Many folks dream of running a fully self-sufficient home. But actually doing it is no easy task. Fortunately, it has been done. And the couple that did it is sharing their knowledge and experience in a new book.
I recently came across a book called The Self-Sufficient Backyard. Written by Ron and Johanna Melchiore, they’re a couple that spent the last 50 years putting together a completely independent home. They figured out everything from proper food, medicine, electrical power, heat, and so on. Their system allows them to live 100% off of the grid.
Back in the 1970s, Ron took up a homestead in Maine, where he spent time setting it up for proper living. With the help of his now wife Johanna, they spent 20 years figuring out how proper off-grid living works and everything it takes to establish. Eventually, they relocated to Saskatchewan via Bush plane to start it all again. Now they had the challenges of the cold winter to deal with. Time passed and they moved one more time to Nova Scotia.
“Unlike our second home, here, we decided to downsize everything. We took everything we learned during the last four decades and we designed this place with one thing in mind: to make a self-sustaining, but low maintenance homestead that doesn’t need much work or expense.”
The couple see this land as their retirement fund. It doesn’t rely on the outside world to sustain itself, which means they’ll be able to live out the rest of their days comfortably.
But instead of resting on their laurels, they’re sharing everything they learned in this book. It covers everything it took to build their final home from growing meat and vegetables to generating their own electricity.
The book, The Self-Sufficient Backyard is available on their website for 37 dollars, both as physical and digital copies. It’s worth noting that we were in no way sponsored by the authors or publishers. They didn’t pay us to promote it or anything. That said, we’re tremendously interested in the book, ourselves.