Freedom From The Grid & Alternate Energy…

So you want to grow some of your own food? Good! You should. We all should. But where do we start?

With this in mind, I’ve been researching this some, and this is some of what I have found. I’ll summarize it for you, and then let you see some of the links I used to figure this stuff out.

Of all the food groups that our bodies need, fruits and vegetables will keep us the healthiest, the longest, if we are limited to surviving on just one group. So in a disaster scenario, or when foodstuff isn’t available anywhere else, or maybe you just want to be self-sufficient and relish the pride and joy that comes from growing and eating the fruit of your own labor, this is what I suggest.

Start with Vegetables. Supplement with meat/dairy proteins when and where possible, but focus on the veggies. Fortunately, vegetables are also the easiest of the food groups to grow. And within that group, start with two in particular: potatoes and tomatoes.

And since space is always an issue, the trick is to maximize our space usage when growing these two vegetables, especially if you are limited to an apartment or very small flat. Let’s look at potatoes first.

With potatoes, the secret is to grow them vertically instead of in the ground. Here’s how.

On top of a sheet of plastic (if indoors), plant three or four of your initial seed potatoes or sprout sections in good dirt/compost in a wide tub, planter, or shallow basin (about a foot apart each is ideal, if your planting basin is large enough). Then wrap a three or four feet tall section of chicken wire, hog wire, or some other container around it, about two and a half feet in diameter (which means you could actually have several small containers instead of just one large one). Then cover the potato sprout with straw, filling up the enclosure several inches about the sprout. Then keep it watered it enough to keep the straw moist (but the planter/pot/basin at the bottom not water logged).

Once the sprout has grown six inches or so above the straw, add straw to the container, leaving about an inch of plant showing. Keep the straw moistly watered. And every time the plant reaches six inches tall or so, do this again, until you have several feet of straw stacked in the container above the original pot. The potato plants that you have planted will send out roots all through this straw, loaded with hundreds of potatoes.

Once the plant begins to flower, you have potatoes growing. To harvest as you go, simply cut holes at various heights in the wire container, big enough for your hand to fit through, so you can gently lift the straw apart and snap off clean, dirt free potatoes to eat. Lay the straw back down, and the plant will continue to grow and produce potatoes. One such set up like this I’m told can produce up to a bushel or more of tubers, PER CONTAINER. If you have several of these going at once, even indoors during the winter under grow lights, you’ll have a constant supply of fresh potatoes to eat, that are full of carbohydrates and essential minerals.

Next we look at tomatoes. We can grow these vertically too, but not quite in the way you might expect. For this project, we use hanging 5-gallon buckets, and then plant the tomatoes in the top, sides, AND bottom of the bucket.

To start this one, get a dark colored (or paint one black-tomato roots apparently love heat and grow better with it) 5-gallon bucket with a lid, and make sure the handle is VERY secure (or reinforce it with rope around the top of the bucket)- these planters can weigh in excess of 40 pounds or more, and if either your handle, or hanging hook are chintzy, you will have an epic failure on your hands.

Suspend this bucket somehow, and then start your work. Using rich dirt mixed with good compost, a little peat moss if available, miracle grotm, and a crushed eggshell or two (for calcium) plant four or five tomato plants total (per bucket) in one two-inch-diameter hole in the bottom of the container, several holes midway up and equidistant around the side of the bucket, and one hole in the lid of the container. Then hang it where you want it to grow, either indoors or preferably on a sunny patio or balcony.

These plants need lots of sunlight (or grow-light if indoors) each day, and lots of watering. Always keep the dirt inside moist, but not waterlogged. You may need to pollinate the flowers yourself too if indoors (some people simply jiggle the bucket to accomplish this- but only if the handle and hanging hook are strong). But overall, you should expect a bumper crop of tomatoes that are rich in vitamins and minerals. And if indoors, these plants can apparently live and produce well into the winter months as well. Keep them below 75 degrees at night, and below 95 in the daytime. Indoors, as long as they have good, direct sunlight and/or grow-light six or seven hours a day, should be perfect for them.

Keep in mind that not every variety of tomato is well suited to this style of gardening, but several are, including my personal favorite, the cherry tomato.

Now taking this hanging garden idea one step further, I have seen pictures (and I included one link below) of where people have installed large mesh hog wire fence over a living area, hung pots of many varied vegetables under it, then trained the plants and vines to spread out across the mesh as they grew. The advantage of this method is that the fruits and vegetables hang down below the mesh into your living space for easy picking. This works extremely well where ground space is limited.

There are several other vegetables as well that can be adapted for apartment and/or small space gardening, but do your research, check out the links below, and have fun! There’s just nothing quite like the taste of vegetables that you grew yourself…

Come back and share your success stories sometime, after you have tried out some of these ideas!

Random links from Google about growing potatoes in straw and vertically, in no particular order:
http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/salloum100.html#
http://www.homesteadgarden.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-852.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_2240028_grow-potatoes-wire-cage.html#
http://thegardenersrake.com/straw-bale-gardening-potatoes
http://www.gardeningtipsnideas.com/2008/11/how_to_grow_potatoes.html
http://www.hillgardens.com/potatoes.htm

Random links from Google about growing tomatoes upside down and/or in hanging pots, in no particular order:
http://oldfashionedliving.com/tomato2.html
http://www.instructables.com/id/how-to-plant-hanging-upsidedown-tomatoes/
http://www.minifarmhomestead.com/gardening/tomato.htm
http://howtogardenguide.com/2009/03/08/best-tomato-varieties-for-hanging-baskets-and-upside-down-planters/
http://howtogardenguide.com/2009/03/18/growing-tomatoes-upside-down-good-idea-or-just-a-fad/
http://www.curbly.com/DIY-Maven/posts/1620-how-to-make-an-upside-down-tomato-planter
http://www.oklahomahistory.net/tomatos.html

A cool hanging garden link:
http://www.autopot.com.au/default.aspx?PageID=7145423c-0ab9-481e-84e4-b3ea660bf13a

Tweet This Post

Everyone wishes that their utility bills weren’t so high. Everyone wishes that they could have power when the electricity goes out due to weather or ??? Everyone hates being caught in the dark (literally) with no options for light or heat either. No one likes rising food prices, and every one agrees that both medical care and gasoline cost too much. Hence, you need to read this article, just to get a basic understanding of the basics of living green, self-sufficiently, and/or completely off the grid.

The best “living off the grid” equation can be broken down into six parts, rather than just five as previously thought by us and others: Power, Water, Food, Heat, Medicine, and Transportation. Let’s take a quick look at each one in order to get a better understanding of how they each function, working together to let you live in a self-sufficient way.

1. Power. The most obvious thing about living off the grid is the need to generate your own electricity and power.
2. The second most critical component of living off the grid is to procure and insure a stable water source or supply for yourself.
3. Then comes food needs. Did you know that even an apartment dweller can grow some of their own food in order to cut down on food bills? And how do you cook it?
4. Heating and Cooling. Depending on what time of year it is, and your geographic location, this one can be a lifesaver too. If your power goes out in the middle of the winter, as it sometimes does, do you know how you are going to supply heat for yourself?
5. Medicines and Medical Supplies. And though we don’t claim to be doctors, there are far more home treatment remedies and processes available to the average person than what the profit driven medical establishment would have you believe.
6. Transportation. Face it, we’re a mobile society, and we need to get around. But how do we do it cheaply, and without tying ourselves to the grid through gasoline?

Let’s look quickly at each of these in more detail.

For Power off the grid, you can use get into solar (by far the most common), hydroelectric, fuel cells, generators, or one of several other technologies being developed at http://www.EvergreenMountainLabs.com (EML). You will also need a bank of storage batteries, a charger to fill them, and an inverter to convert their power to usable house current.

For water, your options are slightly more limited. A good, high quality water filter (with backup filters available on hand) is must, so that you can make use of any water supply you find. Rain and snow water can also be good sources of drinking water, but not if in heavily polluted/smoggy areas. A distiller takes power, but if you have power, by all means, get one.

Sewer needs have even fewer basic options, though within those options, many varieties exist. Basically you need to get a self-composting toilet, and then learn to operate it safely and satisfactorily.

For food, you need basic access to the six primary food groups at least occasionally (as well as a way to cook them): Grains, Fruits, Vegetables, Lean Meats, Diary, and Nuts. A more basic breakdown of these groups might be: carbohydrates, proteins, and vitamins/minerals. Either way, the vegetable group will keep you the healthiest, the longest, if you are limited to just one of them. And that’s lucky for us because it’s also the one that is easiest to address. And the two foundational vegetables that I tend to recommend and focus on are tomatoes and potatoes. Both can be grown in high volumes in small spaces, and will give you tons of vitamins/minerals, and lots of daily carbohydrates. Your protein intake can be meat supplemented into your diet from whatever the source. If you live in the country, goats for milk, and chickens for eggs is also a ard combination to beat. Find out more about growing your own food at the http://www.FreedomFromTheGrid.com blog site.

As for cooking this food, a wood stove is hard to beat when it comes to being self-sufficient. But even here, there are options. A creative person can generate their own methane or hydrogen for cooking on a gas stove, and solar reflectors and reflector ovens, though they CAN take longer to cook, also provide effective cooking methods if you have access to good sunlight. Fortunately, tomotoes and many fruits don’t need to be cooked to be enjoyed (though potatos and other veggies do).

As for heating and cooling, heating is the more critical issue, and needs more attention. What is unfortunate in today’s world is that most heat sources depend on electricity. Fortunately, propane, natural gas, wood, hydrogen, and several other technologies being developed at EML aim to get around this. But the oldest and most time tested heat source technology is still simply a wood-burning stove. Get one if you can, or a derivative thereof like wood pellet stoves, corn stoves, etc.

As for medical care, start by getting and committing to memory a good, thorough, high quality first aid manual and then procure a good store of some basic field supplies.

Then we focus on medicines. There are two very old technologies, and at least one very new one, which can both help anyone living to live in a self-sufficient way.

The metal Silver, when made into a solution through basic electrolysis or some other method, is one of nature’s best antibiotics. People have known this for a long time, and it works, both internally and topically. It has a hidden danger though, in that overdoses of it can turn your skin a permanent shade of zombie gray-blue, so be careful. But in moderation, it seems to work wonders. Do your research.

The second old technology is based more on common sense, and is currently practiced under the name of naturopathic medicine. And basically it aims to help your own body fight off diseases and conditions by first eliminating any vitamin or mineral deficiencies that your body might be experiencing, and then strengthening your body’s own immune system.

A much newer technology still being developed underground even today depends on the simple fact that any object will shatter if you hit it with the right note and enough power, like an opera singer shattering crystal goblets. It works with pathogens of all sorts as well. To get started studying this technology and some of its derivatives, explore “rife machines” on Google.

Of lesser importance to some people, but still worth mentioning, is taking care of transportation needs. At http://www.EvergreenGasLabs.com, they sell lots of items to make your gasoline stretch as far as it can, but barring that, if gasoline isn’t an option, look into bicycles, horses, and even some of the home generated hydrogen fuel technologies being developed at EMP and various other places around the net.

As for clothing, I’m going to have to simply tell you that it’s not economically feasible for you to develop your own fabric mill and learn to sew. Instead, stock up, and then learn to barter with people who do have access to clothing and/or fabric.

By focusing your attention on the six areas above (Power, Water, Food, Heat, Medicine, and Transportation), you can indeed learn to limit your dependence on the grid, cut your bills down, and live in a self-sufficient way. With that said, go to it, be careful, and have fun!

Tweet This Post

Isn’t living off-the-grid every man’s dream? Be self-sufficient! Pay no more utility bills! Have power during the rolling blackouts and winter storms! It’s all so grandiose, and for most people, so completely out of reach.

But never fear; there is still hope. Even a city slicker can do things that decrease their dependence on the grid. But first, let’s break the issue down into manageable parts, with help from the experts at Evergreen Mountain Labs and http://www.EvergreenGasLabs.com, and look very briefly at each puzzle piece in turn.

There are basically five items to address in order to live completely grid free and independent. You can implement one, two, or even all five, items, but the secret is to start somewhere.

1. Cooking
2. Heating, Cooling
3. Electricity
4. Food
5. Water, Sewer, Laundry

1. Cooking Needs. It all boils down, no pun intended, to how you use energy. Find the cheapest way possible to cook your food. For some people, this means getting a wood cook stove. For some it means getting a propane camp stove and learning to use it. For some, it means getting a solar oven (assuming of course that you get lots of sun). And for everybody, it means eating dried goods and fresh fruits and vegetables, and cooking less often, or only cooking one pot of stew or something in the morning, and then serving from it all day. Electric stoves aren’t really even an option here; they just plain use too much electricity to operate.
2. Heating/Cooling. For space heating and cooling, you need several things. If you can find a wood stove and firewood, do so. If you can swing a swamp cooler versus an air conditioner, do it. And insulate everything, to the maximum. Well-insulated items take less energy to keep them at the proper temperature, than do poorly insulated ones.
3. Electricity. It seems that you simply have to have electricity to survive in today’s world. So the trick is to minimize its usage wherever possible (heating, cooling, cooking, entertainment, etc.) And the first thing to remember is to CONSERVE electricity however possible, with energy efficient everything (including lights). The second thing to remember is NEVER use electricity to heat up anything; it’s too wasteful. Find alternatives. As for generating electricity off the grid (including for apartment people), get at least one 12volt, deep cycle battery, one solar panel you can place in a window to keep it charged (or one of the small, pollution free ones being developed by Evergreen Mountain Labs), and a 300Watt Inverter to power whatever it is you need. If something uses more than 300Watts, you can probably do without it – with the possible exception of your laundry washer. You can get a small 5KW generator for things like that, but NEVER run them indoors, and then find a good way to store or procure fuel for it. A diesel one can even run on biodiesel that you can make yourself or often get for free at local restaurants.
4. Food can be a bit of a trick, but there are still ways that you can raise enough of your own food to survive, even in a city apartment. Forget meat unless you can stomach mouse and rat de la creme, and focus on vegetables and fruits. Start with tomatoes grown upside down from holes in the bottom of hanging pots. They produce like crazy, and will cover many of your daily vitamin needs. The thing to remember is to focus on plants that produce vegetables on an ongoing basis, without needing lots of space to do it in.
5. Water and sewer can also be a problem sometimes, but there’s still hope, even for the city dweller. Rain water, snow melt, and even creek and pond water can all be stored and filtered (or boiled). So start by getting yourself a high quality water filter (distillers take power), with a supply of replacement cartridges. As for sewer, get an odor free, indoor, self-composting toilet, and you suddenly have a fertilizer as well. Laundry, since it uses so much water, can be an issue. The only thing I can offer there is learn to do it by hand if the need arises, because your washing machine simply takes too much power too.

By addressing all five areas of grid dependence, and by learning to conserve and live simply, anyone, including city slickers, can learn to live off the grid and be energy and grid independent.

Some of the products mentioned in this article are, or soon will be, available at http://www.SurvivalOffTheGrid.com, along with more info, ebooks, and more.

Tweet This Post

So someone sent me this pretty interesting youtube video yesterday, that shows how this guy built a simple magnet motor. With both interest and a touch of skepticism, I checked it out. And it blew me away. Suddenly, some puzzle pieces of research I had done in the past all clicked into place for me in what I can only describe as an epiphany that left me trembling with excitement.

But first, here’s a link to the video. Check it out, then come back here to read first my scientific explanation, and then my layman’s version, of the phenomenon at work (and no, it doesn’t break the laws of conservation of energy).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf1IesrHBh0&NR=1

The scientific explanation first:

Magnetism actually is not just static, it has a dynamic flow element to it as well. You can create magnetic circuits even, using iron wire and a permanent magnet, hooking up the wire from pole to pole to make a circuit path. This is an area of future research for me, exploring what kind of circuts might be possible, with switching, etc. I want to know if I can create the magnetic circut equivalent of a transistor. There’s some cool stuff you could do if there is. But I digress…

The electrical corollary of this motor is found in the “Poynting Flow Vector”, something I researched several years ago indirectly with Jean Louis Naudin in France. Electron flow has a “wake” force that drags static charges along with it as the electron flow goes along a wire. It creates a circular magnetic field around the wire, true, AND a dragging “wake” force parralel to the wire called the Poynting Flow Vector. Look it up if you want, though there’s not much public research available on it yet.

This magnetic motor demonstrates the same concept in the magnetic areana, that magnetic current flows from one pole to the other, and creates a wake force as it goes, and that a circle of magnets such as the one in this video promotes a continuous wake flow in a circle that reacts to the outside magnetic force.

*whew!* Did that make any sense at all?

The simple explanation:

If you move the south pole of a magnet perpendiularly closer to the CENTER of a longer magnet, the longer magnet will slide forward, bringing the north pole closer to the perpendicular south pole. By arranging these magnets all in a circle, the magnets continue
to slide forward in a never ending loop….

But what about the law of conservation of energy?

First, we have to recognize that while our current classical view of magnetism, gravity, and the universe explains lots of things, it does NOT explain everything. This might be one such case. But by some accounts, aether flow theory does a better job in this case than classical physics does. If magnets are indeed aether flow concentrators, then the flow of the aether into and around the magnets can be tapped into and harnassed, as simply a subset of a much larger universe where the aether flow is dynamic and never ending. So in this magnet motor case, the energy being tapped into is simply replenished by the larger aether field around us.

OR…… Framed back in more classical physics terms, magnets might directly tap into the resonant zero point energy field (by nature of the resonant and in-phase magnetic domains in the metal of the magnet), and the work they perform in this motor is accomplished by energy drawn directly off the zero point field, always being replenished… (Due to this, I predict that we will see a general cooling of the air temperature and general universe in the direct vicinity of a functioning, high-power magnetic motor).

The important thing to remember is that the law of conservation of energy applies ONLY to closed systems. Magnetic systems are by their very nature (zero point energy taps or aether flow concentrators – whichever way you want to go with it), open systems, due to their link with the larger universe around them. The law of conservation of energy CANNOT be applied to them.

So where do we go from here?

First, I am ordering a bunch of high power magnets, then building a unit that can power something more substantial than just a simple little light bulb. There is serious power in permanent magnets, and I suspect that we can extract serious power from them.

So stay tuned for our research as it comes out! (And yes, plan sets will be compiled for people to order, from Evergreen Gas Labs, once I have functional units prototyped…)

Cheers!

Tim

Tweet This Post

If you like doing things the old fashioned way, without all the persevatives and stabalizers included, then you might check out NeonPlaydough.com. They specialize in making kid-safe, family friendly, completely non-toxic playdough that you can trust your kids to play with safely. And they come in colors that we didn’t know existed.

It’s all part of our desire to offer environmentally safe, green, and healthy products and solutions. And since we have kids, we let them play with this playdough here.
Cheers!
The staff at www.FreedomFromTheGrid.com

Tweet This Post

Over this past weekend, we visited what used to be the second largest off-the-grid electrical installation in the state of Idaho, a place known simply as Silver Creek Plunge. Located at one of Idaho’s many natural hot springs, the place features a full size swimming pool built right over a spring, as in the 100 degree F water comes right up through the bottom of the pool. At 540 gallons per minute flow, they don’t even have to use much chlorine, making for a delightful swim. We stayed in one of the many Forest Service campgrounds surrounding the place, and spent many hours soaking, fishing, hiking, etc

But what’s really interesting is their alternate energy installation. Without specific numbers, and just eyeballing their setup (the owner wasn’t even sure of specific numbers himself), they have about a 20KW solar PV panel grid and 1 KW low head, high flow hydroelectric installation, backed up by a 45 KW propane generator. Their deep cycle battery banks take up an entire wall of the battery room and weighs (I’m guessing) in excess of 20 tons. Conversion of the 48VDC battery banks to 110VAC is done by 8 2.5KW Outback Inverters all networked together, giving the place an estimated 20KW of power available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

The things that we liked about this installation were these: multiple sources of power, a strong backup option to both provide power AND recharge the battery bank when it gets too low, their choice of high quality equipment, and that it is successful. It gets the job done, effectively. The owner said the installation has almost paid for itself, and he is looking forward to expanding it even more.

The biggest thing I did NOT like about the installation was this: the Solar Panel grid was located well over 200 ft from the battery room, so even at 48 VDC, I estimate they were losing at least 10% of their available power between the panels and the batteries, just to line loss alone. I think I would have found some way to locate the battery building a lot closer to the panels.

This installation was a pretty standard installation, using classic, well-developed and well-understood alternate energy principles. There was no evidence of any of the more cutting edge technologies in use (such as the ones being developed at EvergreenMountainLabs.com), like propane replacement hydrogen generators, gravity converters, zero point energy resonators, or controlled lightning harnessers. Stay tuned for our research on these as it becomes available. Meanwhile, if you need your own more traditional alternate energy system like the one at Silver Creek Plunge, designed, set up, or installed, give us a shout.

Sincerely,
Tim Benedict

Tweet This Post

Well, we’re finally here, alive and functional, blogging on the web for people that desire to start living grid-free and independently.

Whether it’s simply discussing power generation technologies and processes, or finding tips to deal with society and painful governmental interactions, we have a category for it, and will eventually discuss it in detail (and then open it up for comments and discussion).

Sponsored in part by Evergreen Mountain Labs, it is our goal to become one of your best friends in helping you start living off the grid, being more healthy, and becoming selfsufficient in our increasingly grid-linked world. If the grid falls or ever fails (electricity, fuel, food, water, communication, etc), if you can’t stand on your feet without it, you’re sunk. We’re all sunk.

2012 (fast approaching) is predicted by some to be the worst solar storm activity year on record, and our national energy infrastructure and grid IS VULNERABLE. In 1989, part of Canada’s grid was knocked out by one such solar storm. See this story from Fox News to see what I’m talking about: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,478024,00.html

So come bookmark our site, sign up for our newsletter and rss feeds, and start living in freedom, freedom from the grid.

Tweet This Post