this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2023
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Living off the grid - homesteading and self-sufficiency

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For anyone interested or already living off the grid, anywhere in the world.

And how to live and thrive off the grid

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Welcome everyone. Are you already homesteading/working on self sufficiency or just interested? I live off grid in Spain on 3 hectares, with a small house and a few animals :)

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[–] foxtrot 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Hey, nice to meet ya! We also use a composting toilet, we're in a place with almost no natural water so we don't want to flush it away :P Have you got water on your land?

[–] dmb 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I do have a well, yes. It provides quite a bit of output when I turn it all the way on, but my city limits the total quantity of water that I use. I don't have any irrigation set up, so my focus right now is soil building, doing a lot of sheet mulching, and digging swales so that I can keep more rainwater on and into the land. It's really nice to have a well for the house and other normal water needs, or if I want/need to do some spot irrigation, but I'm hoping to keep irrigation pretty limited and get to the point where the land is mostly self-maintaining with it's water.

[–] foxtrot 1 points 1 year ago

Jealous :) A well would cost more than we paid for the entire land but it'd be so worth it!

[–] dmb 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What do you do for water? Is it mostly rainwater collection? I spent a couple of years looking at land and the first requirement was always water availability

[–] foxtrot 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah, the only part of Europe we could afford was dry af so we only have rainwater, and in the past couple of years it's hardly rained at all. We do collect from every single roof we have, we can store just over 11.000 litres (~3000 gallons) but if it doesn't rain there's nothing to store. after 5 years we're just about ready to dig a well or move but we can't afford either :) we're doing okay though, we have water in the house and all our animals have enough to drink - the one thing we're missing is irrigation for a veggie garden. so mostly we grow vegetables in winter.