Living Off The Grid: One Family’s Story

Abe Connally and Josie Moores and their children, Leo and Nico, live off the grid in a homestead in the mountains of northern Mexico. Photo: Abe Connally

Twelve years ago, Abe Connally left his 9 to 5 job with an advertising firm in Austin, Texas, and decided to pursue a simpler way of life, purchasing 20 acres of pristine desert in Brewster County, Texas, home to Big Bend National Park. He soon met his future wife, Josie Moores, and the couple started building an adobe house together on the property, where they would live off the grid for the next seven years.

For Connally and Moores, disconnecting from the grid was not their main motivation behind moving to desert; but it became a necessity to achieve their dream of living self-sufficiently in the wilderness.

“We lived 30 miles from the nearest small town and amenities, and we had little money, so whatever we wanted to have, we had to provide for ourselves,” Connally says.

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And while a concern for the environment was also not the primary driver behind the couple’s lifestyle shift, conserving resources became essential to their new way of life.

“Once you find yourself living in a natural environment, things like sustainability and environmentalism become common sense,” Connally says.

In 2007, the couple started a new homestead in a place more suitable for raising a family – the mountains of northern Mexico. Today, with their two sons, Leo, 4, and Nico, 1, they generate their own power, grow their own food and make as many of their necessities as they can.

Continue reading: Life on the homestead