For our community however, we have put in a digester to produce electricity from methane and from cow manure…. and this being Moo-town, we have LOTS of cow manure and the project is working well!

They have diesel that the haul on the boat for the generator, run sparingly, and gas, also hauled in by boat, and no electric. The plane drops a bundle once a month in the winter time. There are a lot of folks doing the same thing there, and in other places, so it is not as uncommon as one might think.

Here in NW coastal Oregon, we often times go 3-4 days without electric in the winter, stretching to 8 days without 2 winters ago. Cell phones were out for 10 days, and only local landline calls could be made for 10 days. With a wood stove, for heat, hot water, and cooking, all I worried about was the freezer. It was cozy, and the family all gathered at my house cuz they knew Mom (me) would have a great stew going on the woodstove Since then I have been trying to can more and freeze less to prevent a major loss of meat.

But to get back to the topic at hand, it probably is best for all of us to make some attempt at incorporating some of the principals of “living off the grid” within the context of modern life. Few of us have the willingness or ability to go back to a pure live-off-the-land existence but there are components that are desireable, such as detaching ourselves from the media and the popculture to a large degree, spending more time with family and friends, perhaps homeschooling our kids and in general emphasizing self-reliance. We don’t need to live in the wilderness to do any of these things, but maybe we can make some effort to incorporate the best of both worlds into our own.

What I said was that 3 miles then was about 500 now.

I actually didn’t come up with this by myself.

In a study of distances traveled by populations in various eras, most medieval peasants traveled no further than 3 miles from their homes, on average, in their entire lives. They were walking on foot, laden with provisions for their journey, not on good roads – most were the equivalent of goat paths. Modern roads and accompanying infrastructure are more uncommon throughout history than one would think. See also Zvi Razi’s Medieval society and the manor court.

For example, I used to live 1.75 miles (about 2.5k) up a dirt road. No problem, right? Except that walking home after the bus dropped us off was nearly impossible because there were two hills to go over, and 2 knee-deep creeks to cross, and about a tenth of a mile where you traveled through the creek bed. The creeks were commonly used for travel because at least they were relatively flat, and free of vegetation. You might read Follow The River by James Alexander Thom for more details about this.

Barring major moves or travel, most modern, middle-class Americans will travel no further than 1000 miles in a day (500 miles there and 500 miles back), because that’s the average distance you can travel in a day in a car. And we are a sedentary, car loving nation.