Greetings! Everything on this page is a product or service that Lurko or I have personally used and recommend. It is very much under construction, but like our house if I wait for it to be “finished” it will take way too long. I’d rather just move in and work around the unfinished stuff.

Some of these links are affiliate links, meaning if you click on them and buy something, I receive a small commission. Other aren’t — I just like their products. If I have a product review, I’ll link to that and you can see my experience in more detail.

If you’re looking for something in particular, this page is searchable with the CTRL+F function. (As in, hold down Control + F buttons on your keyboard, then type the word in the box. There’s probably a button I can make for this but I haven’t figured it out yet.)

Full disclosure: this page contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I do earn commissions from qualifying purchases. More info here.

Finance

To make your off-grid dreams happen, you will likely need money. I credit 3 blogs with helping me get my financial s*** together:

–WalletHacks.com: run by Jim Wang, who believes finance doesn’t have to be complicated. His common-sense advice is easy to understand, and most importantly, doable. I found this article particularly helpful: Building a Rock-Solid Financial Foundation.

–NerdWallet.com: This is who I used to research my options when I was trying to rebuild my credit. I like their side-by-side comparisons of different companies, and oftentimes you will get deals and discounts if you go through NerdWallet. Through the site I found a nice starter credit card with a $1000 limit. Three years later the limit is up to $2500 and I’ve been able to use this card responsibly. My credit rating is now Fair. Thanks NerdWallet!

–Making Sense of Cents: When I was temporarily unemployed in 2024, this is the web site that kept me from panicking. Michelle Schroeder has tons of articles and advice for earning and saving money. From her I learned how to make money blogging, and took a course on affiliate marketing.

Land

Land is the piece of dirt you have claimed for yourself in the world. Working the land includes gardening, so this list includes some tools that I use. I’m also including seeds, because they go into the soil and aren’t food yet.

Name	Link	Description
Boots, pink rain	https://amzn.to/3G0rkvz	A must-have for the rainy season. They’re so easy to pull on/ off, I wear them year round in the garden,
grass cutter	https://amzn.to/3FRMtbt	So you don’t have to bend over to cut grass. Uses a lot less gas than a lawn mower!
Japanese sickle	https://amzn.to/3XFxckd	My go-to cutting tool.
garden gloves	https://amzn.to/3DSOrb3	I love these sunny, bright gloves, and they do a good job protecting my hands from stickers.
Alfalfa seeds	https://amzn.to/4444JIy	So easy to grow!
Pea seeds	https://amzn.to/3XEhPZ8	I am so happy these actually sprouted.

Shelter

Once you have land, you will need to build a shelter. In this section you’ll find everything we’ve used to build and maintain Casa Buenavista. Want to know what cleaning products I use? You’ll find them here.

Power

While you build your shelter, it’s important to consider how you will power it. We use Growatt for our solar panels, inverter, and batteries. If you don’t want to support Chinese companies that’s fine, but Growatt is known for their cheap and reliable equipment and it has done the job for us. We do not recommend installing the system yourself unless you really know what you are doing. We paid a Mexican company to install and maintain them, and we will not name them here because we don’t recommend them. But the equipment itself has worked great ever since we bought the system in December 2023.

Water

We can’t live without it. Here is the equipment we use to move water around on our property.

Name	Link	Description
Hand pump	https://amzn.to/4hZcNO1	The pump we attach to the top of our drinking water bottle.
Rain barrel	https://amzn.to/47aWjAD	50-gallon plastic rain barrel w/ spigot, hose, and mesh screen.
Expandable hose	https://amzn.to/3HfIbM6	This 100-foot expandable hose is stretchy, durable, and never kinks.

Communication

Communication encompasses four activities: listening, speaking, reading, and writing.  Here I will include products that will help make these activities easier. I will also recommend books, Substacks, YouTube channels, and other publications that aren’t specialized to one of the other off-grid categories.

• Legal Templates: I used these templates to create the legal pages on this blog, including the Privacy Policy, Disclosures, and Terms and Conditions.

Community

Off-Grid Resources

During the year I was waiting for construction to be finished so we could move to Mexico, I stayed at a friend’s house in Texas and studied these two books:

• The Self-Sufficient Backyard: For The Independent Homesteader by Ron and Johanna Melchior. The plans and sketches were super helpful, and even though this couple’s off-grid experiences were way, way further north (like Maine and Saskatchewan), I still learned a lot from them.

• Survival Projects Book for No-Grid Living by James C. Howard. What I like about this collection of off-gird/ survival projects is that besides having very precise directions (yay for being written by an engineer), the author also has created how-to videos that go along with each project. He also gives you a difficulty level for each project, so I was warned if I was getting in over my head.