plant.

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Where Do Lettuce Seeds Come From? And How to Save Them

Some vegetables can be baffling when we think about where their seeds come from because we only see the part we eat. Sometimes that part is a seed and but most of the time it’s a completely different part of the plant. But the seeds are the key to the existence of the vegetable we are eating, so every vegetable must have seeds somewhere. But where are the seeds on a head of lettuce?

This video will not only show where the seeds are, but how to grow them and save them so you can grow your own lettuce year to year without buying seed.

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Starting Jackfruit from Seed the Super Easy Way

While in Florida this time I started some jackfruit from seed and planted a few trees before I left. In this video, I demonstrate the super simple process and reveal some tidbits about this delicious tropical fruit. In only 2-3 years you can have a jackfruit tree that produces fruit if conditions are right.

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Ramen Noodles For the End Times: Homemade Ramen Noodles in a Solar Cooker

So society is crumbling, there’s limited access to fossil fuel, there’s chaos in the streets, but you happen to have some flour and baking soda and a solar cooker. You can easily make homemade ramen noodles without any fossil fuel.

I used to think of ramen noodles as a low quality convenience food. Still I depended on them back in college and I still love a doctored up packet of fancy ramen noodles from the asian grocery from time to time. But ramen noodles are very popular in Japan, and as with many Japanese things, they have taken it to a level of artisan perfection. You can pretty easily make your own ramen noodles. In this video, I show you how I make ramen noodles without any fossil fuel inputs, using only the power of the sun.

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