离开电网是一个巨大的努力，可能需要数年的时间来完成，因为你要寻找土地，移动，并建立自己的独立系统。
如果你刚刚开始，考虑所有需要做的事情似乎是一个不可克服的任务。如果你还没有自己的土地，整个地方就像是空中的城堡，令人绝望地漂浮着，遥不可及。
So with this list, I will try not to overwhelm you with hopes and fears about the massive end goal. Instead, here are weekend-sized projects that allow you to build up confidence, have relatively speedy success, keep the dream alive, and achieve small steps toward freedom.
Whether you live on 40 acres in Idaho or a bitty slice of land in inner-city Chicago, all of the projects can offer you more autonomy from systems that are beyond your control.
Off-Grid Projects to Consider
对于每个项目，我将描述基本的想法，然后引导您找到更多的信息和逐步的细节。
Biosand Filter
When it comes to off-grid living, one of the first systems that should be established is your water supply. Of course, that water is only useful for consumption if it is potable.
ABerkey filter是一种可靠，持久的过滤系统，但必须承认，它需要一大笔钱来确保安全。如果你想尝试另一种清洁水的方法，同时又能省钱，那就试试生物沙过滤器吧。通过模仿地球的自然过滤作用，配合有益的细菌层的活动，可以杀死病原体，一旦启动和运行，它可以令人满意地清洁水(这个过程可能需要至少一个月的时间)。
Composting Toilet
Dealing with your own waste may not be considered a palatable topic but the fact is, we all do it and most of us depend on a mysterious flush down mysterious pipes to mysterious locations to handle it. When you go off-grid, however, the responsibility of handling your own waste falls squarely in your lap. Thankfully, with proper management, what was formerly labeled “waste” can instead be converted into safe-to-handle fertilizer, as these plans show.
Setting up a composting toilet can be as simple or as complicated as you want it to be, as we detailed in anearlier article.
If you have the space for the composting system, a composting toilet is simple to set up, and offers you a place to relieve yourself whether or not there’s a sewage hookup. Of course, even if you don’t plan on using a DIY toilet system in the long term, it’s a great skill to have prepared for emergencies, small house living, traveling, or RV camping (as long as you have a place to compost it at the end of the trip).
Solar Dehydrator
When folks talk about food preservation, freezing and canning are probably the first methods that spring to mind. The strange thing about these methods is they are some of the most fragile to depend on. Most freezers only work when they are connected to that lifeline of electrical power, and the lid-and-ring canning process only works if you have enough of those lids.
Before a freezer or canning jar was a glimmer in an inventor’s eye, there was dehydration — a dependable method of preserving a harvest that requires nothing other than good ventilation. You can use these plans to create a modern, off-grid dehydrating chamber by upcycling an unwanted stand-up freezer or refrigerator into a solar dehydrator. You keep a giant hunk of material out of the garbage and get some shelf-stable food: win-win!
我们的脱水机在干燥坚果、种子和叶子方面效果很好——尽管我承认我还没有在西红柿上尝试过。然而，使用它的诀窍是，在干燥、晴朗的天气里填满它，并记住在天气转变之前清空它。我犯了一个错误，在下雨的时候忘记在我的脱水器里放一些野生茶。虽然它们已经干脆了，但潮湿的天气很快又使它们潮湿了，产生了一些破坏性的霉菌。
Rain Barrel
Rain barrelsof all sizes are the gift of foresight for dry times. In several regions, if you plan ahead and gather the spring rains, you can ensure that you’ll be able to water your animals and gardens during a dry spell. And even if you don’t live in a drought-prone area, a rain barrel by the garden or chicken coop can give you super easy-to-access water so you can get the chores done with relative ease.
I know they sell cutesy premade rain barrels at the garden store, but you can make your own custom-fit rain barrel for far, far less. Give a 55-gallon plastic barrel or a some 275-gallon IBC totes a new lease on life with the simple addition of a spigot (and a custom paint job, if you’re feeling artistic).
Off-Grid Laundry
In our modern world, the idea of washing laundry by hand has become synonymous with hardship, crisis, or so called third-world conditions of living. But for the off-grid experimenter, it’s one of the many benchmarks for securing self-reliant success.
有许多不同的小工具和设备都被认为是优秀的离网洗衣系统，但在尝试了其中几种后都失望了，我宁愿向你提供我个人使用的系统——廉价、可靠、有效的洗手盆搭配一个活塞。I detail the process in full here对于那些有兴趣。
You can also build a more complicated unit, if you’d like.
Strawbale Garden
The benefits of raised beds are many — they allow you to start growing your own food, make for excellently shaped root vegetables, save you a backache, and they look nice, too. But for those who don’t want to commit to the permanent change they make on a landscape, who rent their property, or plan to move in a few years and don’t want to customize the backyard too much, consider the strawbale garden as a workaround. Easy to set up, customize, and remove, strawbales offer you all the benefits of a raised garden with the bonus of being easy to take down and convert to compost.
建立一个稻草花园是很容易的，就像在你选择的位置敲紧每个捆。为了计划起见，你应该知道在它们准备种植之前，它们需要几周的“调节”(也就是鼓励腐烂)。查看我们之前的文章，了解更多关于如何在这个周末让一个人成功的细节。
Clothesline
Drying clothing with the free power of the wind and sun can be a game-changing first step in switching over to an off-grid lifestyle(it was for me, anyway). Setting one up can be as simple as stringing a sturdy line between the posts on your porch and a tree, or as refined as building a stand-alone structure. There are kits you can buy, but there are also plenty of online plans for the DIY crowd.
Once you’ve enjoyed sleeping on a sun-dried pillowcase, you’ll understand why dryer sheets are always trying to mimic the experience with their fakey “line-dried cotton” scents.
Chicken Tractor
Farmer and author Joel Salatin is probably responsible for making this moveable chicken system famous, but it’s for good reason. It works well. Chicken tractors give your birds the benefits of free-ranging with the predator protection of being under cover.
Fellow off-grid homesteader Doug has a simple design featured on his YouTube channel where you can quickly assemble a decent tractor for around $50. Considering some small coops at the feed store are hundreds of dollars, the savings of a DIY job like this can’t be beat.
SolarOven
Cooking food with the sun? Absolutely. You can convert bright, sunny days into bakery, bread, and slow-simmered goodness with a bit of reflective material and some patience.There are several plans to be found online, from tinfoil-covered pizza boxes that look like a (vaguely) successful middle school science project, to downright professional-looking builds that will last you for many meals.
For full disclosure, the Sun Oven I have pictured here isn’t a DIY job. I cook with the sun so often during the summer that I wanted the heft of this very well-built model. From my experience cooking, I can tell you what the photos online don’t. You need to be very present when cooking with the sun.
你需要每20分钟左右调整一次烤箱，以确保它的朝向与太阳一致，并保持一个稳定的温度，而不是“设置好就忘了”的烹饪方式。
Fire Pit
The original off-grid cooking system also happens to be a great conversation starter, a source of cozy heat on a starry night, and an ideal location for midnight storytelling. Setting up a fire pit in the backyard gives you all this and more. A fire pit also allows you to clean up windfallen sticks and dried brush trimmings, converting all that unwanted woody material into ashes for the garden or used to dust chickens with a parasite problem.
The fire pit I have pictured here was built solidly with bricks and a sawed-in-half metal barrel, and I use it for cooking through much of the summer. If this isn’t quite your style, the options for the DIY warrior are endless.
Don’t give up on your hopes of going off-grid even if you can’t figure out where you’re supposed to do it yet. I hope this article has given you ample fodder and plenty of helpful links to keep the dream alive. These are just my own ideas. If you have other projects that have helped you become more independent, let us know in the comments below.
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