3 years off grid! And............

I looked at your gallery Karen, and I'm really impressed and somewhat jealous.  I would move to a remote site and do something similar if only I could talk my family into it.  I have a small off-grid system, but I live in the suburbs with all of the normal services.  I can't say that I know what it's like to live off-grid.  I only experience off-grid living for brief periods when the grid fails.  I hope you'll keep posting so that folks like me can better understand real off-grid living.  Thank you!

It takes a special kind of person willing to accomplish "off grid" living. There is the conception that we are just living without conventional electricity, but those that have achieved it know there is more to it than that.
While not meaning to minusculate your accomplishments Karen, I would like to point out to other readers that "off grid" living wasn't much of an issue a little more than 100 years ago, it was the way of life. Think about Laura Ingalls Wilder (Little House on the Prairie) and her parents before her, for example.
Now, as for the rest of you, trace back through your heritage. Think about how your ancestors had no concept of "offgrid" living because, there was no "grid." Some of you can probably remember stories told to you by aged relatives of how they grew up without electricity. Electricity, as we know it today, is only about 100 years old.
Electric lighting was installed in the White House in 1891.
Benjamin Harrison was president. By the time Theodore Roosevelt was president the use of electric light was common in all but the most rural parts of America. It was around this time that another, soon to be president was born, Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Now he we are today 2008, celebrating, in a sense, a return (more or less) to a way of live that was chosen to be left behind. There may be hope for Earth yet.
Thank you Karin Evensen.