When we first moved and began living off the grid we had never really even considered ice fishing as a means to provide for our family.

I have to tell you that I simply love fishing. My earliest childhood memories are of sitting on a pier with my dad and casting out my line to catch the plentiful perch from Lake Erie. That was some years ago, but the lessons dad taught me have stuck. He kept everything he caught, and we ate  fish on a regular basis in the summer.

I never got the chance to take him ice fishing, pretty sure he would have loved that too. It is a time to connect with family, to soak up the winter wilderness all around us, and if done right, bring home some fish for supper or the freezer.

The lakes in our area are stocked with Trout, and during the first part of the winter are not very difficult to catch. We use minnows and a simple tip up or short rods that we have made ourselves. It’s really fun making the tackle and gear for expeditions, even if they are only day trips living off the land. We love it either way.

In the next few weeks we are planning to camp out on the lake. Before you go to fretting, and maybe call my Mom and tell her that her son has flipped, the ice is now over a foot thick and as solid as walking on a highway. Very safe. In fact, the very first thing we do is to scout out the ice conditions even before we consider bringing fishing gear.

Catching supper is what it’s all about for us, and hopefully putting away another meal in the freezer. We count it as a very successful day if we can accomplish that.

My fishing partner out on the ice this year has been Andre’ , our youngest son. He has taken to living off the grid like none of our other kids ever did. He is a natural in the woods, born to be outside.

Inside he frets and doesn’t know what to do until our next adventure outdoors. You can bet he is up early if we are planning on going fishing. Living off the land is something he has learned very well.

Those 5 nice trout are testament to a pretty good day ice fishing. Yes, he caught the biggest, about 3 lbs and 18 inches. Nice job. In the photo, taken this past Monday, it’s raining, but that would never take the smile off his face.

Sharing this time with family is so important to us. Like nothing else that we can do indoors, getting outside and enjoying the wilderness, getting off the grid for a few hours, fetching up a fresh supper for your family. All of these things put a big smile on our face. Just like all those years ago fishing with my dad, I hope I can pass along that same joy he felt to my own family.

Check for the next warm front coming through and get out on the ice just before it moves through. Get your fishing license and read the regulations book and learn what it takes to live off the land in the winter.

Certainly you will enjoy living off the grid for a few hours just as much as we do. Next week we will be taking Jane along for the first time this year. You can bet there will be some whooping and hollering going on then, she loves those days off the grid especially when the fish are biting, she can never contain her joy when she brings up a nice trout through the ice.

One of the most important aspects of living off the grid is our large garden.
Watch the following video about the fall garden and learn to live off the grid.

From the Living Off The Grid Homestead.

This past fall season has been a wonderful time for our family with the seeming extension of the growing season. One of our great challenges with being off the grid is growing food for the entire year.



This year the season has grown much longer than normal, as you probably saw in the previous video. Our garden truly is a focal point of our life, and for good reason.
With just a simple amount of foresight you too can extend your season.
Watch the video first and you will see what we mean. Why not try a bit of garlic in your own garden, or overwintered onions if you live in a warm enough climate. Garlic is one of those vegetables that anyone, regardless of skill can grow.
You will notice also, that I use the word lazy, for lack of a better reference to describe our gardening approach. Some people work like mad to get all of the weeds out, but you will notice we leave as much as possible, clearing only enough space to do away with close competition weeds.
Living off the grid can be a lot of fun, or it can be a lot of work if you let those small chores get out of hand. We prefer to leave the work to natural processes, which do the job much better, although perhaps a little slower. It seems to work very well for us here. The extra composting material may seem unsightly to some, but it’s just another excuse to have everything clean as a kitchen floor?
We prefer to work with the natural cycles of the seasons, let the compost worms do their job and leave the rest to winter to accomplish.
If you take the time to clear everything with a rototiller it does seem to overwork the soil as well.
Take a few minutes off and just let it go, you do have better things to do than to presume to do the job of nature.
Thus comes the description of lazy as described in the video, some think that is the case, I prefer to let those soil critters do their job, while I watch.
Part of the fun of living off the grid we think.

Hello, The following video is an introduction to living off the grid. You will see a new video every week showing you our life and how to live off the grid. Our aim is to show you that we live what we talk about here.
How to live off the grid, watch the video now>

From the living off the grid homestead.


We try to grow as much of our own food as we can, we use the natural resources that are on this property, and we try to make our life as enjoyable and productive as possible, every day we learn more about how to live off the grid.



Keeping life simple is one of our main goals. As life out there spins out of control with debt, severe confusion over wants and needs, and just simple fear of what tomorrow will bring it is a comfort to know that a simple lifestyle based on self sufficient living is still possible.

It may seem strange to end the video with a statement about carrots, but that is derived from our basic belief that living off the grid means a simpler existence where the simple joy of picking a carrot is what it’s all about. Take the time to enjoy the simple things, the basic joys in eating and building a life.

For a long time Jane and I could not enjoy our life. We felt trapped, utterly alone in this world, and fearful of what tomorrow would bring to our new family. But, we persevered and found our way to freedom. It started with a dream of never having to pay another electric bill, wanting to grow a big garden and an overwhelming urge on my part to build our own home- living off the land and using a chainsaw mill to cut lumber for building.

It all started the first week of May in 1994, some 17 years ago now.  We know you can do this, because we have. Living off the grid is a welcome challenge filled with rewards you could never imagine when you first begin- fresh carrots can even make us smile here.

Here at the off grid living homestead we love to use materials that we have on hand and create something lasting and permanent. One of our favorite jobs, one that lets us use our creative side more than you would first imagine is learning how to build a stone wall.

The simple process of putting one stone on top of another and binding the mix with mortar or concrete is both satisfying and demanding at the same time. For those of you contemplating self sufficient living any and all building skills can be learned. Here is how you get started.

You can see by the photo on the left that we were working on getting some footprints made with small stones as our top design. It is rather striking how a simple design like this can set off an otherwise uncreative process. If you simply add concrete to the forms, fill them to the top, yes, you will have a wall , or steps in this case, but can you do better.

It does not take hardly any more time to make a permanent design that will provide a lasting impression for your visitors off the grid. Collect up some stone that is just lying around and start working on the ground to make something out of it first, before you begin to mix cement. The only criteria is that the top of the stone, whichever side you use should be flat and smooth, nothing else really matters.

Wherever we are in the area we look for stone that we can use for building, it kind of gets to be a bit of an obsession for us since we have a lot of time since we began living off the grid.

It’s always kind of fun to see a project come together before you even begin. Kind of like putting together a jigsaw puzzle only you get to pick the pieces you use.

First, you need to build a form. For this (and you can reference the top photo) you should use old or used lumber if possible as you will not be able to use it for anything else after cement touches the wood. We use old wood and we build with it until it rots, keeping it out of the weather as best we can. Remember to brace it properly as stone and concrete exerts a tremendous force outwards after it is in the forms. Another thing to remember is to build with wood screws so it can be carefully disassembled after a couple days.

You can see by this wall that it is a bit of a rough job until you do the pointing. This is the process afterwards or filling in the exposed joints with mortar to add a very finished look. This is our root cellar which we built to accommodate or garden produce for the winter here at the off grid living homestead. It was our very first large stone building project but we completed it in just over 2 weeks. We did one round of stone per day adding about 8 inches in height each day.

Remember that you have to work from the outside in. Place your form boards for the exposed wall (the part you see) and place your flat surface of each stone to that board. It really is a simple process whether you are placing stone or using concrete and simply finishing the top portion with stone or design. Mixing concrete you will use a mix of crushed stone, sand (which your local contractor can deliver) . In our area it is known as A gravel, just tell them it is for concrete. Use this mix at 5 to 1 to portland cement and you will have a great finished product.

If you want to fit stone then you need to use masonry sand (again from your contractor, he can deliver it by the square yard). Most of this material is used to do cement foundation blocks but the mortar is basically the same. Use this sand 3 to 1 with type S masonry cement, or you can use type M cement too.

The great part is that this material is relatively cheap in most areas and the resulting building is truly permanent. Practice on small projects first and you will get the hang of it.

In the next article we will show you some finished projects, and more detailed plans for building stone walls, all of which we did around our off grid living home.

We were recently asked about living off the grid, and what we really think is important in making the move. In the email specifically we were asked how to get off the grid. It really is hard to know exactly what this fellow asking the question really had in mind. It all started with an email about  off the grid in the city, and it went like this. This person was having trouble downloading our guide book and asked us to send him a link, which we gladly did.  At the end of the email they explained that they wanted to read it when they were ‘off the grid’ with only their notebook computer as a companion. It really made us wonder if this person really knew what they wanted.

If they were convinced that learning how to get off the grid was just a matter of unplugging your home phone then they were in for a bit of a shock. Of course, in its simplest sense you are not connected when you are out of range, but that would not do the term justice, would it?

How could he think he was making a difference in his life simply by switching from one form of communication to another? Is it real, or is it simply a marketing illusion? The intention of this website is not to give you false hope that you can simply unplug and  be free. That is simply not the case. Our intention is to show you, our readers, that a few simple choices in the right direction could have you in control of your life instead of the big corporations that surround us.

Let’s get back to the cell phone example, is it less expensive? Not on your life. This is not the answer for learning what you need to know. More and more apps, more and more options to get you to use your phone more actually detracts from your freedom, it does not enhance it, and that is not what living off the grid should mean.

Recently we had some interesting developments here at our home that should illustrate the point even further.

For the second year in a row we were approached by a major publisher to tell our story- and for the second year in a row we turned this second publisher down in favor of being able to say what we want to say right here.

And yes, we turned down a sizable chunk of money and royalties in the process. Why did we do it?

Simply put, the publisher had no idea what we were trying to do, they only wanted a book that would appeal to the largest audience.  They wanted us to write about things that we don’t do here, things that would help the book sell. Whether or not the reader learned what they needed to know was immaterial. We have a loyal and very large readership right here, and we like it that way. When inspiration hits us, we want to be able to share it with you right away, and as honestly as possible.

I have to admit that I really love reading books, but the fact of the matter is that book publishing is really living in the past, something we refuse to do. There is no interaction, there are no comments, in short, you the reader, do not have a voice. And we really love hearing from you, your successes and your failures.

Jane and I feel so privileged to be able to share our life with you right here at the living off the grid homestead, and we would not change a thing.  Learning how to get off the grid is not just unplugging, and it’s not selling out to be popular, it’s a real choice on a very personal level to live your life to the fullest.

One of the many things we have learned here at the Living Off The Grid Homestead is that we are usually better off than most people when a disaster hits.

Whether it is a natural or man-made disaster by providing for yourself in a self sufficient manner you can definitely weather the storms.

One of my favorite topics of discussion is Economics. I don’t claim to be an expert in the field but it is one of my passions and I follow closely the news in this area… why?

There is not one other item of business that affects us so profoundly and in such an utterly detached manner as economics. The price of gas goes up? why? we just don’t know. Is it a long weekend? Can the big companies squeeze an extra dime from us because they know we are going to drive anyways? I think they do.

Our only defense, if we do not carry as big a stick as these guys is to simply not play the game at all, and living off the grid is the best defense of all.

I don’t mean to withdraw from life itself, but simply stop playing into their hands. Devise a life that answers their questions, and gives us a life back in return.

No where is this more evident than in the world of credit, and the Governments of the U.S and Canada are probably the worst offenders. Bailouts and an out of control money supply have left them in quite a pickle.

Of course this is not a short term problem, it has been going on since the first deficit budget way back in the 70′s. Ah… to go back and say stop borrowing.

Now the borrowing of money has gotten out of hand, now if a government can not pay its bills they simply print more money. And every country who has used this strategy throughout history has had its currency fail, some slow, some quite quickly.

If you think of this on a family level and imagine that if you had bills you could not pay? what would you do? print more money on your home computer? I don’t think so. How about the bank’s solution > they raise your credit limit, so you can do the whole thing over again. Not smart.

Our only solution is to stop playing the credit game, both on a government and on a family level. Only in this way will we survive the pending and predicted impending financial crisis.

Yes, we can put our heads in the sand, pretend it will be alright, and I really dislike even bringing this up, but it is ahead for all of us.

I remember some wise advise from my own Grampa, Don Emerson, whom I have relied upon heavily all of his 97 years (still going strong by the way).

He told me about the Depression of the 1930′s, saying ‘ it was just like any other time, except no one had any money to buy anything. You either grew it yourself, made it yourself, or you did without.”

I always remembered that and it has shaped my life immensely. We feel secure here living off the grid, and it is our mission to help you do the same, homesteading is not for everyone, but nearly everyone can grow a garden and build the things they need to live a better life.

It may seem strange but one of the things we enjoy most about living off the grid is growing chickens.

Strange that the simple act of keep a few birds should be so liberating or make us feel good about our decisions but it does.

You see, before we moved we could not keep chickens at our apartment, and for Jane who had grown up on a farm that was unbearable.

Yes we kept a small garden but we could not keep any animals at all.

When I was younger, I remember my Grandmother keeping a flock of chickens and she lived right in the middle of a small rural town. No one seemed to mind, and truthfully if you keep hens (and not loud roosters) there is a good chance that no one will even notice.

A lot of towns even have by-laws stating that you can keep small flocks of chickens as long as they are for personal use.

I have to admit a rather fondness for fresh cooked eggs for breakfast. To me nothing beats that freshness. We were talking earlier today that no restaurant meal comes close to what we produce here off the grid.

We do occasionally go out for meals, not often, but we always find ourselves comparing our own cooking, and the freshness of our ingredients produced living off the grid. We just can’t help it.

And why not, we worked hard to build up what we have and reap the benefits now, replacing the work of doing dishes and harvesting a few veggies just does not seem worth it when the end result is not as good as what we could eat at home.

It just does not seem worth the extra expense either, when we can do better ourselves.

Actually, I really enjoy preparing meals with Jane, it’s a lot of fun and will be the topic of another homesteading blogs post in the near future.

For now let’s stick with growing chickens. Here our number one priority is predator protection, from bears to weasels to foxes we get them all hunting around for an easy meal, so we need protection.

The chicken coop itself is built on bedrock, but a good concrete floor would suffice. We have had bears actually tear down the siding off of the coop so now it is sided with steel siding.

The moveable hoop coop shown here is actually in the garden and we can manure the garden directly while the girls eat lunch. We keep them out there all summer.

Our only necessity is that we use solar electric fencing for around the perimeter. It is really inexpensive, portable and easy to use, best of all it keeps the predators out.

Over the years we have lost a few chickens and this has proven to be the most effective method.

Part of our life is balancing wilderness with our own needs for survival and homestead self sufficiency. It is a delicate balance sometimes and sometimes we have to admit temporary defeat, or simply decide that our own needs have to be modified.

For the most part  our living off the grid homestead is a balance between what we ‘think’ should work and what actually does work, that’s what makes it fun.

After many years of living off the grid we have come to know what is really important in our everyday lives here.

As spring turns to summer our focus changes to the garden. Our aim is to eat 3 meals a day with at least something from the garden, if not the entire meal being grown here.

It may be a bit of a lofty goal but most days (even those hot lazy days of summer) we achieve our aim here at the off the grid homestead. Why is it so important to focus on this seasonal bounty.

I can probably best illustrate it with a little story I just told to our son. In the end he discovered that his life really did depend on our garden for many months of the year.

Obviously we all must eat healthy food to sustain ourselves. And our aim here is to grow most of that food ourselves so that we can maintain a pesticide free food source.

Our son Andre’ was helping us with some weeding last week and obviously as many teenager are guilty of, his mind was somewhere else. He was doing a sloppy job and needed some correction of his technique. As a family we think it is very important to share the work and the criticism.

The weeds in the onions were pretty obvious so we took a minute to discuss his work. I asked him if he liked eating onions?

And, knowing that he did, he told me so. I then asked him how well the onions would grow if weeds were present.

He immediately grasped the concept when I said ‘ I would rather you did one row perfect, than 2 rows crappy.’

Sometimes the lessons living off the grid are not really profound, more like simple lessons that can apply to any job. One perfect row beats 2 that are crap any day, in whatever we do.

Since we are talking about food here, and food is a necessity to survival and self sufficiency then it is imperative to grasp that your life does depend on this garden for months at a time.

That is not extra pressure either, physical or emotional, it simply means that our job is to do the best we can in the garden and it will give back in kind.

For many years we worked harder than our garden did. The soil was poor and needed a lot of minerals and compost to make it productive.

Now, by simply applying a certain amount of work that is no where near what we used to put in, we actually receive much more.

The inputs of time and materials have allowed our family to now reap long term benefits that far outweigh our yearly input time and costs.

If you would simply take the time and view the garden as a long long term project for your family these rewards could be yours. Spread the work over the entire year, and amongst all family members.

They will all take a proprietary interest in the results as they stream towards your kitchen table.

Living off the grid is never better than when we sit down to a meal that was entirely produced from our own efforts.

Over the past 17 years of living off the grid one constant for us has been our large garden.

We have employed a lot of time saving methods and by far the best one is the keeping of chickens. This is a picture of the portable hoop coop that we built that allows the chickens to be rotated around the garden.

Chickens are by far one of the most hardy and self sufficient animals that you can grow, they are very adept at living off the land, perhaps better than any other. We just provide them with a little supplementary food and water and they give us eggs, fertilizer and they keep the weeds and grass clipped too. They are an amazing part of our off the grid plans.

As soon as the first sprouts are out there we have them working, I kindly refer to them as the working chickens, as opposed to the chicken coop chickens. Of course they work too, eating household scraps and producing eggs too, but it is different when they are in the coop it seems.

When the garden is planted the chickens are simply moved to an unused section or to the edges where they happily munch seeds and weeds all summer. In the fall they are put to work in the garden working the land where we are finished growing.

Early and late plantings have become the normal in our homestead garden, it seems living off the grid really fits well with the seasons and how to make it work is to look at the longest possible growing season you can.

In our area the fall garden is truly lovely, but it requires us to keep planting so maturity dates coincide with the fall.

We plant right up to July 1 here, and that gives us fresh vegetables directly from the garden right in to the end of November. And in December we are still digging carrots and picking Brussels Sprouts too, as well as greens and cabbage.

Looking at the garden as a long term investment allows us to work only a little each day at it and reap benefits for a longer period of time. The old theory of plant it Memorial Day and it is done the first week of September are definitely gone.

We start eating from the garden in March usually with Parsnips that were actually planted the year before. They overwinter and take on the best flavor after being completely frozen all winter. By far the best vegetable you will ever taste. No, the ones from the grocery store are not even close.

Take the time and plant them, and wait, it is worth it.

Then along comes Asparagus, a definite favorite around here. When we first moved to our home we wanted to grow a wide variety of veggies and Asparagus was one we really wanted.

Through the seasons it is definitely a sure hit, with never a crop failure.

Then comes the summer vegetables which we always enjoy, peppers, tomatoes and melons.

But we look forward to the fall garden the most, fresh greens after frost are just awesome, they will take more frost than you think too.

Whether you are living off the grid or just want to improve your garden give these suggestions a try.

Ever since we started living off the grid we have noticed a very prevalent opinion that goes something like this – ” your home is nice, but how would you ever sell it?”

We used to get kind of irritated at the question as being off the grid has given us the option of not looking at our home as an investment at all.

We built the house as our own, without any thought of selling it.

Recently it has become all the rage to flip a house for profit. Buy it, fix it and sell it.

And keep doing it until you are rich presumably.

That’s fine if you really like building and want to look at your home as a business, but does that make it a home? For the most part it doesn’t.

It is really difficult to translate the intangibles about living off the grid and how we look at our home differently than most.

The best we can come up with for folks who ask is that our home is a work in progress, and it has grown with us and our changing needs.

And we have built it to be permanent, in other words it is our home.

Certainly things could change and our home could become unattractive to us through outside influences. The very same thing happened to Helen and Scott Nearing with their first homestead in Vermont. It is a very interesting story told to us first by Helen.

The area had become a tourist trap and resort area and they were lead to believe that their home would be preserved as it was, instead shady real estate developers bought their home and made it part of the same resorts.

We don’t build anything here that we don’t want to be permanent in our homestead. Part of self sufficiency certainly is thinking things through before you do them.

Every tree that we have, every rock, every acre of land we take it very seriously that it is our responsibility to look after it as best we can.

Most of the material for our home here came directly from this property, dead and damaged trees, stone for the fireplace and root cellar (even the chicken coop and greenhouse) All came from right here.

If you look closely you will see a lot of change on our property over the years, but most of that change has been a more permanent relocation of all the material we have used.

With the addition of concrete and sand nuisance rocks have become walkways and steps even foundations.

It is all in how you look at it. Why would I build a home, or even fix one up that we are not going to live in? It just does not make sense. Is the next house going to be our home? Why not live in the one you have now?

The strange part is that lately we have noticed a change in the question, and a definite acknowledgement that our building for ourselves theory just might appeal to another owner as well, go figure…

Build your home how ‘you’ would want it, not how you ‘hope’ the next owner would want it. That is living, and certainly living off the grid gives us this option better than any other.