Over the last decade or so, intentional, sustainable, green living has become incredibly important to many people. the desire to take those precepts to the next level, to disconnect from society’s systems and build your life off the grid, has become equally strong.
With such an explosion of interest has also come an unprecedented proliferation of articles, videos, blogs, vlogs, and books. Today I’m offering what I think are the best books on life off the net and a brief overview of what they offer and why you should read them.
You are reading: Off grid living books
what we’re covering (and what we’re not)
If you’re reading this, you probably googled something like “books on living off the grid” and were inundated with survival stories, primitive hut building guides, and countless books on how to “survive” off the… grid only looking for mushrooms and filtering the urine.
Those are not the books I’ll cover here.
Until recently, much of the offline community was dominated by preppers, old-school survivors, and others with similar ideals. I have nothing against the desire to survive, but the mentality can be very different from that of the small community.
The books covered today offer useful information and inspiration for those seeking to create an intentional, sustainable, and future-focused life offline. some are how-to guides that can help you learn new skills, while others cover some of the mindsets needed to make your off-grid adventure a success.
1. the encyclopedia of country life
Whether you want to learn more about living off the grid or are looking for practical, actionable tips for your off-grid home, the Encyclopedia of Country Living is worth a look. In continuous publication since 1974, its nearly 1,000 pages are packed full of helpful information on every possible topic relating to living sustainably off-grid.
The Encyclopedia of Country Life grew out of the 1960s back to earth and focused on providing “new settlers” with a reference resource for practical information. leans heavily on agricultural and other food production information, but does so in an accessible way that allows even novices to start off on a solid footing.
The different sections range from plants in general to staple crops such as grasses and grains, to vegetables, then herbs, and then fruit trees, shrubs, and vines. is a great way to approach gardening for a novice, as it helps you understand the easier plants to develop your gardening skills without immediately jumping to the difficult ones.
The 50th Edition carefully updates this information with the latest management knowledge and practices, while adding interesting modern touches. An entire section teaches you how to make natural skin care products from the bounty of the earth itself.
As someone who likes to take care of their skin but struggles with the many issues of the modern beauty and wellness industry, that was a welcome edit.
personal highlights
I’m a fan of bees. they are industrious, friendly (stingers notwithstanding), and one of the most essential and sadly overlooked parts of our ecosystems. the encyclopedia of country life has an excellent section on home beekeeping that does an outstanding job of showing you the pros and cons of keeping bees and how to get started.
provides practical advice on how to build and cite your apiary and can guide you through most of the serious problems your new hive may face and how to deal with them.
2. five acres and independence by maurice grenville kains
I have a soft spot for this book as it was one of the first that introduced me to the idea of sustainable, self-sufficient living way back when I was in college. Initially published in 1935 during the height of the Great Depression, Five Acres and Independence was one of the earliest books in the nascent back-to-the-land movement and broke down every step of finding, buying, and operating a small-scale self-sufficient farm.
begins with a detailed description of country versus city life and country attractions. kains is under no illusions about what off-grid country life entails, ie work, and lots of it, but honestly, that’s one of the book’s strengths.
doesn’t sugarcoat the problems you’ll face trying to intentionally live off the grid and doesn’t try to embellish. Many people I’ve talked to on my journey towards a more sustainable way of living take an overly optimistic view.
Understandably, social media is full of #vanlife and similar posts featuring smiling, fit people living in top-of-the-line vans, RVs, and tiny homes traveling the world. The reality of off-grid sustainable living is that a lot of things won’t go exactly as planned, and some will fail spectacularly in ways you’ll have to figure out how to fix.
Five Acres and Independence runs through the mindset needed to succeed in these situations and does so in a timeless manner.
practically, a good deal of the real advice on planting, farming and ranching (particularly advice related to marketing and pricing) is significantly out of date. the surprising thing is how much information from a book written in 1935 still applies.
If you’re looking to try living off the grid but can’t immediately, Five Acres and Independence is the book for you. you’ll always have the city and modern conveniences to return to when you’re done, but you’ll remember the reading fondly.
personal highlights
See Also: The Top 15 Best-Selling Self-Help Books of All Time – Project BOLD Life
one of my favorite parts of five acres and independence was the intense focus on practicality and the first section on “tried and true ways to fail”. kains breaks down some of the most common ways to fail before you start, and provides practical advice on how to avoid them.
Most of them, particularly “too little capital” and “unpleasant location,” are the ones every would-be off-grid enthusiast should consider. there’s a lot of good land and there’s a lot of cheap land, but there’s not a lot of good cheap land available unless you know what you’re looking for.
3. all new gardening square footage, 3rd edition by mel bartholomew
Growing your own food is one of the most popular aspects of living off the grid for most people, and with good reason. Many in modern society feel disconnected from the source of their food and (rightly) suspicious of industrial agriculture.
all new square foot gardening offers a way for just about anyone, who lives just about anywhere, to get back in touch with where their food comes from and start a garden quickly and easily. I recommend it for those looking to live off the grid because it’s one of the best methods out there for those with no gardening experience to start growing more food than they may realize.
Square foot gardening is an intensive style of gardening that uses a defined growing area, one square foot, in a raised rectangular bed. each patch is 6 to 12 inches deep and filled with a mixture of peat moss, vermiculite, and compost.
4′ x 4′ or 4′ x 8′ are common starter beds, but you can scale them as much as you like.
The benefit of this type of gardening is that it allows you to plant many different vegetables, herbs, and fruit bushes in a small space. the planting mix is free of weeds (at least in theory), pests and fungi, so there is lower overall maintenance without affecting yields.
The third edition of All New Gardening Square Feet updates Mel Bartholomew’s original guide from 1981 with new materials, new growing media, and better fertilizer and compost mixes. takes an already easy and effective farming system and makes it even better.
personal highlights
all new square foot gardening is a step-by-step guide more than anything, so no section stood out in terms of writing in motion. I appreciated the book’s comprehensive guide to choosing the right vegetables and the variations that work best in the square foot style of growing.
I’ve read many gardening books before that lay out a system and maintenance plan, but don’t do the real research on the ground to determine which of the hundreds and hundreds of vegetables and herbs work well for him. .
4. hacking ship earth: in search of a terrestrial haven that works for everyone by rachel preston prinz
One of the most interesting parts of the intentional and sustainable living communities is the Earthships. First developed in the mid-1990s, Earthships are passively heated and cooled, ecologically sustainable homes built from recycled and natural materials.
Long ago considered one of the more ‘granola crunchy’ sides of the back-to-earth and off-grid movement, Earthship hacking seeks to take the Earthship concept and turn it into a solution of solid and feasible housing that works. on a larger scale.
Instead of focusing solely on the ecological and environmental aspect of building a landship, he takes the approach that landships are first and foremost homes that must function efficiently. Prinz combined the best modern research on passive construction techniques with a solid understanding of the practical side of building a house.
While many landship books focus on the “cool” factor, Prinz has a detailed and highly organized guide that discusses the practical considerations for building one. she covers the soft side of things, permits, building codes, insurance, mechanical systems, and the minutiae of building a house that are often overlooked in publications and articles on Earthships.
hacking the earthship seeks to take the earthships from something that only the most committed environmentalists do to a rational, resellable and comfortable home for anyone.
personal highlights
the amount of time prinz spends on financing, building codes, insurance and other purely practical matters impressed me deeply. Too often, books and articles on sustainable living gloss over crucial details in favor of pretty pictures and brilliant descriptions of sunlight through reclaimed glass bottles.
The fact that he devoted a section solely to the consideration that someone might one day want to resell their house and gives advice on how to make a landship marketable makes this book worth reading if you are considering the architecture of land ships.
5. One Man’s Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey
For those of us in the sustainable living and off-grid community, the draw of nature is always strong. Many express a desire to shut out the world and walk into the woods to live a simpler life even in ‘normal’ life.
dick proenneke, at the age of 50, went into the alaskan wilderness, found a place and built a simpler life.
A Man’s Wilderness is the collected journals, musings, and ruminations on life and the natural world that he wrote during his first five years living alone by Twin Lakes. It’s a simple tale in his own words that nonetheless has larger-than-life appeal.
See Also: Les Pyjamasques – Lauri Fortino&039s Frog On A (B)Log
proenneke talks about how he felled, cured and processed the logs for his house. Using only hand tools and a lifetime of experience, he built a cabin and planted a garden. He explored the Alaskan wilderness, fished, hunted and grew his own food.
The 50th Edition of One Man’s Wilderness features a stirring foreword by beloved actor and outdoorsman Nick Offerman, and gorgeous, never-before-seen full-color photography.
personal highlights
The entire book is a real gem and should be a must-read for anyone considering living off the grid. there is a lot i could say about this book but i think proenneke said it best in the first few sentences of it :
“It was good to be back in the desert where everything seems to be peaceful. I was alone. It was a great feeling, a moving feeling. free once more to plan and do as I please. beyond was all around me. the dream was no longer a dream.
I guess I was here because it was something I had to do. Not just dream about it, but do it. I guess he was also here to test me, not that he’d never done it before, but this time it was going to be a longer and more comprehensive test.
What was he capable of that he didn’t know yet? what about my limits? Could I really enjoy my own company for a whole year? Was I up to anything this wilderness could throw at me? I had seen his moods in late spring, summer, and early fall, but what about winter? Would I then love isolation, with its stinging cold, its eerie ghostly silence, its enforced confinement? at fifty-one, I intended to find out.”
To get an idea of what the book is like, consider watching the documentary Alone in the Alaskan Cabin. It’s a little under 30 minutes long and uses a film shot by Proenneke in the late 1960s when he first walked in the desert.
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6. the foxfire series
If you’re at all interested in sustainable living, you need to check out the Foxfire Series. Started as an educational magazine on experiential living in the Appalachian region of the Southern U.S., Foxfire expanded into a sprawling 14-book series that lovingly collects and saves the oral traditions, style of living, and practical advice of a vanishing people.
The books provide a different perspective than the usual off-grid and sustainable living books and focus on the skills and techniques of a fading American culture. despite the age of the books and skills, many are still applicable to modern life and offline.
Each book has a different focus and includes different speakers and writers to showcase them. Some of the practical skills in each volume include:
the foxfire book (book 1)
- log cabin building
- pig dressing
- basketry
- cooking
- fence making
- crops to plant
- hunt
- moonlight
foxfire 4
- gardening
- horse trading
- violin making
- spring houses (water and wells)
foxfire 8
- popular pottery
foxfire 5 (a personal favorite)
- ironmaking
- blacksmithing
- flintlock rifle making
- bear hunting
personal highlights
My great aunt introduced me to the foxfire series when I was only 11 years old. my people had lived in appalachia since before the revolution, and i wanted them to know how those who came before had lived, loved, and survived in the rolling mountains of georgia, alabama, and tennessee.
What struck me most at the time was not the practical advice on how to survive in a sometimes harsh environment, but the mindset and strength of the people whose stories were told. foxfire opens with an account of mrs. Marvin Watts of Rabun County, GA, describing how her family lived.
in their own words:
“We had to shell the corn to shell the corn. everyone in the neighborhood came and my mom cooked a big dinner for the crowd. house it was hard enough to keep warm by an open fireplace but we had never gotten sick back then we had a spring to draw water from and my dad had to take his shovel and cut a path through the snow so we could get. spring.”
final thoughts
As someone who writes extensively about sustainable living and the practical side of off-grid living, I’m a firm believer that books have a lot to offer. The above books provide new perspectives, practical advice, and valuable information for anyone considering going offline.
Some are purely practical, notably the encyclopedia of country life, while others offer more of a spiritual and philosophical side that explores why life is worth living off the grid.
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