Have you ever wondered what it would be like to leave the rat race behind and live off-grid? We take a look at what it’s like to drop off the map in the beautiful North American wilderness and meet the people living a unique way of life.
From Missouri to Alaska, click or scroll to explore these incredible homes...
After growing tired of the demands of modern suburban life, Jeff and Rose Burkinshaw decided to leave it all behind in favour of self-sufficiency. They purchased a remote, 40-acre plot of land in a forest 500 miles north of Vancouver. And it’s here, in an unassuming log cabin, that they now live with their five daughters.
The family lives entirely off the land, growing their own food, foraging and hunting animals such as moose and birds. The five girls play a large part in the family’s survival, with each learning to hunt once they reach the age of 10 and then learning to weld at the age of 12.
The Burkinshaws’ home has solar energy and log-burners but no running water. Instead, rainwater gets collected and stored underground before being brought into the house in buckets. It’s then heated on the wood-burner for washing or filtered using a Berkey filtration system before drinking.
With exposed beams, plenty of books on show and a colourful hammock, the family’s cabin is rustic but homely. The main difference between this and the average modern home is the bathroom; a three-sided outhouse with views over the forest!
Thankfully, two indoor compost toilets are also available during the coldest months – particularly important given the typical two-metre snowfalls and below-freezing temperatures of Canadian winters.
The family’s five daughters are homeschooled using an online interactive schooling programme. But once they finish school at lunchtime, they have plenty of time free to do chores, including contributing to the building of family projects like this root cellar. The two older daughters even built their own house on the family’s land, all of which the family documents on their YouTube channel and website.
Keen to make the most of the great outdoors, the family recently built their own dreamy, wall-less outdoor kitchen. Complete with a suspended retractable roof, LED fairy lights, and an ancient family pizza oven, the kitchen makes the perfect place for summer gatherings, and blends almost seamlessly into its woodsy surroundings.
With land cheap and building codes lenient, Northeast Missouri seemed like the perfect place for Teri Page and her family to build an off-grid homestead. With over a decade of experience in self-sufficient living and some carpentry skills under their belts, they began building their homestead from scratch in 2013, documenting their progress on Teri's blog, Homestead Honey.
Before they installed solar panels, the family spent a year and a half living without electricity and using rainwater catchment and a pond in place of running water. Initially, they planned that the tiny house would eventually transition into a guest space or office. But once the 350-square-foot home was complete, they loved it so much that they decided they wanted to live in it themselves!
It took the family six years to build up their homestead from scratch. As well as growing organic gardens and food forests, they constructed features such as a root cellar and outdoor pizza oven. The property sits on 10 acres of land, so there’s lots of opportunity for growing produce and plenty of space in which to store it, from a canning kitchen to a root cellar and barn.
Plus, the family’s land is located within the rolling hills of the Bear Creek Community Land Trust – 184 acres of community land with shared pasture, forest, ponds and wild spaces for them to enjoy.
In the bustling family kitchen, there are signs of the family’s self-sufficiency everywhere you look, with jars of preserves lining the shelves. With four people sharing just 350 square feet, the family is together a lot and has grown very close. After all, Teri and her husband both have home-based businesses and they homeschool their children too!
Now, after many happy years spent in the homestead, Teri and her family are finally moving on to the next exciting off-grid adventure! They have left their Missouri cabin, which is now for sale, in the care of the Bear Creek Community Land Trust, and are currently working on building a new off-grid cabin (pictured here) in Vermont. In the interim, the family is staying in a yurt while they wait for the new house to be finished. Watch this space!
Deep in the Canadian wilderness, you’ll find this picturesque log cabin – home to blogger, self-reliance educator and photographer Shawn James, as well as his dog. Shawn made the move away from the city to enjoy a more simple life, free from the stress that he associates with material possessions.
After spending time learning traditional skills, Shawn built his cabin from materials he harvested himself from the forest, using mostly hand tools. Since starting this venture in 2017, he has continued to document his progress on his YouTube channel and blog. He’s even added an outdoor kitchen, outhouse, woodshed and sauna!
A log-burning stove and animal skins make the cabin feel warm and inviting. But the stove isn’t just important for comfort – it’s what Shawn uses to cook food indoors! When the weather permits, he also enjoys cooking outside with an outdoor kitchen he set up for the purpose.
This cute log cabin sits in two and a half acres of land in rural North Florida. It’s home to Becky Perez (also known as Homestead Becky) and her husband, Victor. The pair turned their backs on their suburban home after growing tired of the pressures of modern life.
Keen to live mortgage and debt-free, Becky sold everything she had to purchase a plot of affordable land and all she needed to build her two-bedroom log cabin. She’s since become popular on YouTube, where she shares her tips for other willing homesteaders keen to take the plunge as she did.
Becky did the majority of the building work on the cabin herself, which came for the most part from a log cabin kit. She then added the front porch at a later date. With its own water and septic, the property is almost completely off-grid, with Becky working hard to save up for the solar panels that will allow her to ditch the grid completely.
Once Becky had built the cabin, it needed to be jacked up and moved to her new property, where a cement foundation would be laid for it. While she initially attempted to dig the footers for the foundation herself, she ultimately hired a professional team to do it with machinery.
Inside, the property has a warm and cosy feel with exposed logs, fairy lights and colourful shelves and accessories. With just 800 square feet of living space, Becky has had to utilise every inch to pack in as much as she can.
Passionate about living as self-sufficiently as possible, Becky grows almost all her food herself. She has chickens for eggs, goats for milk and a small food garden for vegetables. And she even raises her own hogs for meat! She is particularly passionate about her chickens, and has many videos on what she has dubbed “the art of keeping chickens,” with tips on how best to feed, house, and care for a flock.
Lexie, Amy and Doris decided to move off-grid to live a simple life with their animals, with no prior experience of this lifestyle. Doris made the move from San Francisco, where she says she spent most of her time in heels. They share their unusual journey with their followers on Instagram.
An hour from the nearest shop, the trio was forced to learn new skills quickly, from fixing their own plumbing and septic to setting up solar panels and learning about different generators. And of course, that’s not to mention the hard graft that’s needed on the farm itself.
Although their love of animals played a major part in prompting Lexie, Amy and Doris to set up the farm, it isn’t without its problems. With bears and coyotes rife in the area, it’s not unusual to find that their livestock has been killed or seriously injured, which Doris states is the hardest part of life in the wilderness.
When they first set up the farm, the trio intended to make their money from growing cannabis. However, now that their county has banned commercial cultivation, they earn their income from selling farm fertiliser and walnuts.
Their willingness to work hard and learn on the job shows that although it isn’t easy, making the move to live off-grid is totally possible! Feeling inspired? If you fancy trying your hand at some off-grid living, the A-fame tiny house on the women’s property is now available to rent on Airbnb!
Deep in the mountains of North Idaho, you’ll find this amazing chalet surrounded by a sweeping deck. Nikki Mulder and her husband met in the armed forces and soon decided to swap modern-day pressures for a life off-grid with their two young boys – a journey that Nikki has documented in detail on her Instagram profile.
The family designed and built this gorgeous chalet themselves, spending the first year living with no electricity other than a small generator they used for power tools. Now, the property has solar power and a backup generator, although Nikki states that having lived for so long without electricity, they use a lot less than most families would. In fact, they only have 200W worth of panels.
This homely corner of the chalet boasts a large log-burner along with stunning mountain views – ideal for staying cosy during those freezing mountain winters. In order to save energy, Nikki often used the log-burner for cooking and states that her one regret was not placing it closer to the kitchen!
The family kitchen is a truly social space and has all the mod-cons you’d expect from a 21st-century home – other than running water. The family keeps 11 hens and two female ducks, laying between them roughly 10 eggs a day. And they also keep their own beehives! They were also able to shop around once a week for other supplies by driving approximately 20 miles to the nearest main town.
The family’s two boys are homeschooled and pictured here in an art lesson. This means the family has plenty of time to spend together enjoying the mountains, making baskets, preparing eggs for sale and more. Nikki says that she has no desire to return to life on-grid and will always homeschool her boys.
Describing themselves as “gluttons for punishment,” the Mulder family have left their mountain home and are already well on their way to constructing a brand-new, off-grid abode, which features many of the same sustainable energy workarounds as their previous build.
The new house also has some exciting new features, like this adorable duck coop, which Nikki described as being something akin to the “Wild West meets The Shire.” It even comes with a hitching post!
Another impressive feature is the blacksmith shop for her son, DJ, an aspiring metalworker. There is also room for a spacious barn and a garden, giving the family flocks lots of room to spread out. We can’t wait to see what Nikki and her family will build next!
She uses the channel to document her experiences from the day she finally made the big move, and the various challenges that come along with her unconventional living situation, which include having to get creative when it came to energy sources, running water, and even transportation to and from her isolated new home.
The cabin is situated a five-hour drive from the nearest town, Anchorage, and heavy snowfall makes the roads too dangerous to use for roughly the entire winter. Arriving home after dark, she can often hear wolves howling around the cabin.
While she welcomes gifts mailed in by her YouTube fans, she cautions that anything sent after the snow starts falling will be returned to the sender, as she is unable to reach the post office all winter! She therefore lays in supplies of canned goods and wood, enough to keep her sustained throughout the long, cold winter months.
The cabin relies on water and propane tanks located on the property, but when storms and heavy snow cause trees to fall, she can frequently lose access to one or both of these resources. Talk about roughing it in the wilderness!
Starting from scratch, Martin Johnson and his wife set out to build their own off-grid home in the wilderness of Northern Idaho. The couple had purchased a plot of land, and, along with their two kids, began a race against time to get their house built before winter set in.
In an incredible display of commitment to the project, the family even camped in tents on the property for five months while clearing the land and building the house. The Johnson family have documented their journey extensively on YouTube, aiming to demonstrate to viewers that not only is an off-grid lifestyle possible, but it’s the way to go.
While the house itself is still a work in progress, with ongoing construction to shift, expand, and reshuffle rooms, it’s only a small part of the family’s larger, long-term goal: to build an entire off-grid homestead from scratch.
The Johnsons have been working on their build for roughly two and a half years, and so far have constructed a small cabin, a garage and shop with an apartment on top that they are considering renting out in future, a chicken coop, and a solar shed. The entire property runs on solar energy, and relies on an off—grid water system and well which they drilled themselves.
Their most recent projects have included the construction of a greenhouse – an extension of their victory garden where they grow much of their own produce, and a secret bunker underneath their kitchen.
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