Off The Grid News Better Ideas For Off The Grid Living

The first phase of the American professional football playoffs are now history. Four games in two days have narrowed the potential championship contenders down to eight teams. After next weekend’s games, only four teams will remain. Two more games will ...

As 2011 draws to a close, many of us have begun planning our 2012 gardens. Many of you have probably already harvested and stored seeds from this year’s crop and are looking into ordering heirloom seeds for veggies that you’d ...

Old Man Winter generally arrives pretty late in my neck of the woods. Although the nights are starting to get a bit chilly here in North Carolina, I’m still growing some healthy root vegetables and a variety of greens in ...

If you watch a lot of commercial television or listen to the radio several hours a day, you probably have your fair share of commercials that you love to hate. It seems that some stations and networks tend to run the same annoying messages a dozen or more times a day, sometimes two or three times during the same program. If you're anything like me, you eventually just tune them out, mute the sound, or change the station.

In the northern hemisphere, November sprawls across the border of autumn and winter like a damp gray blanket. While the eleventh month brings a few pleasant days to us in North Carolina, it also carries stretches of time burdened by chilly winds and cold rains. It's enough to make an old fellow want to pull the comforter up to his furry chin and stay in bed to ride out the whole sloppy mess. Bats, bears, hedgehogs, squirrels, chipmunks, and a host of other critters are either...

As I sit down to write this column, Halloween is right around the corner. Strolling through my neighborhood, I've noticed a wide variety of goblins, ghouls, and tombstones decorating the lawns. In a Halloween frame of mind, I'd like to suggest a plot for a future horror movie. Imagine a place where the population receives about a quarter of their calories from a poison that is disguised as food. The overlords of this society have not only labeled this toxic substance "generally safe"....

We have now passed the mid-point of October. With the arrival of October 19, only 73 days remain before your 2011 calendar becomes obsolete. While I'll still be growing broccoli, collards, carrots, and some other hardy crops for a few more months here in North Carolina, most of my friends up north are preparing to shut things down for the season. With that in mind, I thought today might be a good time to mention a few things you can accomplish around this time of year...

The marketing mavens who work for the Corn Refiners Association have spent a bundle of money trying to convince the public that "high fructose corn syrup is simply a kind of corn sugar." Anyone who has ever savored a batch of freshly picked sweet corn can testify that the tender kernels might just deliver a tasty liquid that could be boiled down to make a healthy and delicious syrup. If you think of it that way, high fructose corn syrup sounds like a simple, natural...

With a little bit of imagination, the whole idea of corn sugar seems like a pretty tasty treat. Imagine tender kernels of freshly picked golden corn gently squeezed to release the sweet essence hidden within. Imagine simmering this naturally delightful ...

I don’t mean to brag or anything, but I’ve got a few good-looking cousins, and many of my cousins have been blessed with a healthy batch of good-looking kids. A few weeks ago, I got reminded of that fact when ...