Off-Grid Living

Off-the-grid is a system and lifestyle designed to help people function without the support of remote infrastructure, such as an electrical grid.

Why I don’t talk much about owning my own land and living off-grid these days 🚜

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Sometimes the best thing to do with an automatic investment is to just let it run its course. Let the bimonthly deposits go in on schedule, let the markets grow, ignore the ups and downs, know that better days are ahead but don’t give it a lot of thought in the near term.

The truth is my hope and vision for the future hasn’t changed much though my expectations have been somewhat tempered watching the rate the markets grow, my quickly aging parents, the progress of my career. I realize probably within the next decade my parents are either likely to pass on or retire to a nursing home when they are no longer able to take on their homestead. My sister has little interest in their five acre property in Westerlo, so it will either get sold or I’ll take it up as my own home.

It’s not everything I would want in land but there is a lot of possibility with the property and it’s within commuting distance of my current job. Another thing two I’m considering is that I’m within 5 years from having twenty years in with the state retirement system at which point I will get a big bump in my retirement benefits. My current apartment isn’t great but it works well enough and is super convenient on the bus line and not a long ride to work.

On that land, if it’s someday mine I could rework it more into my own vision of the land.

After watching that video I was thinking about all the tools I have for land research with public data and GIS tools 🗺

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After watching that video I was thinking about all the tools I have for land research with public data and GIS tools 🗺

Most counties and states now publicly post tax maps and rolls. If I can connect to those REST Services then I can have fairly good idea of property lines, assessed value and taxes. Using R Studio I can easily calculate the assessed value per acre in an area or for similar properties.

Then then there is a lot I can find out about a property without ever even stepping foot on it. Aerial photography, especially the most-common leaf-less type taken either in April or November before the snow can show a lot about what conditions are like on the ground. It can give on an idea of what buildings exist there, what trees and pasture exist. What kind of logging practices have taken past in the recent past. In addition, most places now have a wide variety of historical aerial photos available. For most areas, you can easily get aerial photos from the 1950s and early 1960s, which can give you insight on whether or not the land was farmed in the recent past.

But maybe the next most interesting is the information one can obtain from LIDAR elevation data. In most cases, LIDAR survey data can show stone wells, gullies, potential wetlands and swamps, and old trash dumps above grade. Basically anything that is ground cover, that is not trees. If you download the full-point cloud data, you can get things like building and tree heights, which can give you more ideas on what trees are on the property and what is salable.

It’s actually quite remarkable what you can do with modern databases, some R code and GIS data to discover a lot about land that might in a few years back be unknowable without a detailed, on the ground property survey. I am fortunate to have so many resources available at my finger tips these days — recognizing though that other people also have access to data, though maybe others aren’t quite as talented when it comes to working with big data or sifting through GIS data.

Propane 🏮

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Propane 🏮

A few days ago I posted about how my research found that it was the propane dealers association that was most vocally pushing back against the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. Propane is widely sold as a cleaner and cheaper fuel to heating oil, especially in rural Western NY in areas lacking natural gas lines. Oil still remains dominant though in rural parts around the Hudson Valley. I don’t know if electricity is that much of a threat to propane, although it’s obvious that propane dealers see the writing on the wall, or at least are pretty fearful about heat pumps and greater electrification of rural residences. A farm or rual residence might be a good place for solar panels, and if you can make your own energy, why pay a propane dealer?

I have some experience working with propane having used it a fair bit for camping over the past six and half years with a twenty gallon tank and my big buddy heater, propane stove and lantern. Propane has its pros and cons for sure — it’s a relatively clean fuel but it can get very dirty from the oils on connectors taking them in and apart in the woods. But certainly propane is a much cleaner and more reliable fuel then the awful liquid gas stoves I used to use, especially when burning regular gasoline.

When I own my own land and have an off-grid cabin, I will probably use propane but I’m not sure if I would want to use it as a primary heating fuel, as it’s relatively expensive and makes you dependent on propane deliveries, which can be difficult if not impossible in remote country. Plus it sure seems l like some of the propane dealers engage in scammy business models. While bulk propane delivery is much cheaper, getting a 100 lb or even a 30 lb tank might be a better option, as you can take it to any propane filler to get filled and have multiple tanks around.

Most energy consumed by propane is by far for heating. While I might keep a propane wall heater or a big buddy heater for warming things up quickly in the cabin when things are cold, I think the best method of heating remains wood, harvested and processed yourself. Wood is a carbon neutral fuel if harvested from your own acreage, it’s not dependent on market prices. Propane though is good for cooking, although if you have a wood-stove going, you might as well make breakfast and other meals in a cast iron skillet right on the wood-stove, rather then consuming expensive gas.

In the summer, an outdoors cook-stove might be a good option, although in my experience in Boy Scouts, cooking on wood isn’t as easy as you might think to control heat levels, and it’s a lot of waiting for coals to build up. Maybe though in a regular outdoor cook-stove it’s easier to cook then an smokey, open fire. At least with a cook-stove you can ventilate the smoke up and above and not have it in your face, and to boot, papers and wrappers can be disposed of after cooking so you have less kitchen trash around. But I don’t know, there is definitely some advantages to cooking with gas, especially in rural areas without access to high-voltage electricity.