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Thread: So how many of you have ever seen or visited 'of the grid' communities?

  1. #21
    Senior Member DSJohnson's Avatar
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    I have been to one in Southeastern Oklahoma a couple of times. I have a friend who lives in the "community" It is pretty much off grid. No external power feed. No external water. If I were guessing I would say around 8 or 9 homes on about 300 acres. Water is from a spring and wells. Some people use solar and at least one home has a modern wind mill powered electric system. From my observations and discussions with my friend I think most folks raise chickens or guineas. You see some goats, both milkers and meat stock. I have seen one lady using a team to plow with. 4 wheelers and Gators/Kabotas seem to be very popular. I think most of the folks work somewhere away from the community but I know of at least three families that don't. They do what they call "Subsistence living" but to me it looks like they work their rears off. Lots of timber in the area and you can get a permit to cut standing dead or marked "diseased" trees from the Forestry department. I think the community is about 50 or so years old or least some folks have been living there that long. I think there is a large extended family that was the genesis of it. Brothers bought 360 acres at a Sheriffs Sale and built three homes out on "The Place" in 1961 or so.
    Last edited by DSJohnson; 05-07-2015 at 12:43 AM.


  2. #22

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    Quote Originally Posted by DSJohnson View Post
    I have been to one in Southeastern Oklahoma a couple of times. I have a friend who lives in the "community" It is pretty much off grid. No external power feed. No external water. If I were guessing I would say around 8 or 9 homes on about 300 acres. Water is from a spring and wells. Some people use solar and at least one home has a modern wind mill powered electric system. From my observations and discussions with my friend I think most folks raise chickens or guineas. You see some goats, both milkers and meat stock. I have seen one lady using a team to plow with. 4 wheelers and Gators/Kabotas seem to be very popular. I think most of the folks work somewhere away from the community but I know of at least three families that don't. They do what they call "Subsistence living" but to me it looks like they work their rears off. Lots of timber in the area and you can get a permit to cut standing dead or marked "diseased" trees from the Forestry department. I think the community is about 50 or so years old or least some folks have been living there that long. I think there is a large extended family that was the genesis of it. Brothers bought 360 acres at a Sheriffs Sale and built three homes out on "The Place" in 1961 or so.
    That makes me curious, do they research and build things like windmills or maybe irrigation ditches? Did they seem to participate in any community enrichening (I don't really know how to say it) do they grow veggies and, if someone is not busy do they start taking up beekeeping, as an example....

    Do they improve what they have or do they continue to stay as they are, how they live?
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  3. #23
    Senior Member DSJohnson's Avatar
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    Well I screwed that up. Okay there is a paved county road that runs through this little neighborhood. The school bus picks the kids up every day. Most of these folks, I think, are in town regularly. Even the ones who do not seem to have a job away from here go to Walmart every once in a while. The post office delivers mail to their mail boxes and the UPS driver knows all their names. They are not living in isolation. They are just living


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  4. #24
    Senior Member hunter63's Avatar
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    Might want to Look up "The Hog Farm"....long running hippie commune started in the 1960's.....
    This is an interesting article dealing with an archeological dig at the former site in California.

    http://www.kcet.org/arts/artbound/co...m-commune.html

    Kinda funny to me seeing a site I considered current in my past being considered "archeological".....LOL
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  5. #25

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    A photo overview of Amish today.
    Electric free sawmill. Gas powered horse drawn hay bailers.
    How far off grid do you want to go?
    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexpe...y/amish-today/
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  6. #26
    Super Moderator crashdive123's Avatar
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    Each and every Navy Ship I was on was an off grid community.
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  7. #27
    Senior Member DSJohnson's Avatar
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    Duh. I completely missed that Crash. LOL Boomers were/are pretty "off the grid"..!


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    Last edited by DSJohnson; 05-07-2015 at 11:34 PM.

  8. #28
    Senior Member natertot's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by crashdive123 View Post
    Each and every Navy Ship I was on was an off grid community.
    To a degree. Lots of communications to other ships and land based commands, though and at least every week we hit port to get supplies/fuel or we would do a RAS. We never grew any food on the flight deck, but if we caught fish the cooks would oblige us as long as we shared. We did have our own police/security force, fire department, flooding department, mail department, repair department, etc. As far as civilian basic government services, yeah, self sufficient and off grid.
    ”There's nothing glorious in dying. Anyone can do it.” ~Johnny Rotten

  9. #29

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    Ain't hunting camps of the grid? They have generators in some camps. Your cell phone isn't gonna work in our camps. No anything provided. But, most folks only go out on the weekend.

  10. #30
    Super Moderator crashdive123's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by natertot View Post
    ...........Lots of communications to other ships and land based commands, though and at least every week we hit port to get supplies/fuel or we would do a RAS.........
    Not on the Boats I was on.
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  11. #31
    Senior Member natertot's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by crashdive123 View Post
    Not on the Boats I was on.
    oh, yeah, I forgot you were on those little underwater thingys! Yep, whole other lifestyle compared to the rest of the sea dwellers!
    ”There's nothing glorious in dying. Anyone can do it.” ~Johnny Rotten

  12. #32

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    Quote Originally Posted by DSJohnson View Post
    Well I screwed that up. Okay there is a paved county road that runs through this little neighborhood. The school bus picks the kids up every day. Most of these folks, I think, are in town regularly. Even the ones who do not seem to have a job away from here go to Walmart every once in a while. The post office delivers mail to their mail boxes and the UPS driver knows all their names. They are not living in isolation. They are just living


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    That sounds like an Ideal community. Not isolated, but they are mostly self sufficient. What do you guys think of this community DSJohnson spoke about? I guess.... What would you consider to be an ideal community?
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  13. #33
    Senior Member hunter63's Avatar
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    The ideal community is have them "over there" and me "over here".....LOL
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  14. #34
    Alaska, The Madness! 1stimestar's Avatar
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    Yep, what Hunter said...

    DSJohnson, is that the community where no one has a driver's license? I remember one of those when I lived down there.
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  15. #35
    Senior Member DSJohnson's Avatar
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    1stimestar,
    My friend, Jasper, has a drivers license and an Oklahoma Life time Hunting and fishing license. I have no clue about the other people. I do know that they have "community" work days once each quarter. They ask everyone who lives there to help clean up and do some "house keeping" type things for 4 hours and then have a big pot luck. Jasper bought an existing home there several years ago. He chose to do that because they have some kind of (screwy, in my opinion) deal where you can buy the home/house/lot/acreage on some kind of a "quit claim" deed deal. No down payments you just start making payments. They get first shot at buying the place if you decide to sell. You sign some kind of a contract. What it did for Jasper was allow him to move to a livable home with 5 acres for $750 a month I think. He can NOT pay it off early and I have no details on interest or any specifics. I only know what Jasper has mentioned in casual conversations. I have never really quizzed him much about the details of the deal. Not really any of my business. I let him use my trailer to help move down there. I have only been down there a couple of times since he moved. The last time I was there he told me about one of his neighbors building a very nice little shooting range. He cleared out a place to shoot out to about 250 yards with a good back stop/berm and a pistol distance range as well. He told Jasper, who had helped him work on it, that Jasper and any friend of Jasper's could use it whenever they wanted as long as we police our trash and do not start shooting before 0800 hours. Jasper showed it to me but we did not do any shooting that day.

  16. #36
    Senior Member hunter63's Avatar
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    When it's some one else's community...usually come with their rules and such.
    Sounds to me like that is pretty controlled.

    When I hear, "Like minded people Community"....means do what the organizers/original owners say to do.
    Bring your back and cash.......
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  17. #37
    Senior Member DSJohnson's Avatar
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    Hunter,
    Kind of my thinking also. According to Jasper, except for the quarterly work day deal he really does not "interact" with many of his neighbors. He gets a check from the VA and does some "Handy Man" work in two or three of the local towns. He is really good at laying brick and cinder blocks and actually stays pretty busy during the summer with that. I have never understood choosing to live in a gated community/neighborhood or a "Covenant Neighborhood" I am really happy with the choice that my redhead and I made when we decided to move out on this 50 acres and "live out in the country" On the other hand I also have no desire to live in commune/"Utopia" type experiment or an "Off the grid" community either. I really really like EMS, Fire and the rule of law!

  18. #38

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    I guess no matter how nice it sounds, small 'communities' are very much like small towns...
    Be the change you wish to see in the world. - Mahatma Ghandi
    Individually we are a drop, together, we are an ocean. - Ryunosuke Satoro

  19. #39
    Senior Member kyratshooter's Avatar
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    I have found that on close examination most of those Quick Claim communities are a scam.

    No one ever remains long enough to pay off the debt due to changing restrictions and harassment and the contract always says if you leave you forfeit everything.

    In a couple of instances in TN there were people that paid out their mortgage and found there was no clear title on their land.

    That is why they specify no early payoffs.

    I bought land directly from the bank, at auction, from the bankruptcy sale of one of those outfits after the developers were sued, then prosecuted, then jailed. It was a good deal for me, not so much for some of the folks that had built nice houses on land they did not have title on and lost everything, or had to buy it twice.

    I also learned that gates and a fence are only good if everyone in the community refuses to give out the gate code to every delivery driver and all the boyfriends of every female inside the fence.
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  20. #40
    Senior Member kyratshooter's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by crashdive123 View Post
    Each and every Navy Ship I was on was an off grid community.
    Was there not an incident where the Soviets docked a boomer near a small port city and powered the entire community off their reactor?

    http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrica...p_to_shore.pdf

    It appears that we can do the same thing.
    Last edited by kyratshooter; 05-13-2015 at 03:26 PM.
    If you didn't bring jerky what did I just eat?

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