Off the Grid

Living off the grid is living self-sufficiently, disconnected from public utilities such as electricity and plumbing. As 'Platform' magazine say, "It’s pretty much an extreme version of walking out the room every time X Factor comes on tv because you don’t give a shit about it." Yeahhhhh. Keliy Anderson-Staley was born in this log cabin in an off the grid community in Maine. 

"This is the house I grew up in. It started out as a two story 30×30 log cabin, but has grown over the last 30 years.  The sunroom on the front of the building was made solely with found windows and is the most recent addition. My father spends a good part of the winter in this small room working around a small wood stove. Barely visible in this photograph is the small windmill on the roof of the cabin, which, along with the solar panels just below the tin roof, generates enough energy to power a few small electrical devices including a laptop. We had none of these amenities when I was growing up"

"The Knapps live in a single room cabin, but have managed to carve distinct spaces out of their home. They are raising two young children and have been off the grid for almost a decade."

"This is the Landry’s outhouse, they’ve lived off the grid since the late seventies. This has been the site of a few accidents—a peat moss fire nearly burned it down and a dog once fell into the pit and had to be rescued."


Anderson-Staley has been careful to avoid romanticising living off the grid, but the homes here seem cosy, quirky, and definitely preferable to concrete monopoly houses. They look WARM, and that toilet looks MARVELOUS (really want to put my bum on it). I don't know, maybe its one of those things that seems like a brilliant way to live a full life, to free yourself from modern constraints, but in reality the difficulty surpasses the benefits. Like camping. Or having an allotment. 


There is a link to the rest of the collection here.