Off Grid Living for Beginners: Step-by-Step Guide From Planning To Building a Homestead To Living Off The Land and Become Self Sufficient

 

Off Grid Living for Beginners is a general guide to starting planning and list-making and resource gathering to move to an off-grid self-sufficient lifestyle by Emma Nora. Released 27th Sept 2021 it's 132 pages and is available in hardcover, paperback, and ebook formats. It's worth noting that the ebook format has a handy interactive table of contents as well as interactive links throughout. I've really become enamored of ebooks with interactive formats lately. For Kindle Unlimited subscribers, this book is currently included in the KU subscription library to borrow and read for free.

This is a logically formatted and easy to read guide to planning and troubleshooting.The chapters are arranged thematically: examining readers' own motivations, learning from other's mistakes, minimalism and preparing for change, finding and acquiring property which suits the purpose, building a homestead, making the actul transition, making a living and keeping everything running,  and some thoughts about the subsystems of a working farm such as power, water, livestock, etc. 

The author's style is very informal; more like a casual chat with friends than an actual instruction manual. Because of the arrangement of the chapters, and that the book feels more like an À la carte presentation to be read in sections instead of straight through, some of the information is repeated in relevant locations throughout the book. 

There are no photographs or illustrations. There are also no tutorials or plans included; they're beyond the scope of the book but many good building plans can be found online or through the library. That's one place where this book is very strong. The author has done a good job of collating and curating references, and this book has a comprehensive annotation and resource lists which will provide readers with many hours of further reading.

This would make a good selection for the smallholder's library or for anyone information-gathering before making the commitment to move to a more self-sufficient lifestyle. I've spent the last few decades gardening and doing what I can to increase my own food security and independence (I learned at my grandfather's side), and I still *strongly* recommend getting a mentor and finding like minded folks and resources to get off to the best start, but this book will definitely fill a gap and provide enough information to at least get started.

Four stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.