How would your lifestyle change, if your electricity became very expensive?

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Wow...great question!

In truth, we are already moving toward solving problems like this in our lives. We are FIRM believers in independence and self suffiency.

We would move toward planting more fast growing pines, and saddly a less diverse wood lot on our property. Right now we have a LOT of trees that feed wildlife, but those would not be replanted, as most of them make poor firewood.

We would use horse and goat drawn carts to travel into town, and save any money we might have otherwise spent on gas.

Our garden would become larger, so we had more to sell, and earn more money.

We would invest in more solar electric fence chargers. With goats, and a huge draft horse mare (she's large even for a draft) who simply steps on ANY fence (even cattle pannels, and tube gates!) and goes where she pleases, electric fences are an absolute MUST for us.

We already plan to move toward homeowner sized wind turbines. We might have to also make our own tiny hydro turbine...as our property has two creeks this would be easy....but unfortunatly completely illegal.

Since we already farm, our lives already center around the natural cycles of day/night. We are up at first light, and go to bed when it is dark. Our internal clocks are not too messed up with artificial lights, and nighttime TV watching as most peoples are.

The big things we need electricity for is to run our well...water is a must. Then comes the refrigerators and our three freezers. I could actually (and suprisingly) rework my life so a refrigerator is not needed. However the freezers are a must for us. They are part of the way we preserve the harvest and help feed us over the winter and spring. I can and dehydrate a lot of our food. However I prefer to freeze meats and many vegtables. I do not like the added salts to our diets used in canning, nor do I care to take the off chance on botulism from home canned meats, or vegtables. All that said though, if electricity truely became outrageous, I'd probably get us down to one freezer most of the year, two right after harvest.

I refuse to spend my day whapping dirty clothing against a rock, so a wash machine is a must for me (farming generates a LOT of dirty clothing!). If we couldn't come up with a reasonable wash machine that could be powered by a goat or large dog on a treadmill, then we would simply bite the bullet and keep paying those charges, if we were not producing enough of our own electric.

Tank heaters are a must for livestock in the winter. I'd arrange it so all the hoofed stock was being watered by one tank, with one heater. That stock tank would be well insulated.

Other than that, we would need some electricity to recharge flashlights, and cell phones. I'd also like some to run ceiling fans in the summer.

Then comes the whole problem of my husbands shop. Some of those things, like the welder, use a great deal of power. Fortunatly, because of the creativety of my husband, I know he'd have many wind turbines up in a week or two, to provide any power needs we might have. It might mean he couldn't weld anything on a calm day. However living so close to the ocean, we very nearly always have a breeze.

I guess the real answer is that in a year or two, it wouldn't change our lifestyle at all really. By then our farm should be producing all of our power needs!

~Garnet
Permaculture homesteading/farming over 20 years...Show more

I've been "roughing it" on my remodel for 3 years this fall.

Electricity is great, but I have learned I can live without it. Not that I'd want to, mind you...but I would survive.

I would move the wood stove from the shop to the house for heat. I'd probably splurge on a cook type wood stove like my Amish neighbors use.

I'd build an ice house comparable to theirs, and can my meats rather than freezing. I was amazed to learn that the ice blocks they harvest from the ponds in the winter and store in their well insulated ice houses lasts all the way through to the next fall, if done properly.

I'd use a windmill to power my water pump, and to provide some power......Show more

no longer attempting to sound like a no longer common guy, yet relating to the only time I cry is by technique of dying. I surely tend to grow to be extra pissed than disappointed over issues. i assume i'm an exceedingly stereotypical male in that regard. Did Incubus of all and sundry quite only call somebody else a sociopath and a psychopath?...Show more

go buy older home that has HUGE WINDOW
to catch the breeze.
tall ceiling so less heat in our faces.
deeper basement help too.
NOW wintertime..BURN WOOD.COAL
now the ideal of hydropower for generator is a good ideal.
but will water plant have power to pump water? SO..everybody moving to the country
having an outhouse, chicken..cow, pig..stream full of fish...plow ground for my own gardening.so basically going back to 1800. days of horses vs cars...Show more

I'd stop using all electricity except for what I need to power the computer.

And then they'd probably invent solar-powered laptops, which I would buy....Show more