Getting Off the Grid

Hundreds of thousands of people in this country live "off the grid." If the power fails, food runs short or drought hits, their families won't be hurt. Their houses have solar panels and electric generators; their shelves are stocked with canned food and seeds. They have wells in their back yard so they'll never go thirsty. Some are retreating into farms. Others are bringing the countryside into their homes.

You'll see vegetable gardens growing where once there were pools and barbecues. Bahia grass, golden rod, and azaleas have fallen to tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, onions, squash, and carrots. If they don't have yards, people are growing vegetables indoors in a study or on the window sill. Heard of square-foot gardening? For a few dollars you can try it yourself. A professional square-foot gardener will send you prepared sod, seeds, and a prefab grid of small squares in which you plant your seeds. It doesn't matter any longer if you don't have yard space. And you don't have to deal with bad soil, mulch, or pests. Apparently, you can grow twelve-inch carrots in six inches of soil on your office desk. You can grow luscious strawberries between your coffee-maker and your dish-rack. Last year, seed companies and garden shops saw the strongest uptick in sales since inflation took off in the 1970s. The biggest sellers were survival vegetables – peas, beans, corn, beets, carrots, broccoli, kale, spinach and the lettuces.

I have to laugh. It's what I've been living on all along, even in the boom years. I love making salads with kale – a humble leafy vegetable that costs a dollar and yet has more nutrients than most others. Nature gives us everything we need cheap, but wastrels that we are, we'd rather kill ourselves fighting for what's bad for us in the first place.

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Escaping The System

As a middle class American, it's been difficult for me to understand how we are supposed to make a living when there are so many things working against us. How can we go on day after day with the rising cost of food, fuel, utilities, car insurance, taxes and health care, while dealing with the insecurity of unemployment? In the past, whenever I considered these things, I felt a hopeless sense of impending doom in the pit of my stomach. There is so much talk about how to solve these issues, but nothing ever seems to stop the downward spiral of struggle and stress that millions of folks are experiencing.

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How To Unplug From The Grid

HAVEN'T paid an electricity bill since 1970," says Richard Perez with noticeable glee. He can afford to be smug. While most of us fretted over soaring utility bills this year, he barely noticed. Nor is he particularly concerned about forecast price hikes of 30 to 50 per cent in 2009.
Perez, a renewable-energy researcher at the University at Albany, State University of New York, lives "off-grid" - unconnected to the power grid and the water, gas and sewerage supplies that most of us rely on.

He generates his own electricity, sources his own water and manages his own waste disposal - and prefers it that way. "There are times when the grid blacks out," he says. "I like the security of having my own electricity company."

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