Off the Grid: Living Without Electricity

By The Mother Earth News Editors
Published on February 1, 2004
article image
Photo by Fotolia/Oleh Slobodeniuk
We buy kerosene in bulk, 5 gallons at a time.

Off the Grid: Living Without Electricity

For the past eight years, our family of four has been content without electricity on our homestead. This is how we do it:

Lights: Kerosene lamps: We buy kerosene in bulk, 5 gallons at a time.

Water: Our faithful hand pump has rarely let us down. Each day, we carry about 20 gallons the 37 steps to the door. We then heat it on the wood stove, if necessary.

Cooking: Propane stove: This has been our only concession to modern convenience — the house gets too hot if we use the wood stove in the summer.

Heat: We heat exclusively with a woodstove. Most of the wood comes from dead trees on our land. We’ve also cleaned up waste wood at old logging sites.

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