Episode-1958- Gary Collins on Off Grid Living
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Gary Collins, MS was raised in the High Desert at the basin of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in a remote part of California. Gary enjoyed, and considers himself lucky to have grown up in a very small town experiencing fishing, hunting, and anything outdoors from a very young age.
He has been involved in organized sports, nutrition, and fitness for almost four decades. He is also an active follower and teacher of the self-reliant/survivalist/off the grid lifestyle.
After an exciting career in military intelligence Collins worked for the U.S. State Department, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and U.S. Food and Drug Administration as a Special Agent.
His career took him around the world and gave him a unique perspective on not only how the United States, but the world is affected by our food, drug and healthcare policies.
It can be safely said no one in the health and fitness industry has the inside knowledge and background that Collins has. He is a hybrid of a high intensity health expert, self sufficiency advocate and an investigator rolled into one.
Resources for today’s show…
- Join the Members Brigade
- The Year 1958
- Join Our Forum
- Walking To Freedom
- TSP Gear
- PermaEthos.com
- TspAz.com – Support TSP When You Shop Amazon
- Primal Power Method
- Going Off the Grid – Gary’s Book
- Tom Dooley – The Kingston Trio
Sponsors of the Day
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Not a huge fan of Gary’s health stuff, but this was one of your best episodes EVER. Definitely in the top 100 in my opinion. You guys flowed really well.
Great show. Really informative. And thanks for adding more topics back into the show. It was becoming the permaculture podcast there for awhile.
Great show! More like these please!
Went to Amazon and bought Gary’s book halfway through the episode.
Just curious about the song of the day and where it’s sourced from.
According to Billboard, the song of the year was Volare which spent five non-consecutive weeks at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 (in August and September 1958) and (according to what I can see) was Billboard’s number-one single for the year. Tom Dooley by comparison spent only a single week at #1.
As I said – more just curious than anything.
http://playback.fm/
Hi Gary, thanks for sharing with us. I listened to this great podcast but kept waiting for one question and was surprised Jack did not ask it.
Internet access? I can be anywhere but am tethered by high speed reliable internet access. My livelihood depends on it absolutely much as Jacks’. Any info would be great.
I used satellite internet over a decade ago which came with a huge price tag, uploads comparable to dial up and reliability was crap. And that’s being generous. Not to mention that back then it must be installed by a licensed satcom tech $$!
Thanks for all you do!
I actually have an entire chapter dealing with internet solutions in the book. I have been using a Verizon Jetpack wifi hotspot device for about 5 years now. I tried satellite internet and it sucks so I went back to using my Jetback as my only internet connection. This was troublesome because data was so expensive, but Verizon released their unlimited data package this month, so I switched over. Of course you have to read the fine print, but so far so good.
Contractors (and not even off grid but was on raw land with electricity) – we had a simple 30 x 40 metal building built. Had a quote and agreement with one company, ordered the material for the building, then the guy in charge had an accident and died. No money exchanged hands but now we have all material coming in and no one to build it.
Next group we hired said they could have it done in 2 weeks. Couple months later (moved us aside and only worked days they didn’t have other projects) still not done, told us they needed $ to pay their employees so we paid half as they were half done. Then they would not come back out for another few weeks, they lost blueprints twice, if a drill bit broke they wanted us to bring them a new one, and finally admitted they hadn’t done this kind of building before, and not sure how to finish it, and that they would need us to pay 50% more than the initial quote.
So I asked some friends for references and was given the name of a guy who built the large commercial metal buildings, churches. But this is such a small project. Call him. I did. He was great (my reference also talked to him to let him know I was calling) took a quick look, gave us a reasonable price, but that he couldn’t get to it for a couple weeks. That it wouldn’t take them more than a couple days to finish unless the previous contractors didn’t build it square. It was square and took them a day and a half.
He had a talk with me after finishing and told me to never be afraid to talk to the larger contractors, that they have spots between their large projects (gives them some wiggle room for unexpected weather and other complications) and he’d rather be building a small project than having his crew sit around the shop.
He spent a bit of time giving me great advice on any future projects. I felt like he gave me as much or more respect as a person putting up a several million dollar building.
Half it it is now living area and half shop, but getting a non-traditional building insured at a normal price is another issue.
Thanks Jack for the dome house story, I have a son who has become obsessed with them and wants to build one. Meanwhile he is building various small dome play or chicken house structures around his home.
Yep, these contractor stories are sad, but seem to be the norm. I’m glad it all worked out in the end, and that is great advice to at least contact some bigger contractors to see if they can squeeze your project in.
Our family of 8 just moved out of a camper and into our house that we needed to completely gut and remodel. Because of the camper, we were able to fix up our new homestead debt free. Most people thought we were crazy (I’m sure we are), but it worked well for us. I highly recommend a camper if it gets someone onto a piece of land. We looked into building something small and the cost was surprisingly high! We did encounter some issues in the camper that we didn’t expect and it took a lot longer of camper living than we had expected. We are very thankful to be in a house after 18 months, but still feel it was worth it!
Hey Angie, glad it all worked out for you. I definitely think the camper is the way to go if you can swing it until your house is ready. I looked into building something small in between, and like you I just didn’t think it was worth the time and money in the end.
Congrats on your new dept free and simpler life 🙂
I remember my Dad playing the THE KINGSTON TRIO from LP’s in the early 70’s. I thought they had some good songs.