A family swapped city life to live off-grid in the desert by buying five acres of land from Facebook Marketplace for $7,500.
Zani Sunshine, 43, grew up dreaming of living on a large plot of land.
Her and her husband Yaseen, 43, a carpenter, didn’t want to be stuck in their home in Atlanta, Georgia when the pandemic hit.
They made the quick decision to trade in their car for a truck to tow their trailer and travelled with Zani’s son, 11, until they found the perfect location.
Zani Sunshine, 43, grew up dreaming of living on a large plot of land.
Her and her husband Yaseen, 43, a carpenter, didn’t want to be stuck in their home in Atlanta, Georgia when the pandemic hit.
They made the quick decision to trade in their car for a truck to tow their trailer and travelled with Zani’s son, 11, until they found the perfect location.
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FunTranscript
00:00 [Music]
00:27 In March of 2020 when the pandemic hit, we said, "Hell no, we are not going to be stuck in the house on no lockdown."
00:33 So we traded in our car for a truck, got a travel trailer, and hit the road.
00:37 My husband was raised in New Mexico. He still has a lot of friends out here who are like family.
00:43 So we decided to make our way out here.
00:45 It was a scary and wonderful experience.
00:48 Neither of us had ever been in an RV really or even traveled in an RV and we were pulling a 26-foot RV across the country.
00:58 It was a hell of an experience.
01:00 First we were staying in just RV parks.
01:02 Then we were getting a little bolder and more comfortable and we started camping out on BLM land, boondocking,
01:08 which means you have no connections to anything and you're just kind of out there in the middle of nowhere just figuring it out.
01:15 Once we were boondocking for a while, we said, "You know what? We think we could really do this off-grid thing.
01:21 We really think that we'll be able to get everything together, that we can survive, that we can be comfortable enough to make it happen."
01:28 So we started looking for land. We bought our land and we just started building.
01:33 I am so glad that we took that leap of faith and that we really just did the damn thing because now there's no looking back and no regrets.
01:42 Just because we live off-grid does not mean we're hiding.
01:46 We're not obsessed with a doomsday narrative.
01:49 We're not thinking that the end of the world is going to happen at any point.
01:54 We just like to be prepared.
01:56 We live off-grid because we want a simpler life.
01:59 We want to be closer to nature, farther away from people.
02:02 We want to be able to grow our own food so we know what's in it.
02:06 We want to raise our own animals so we know how they were raised, what they ate, and how they were treated.
02:13 In no way, shape, or form are we hiding out from anybody or we trying to be secretive or we're just worried about people finding us.
02:22 I think that's what people don't understand about most off-gridders.
02:25 However, if something bad were to happen in this country, we would be pretty well insulated and the way of life that we are building because we enjoy building it is beneficial in so many ways.
02:40 Less connected to the system, less dependent on the system.
02:44 We still have all the modern technology.
02:47 I have a pool in the summertime.
02:49 We have air conditioning.
02:50 We have television.
02:51 We have a PlayStation.
02:54 I don't want y'all to think that we're hovering in a corner or we're doing anything out of fear.
02:59 Because people who are off-grid are way less fearful than most people.
03:04 We're just prepared and we want a different way of life.