! OffTheLand net is a 100% FREE platform to sell, barter, and share your abundance LOCALLY!

Hi all!

I’m Vadim, and I live and perm in Florida.

My friends and I created a 100% free (for life) website called OffTheLand.net so that permies who are local to each other can sell & barter their abundance. It’s a hobby project!

As you can imagine, there are millions of people that are into gardening, homesteading, & keeping livestock all over the internet (Permies.com, Instagram, reddit, Facebook, etc) but OffTheLand.net visually connects all of these people on a neighborhood & city level for the purpose of building local & decentralized supply chains. It’s anonymous of course, with approximated locations, unless you have a farmstand or U-pick location and want to publicly share the address. People simply meet locally to exchange.

This free platform is particularly useful if you do not have a lot to sell like a CSA, or if your local Farmer’s Market fees are too expensive or if you weren’t selected (they typically only want 1 seller for each type of product category so as not to dilute their earnings).

The consumers who buy from you benefit from knowing their local farmer, getting 100% transparency about how their food is grown & raised, and avoiding industrial food resellers!

Things you will find on OffTheLand.net: locally sourced fruits, vegetables, animal products, eggs, nuts, seeds, herbs, spices, sprouts, edible mushrooms, flowers, cottage-law foods, plant seeds/starts/seedlings, hand crafted beauty products, crafts featuring natural materials & fibers, artisan goods, compost, consulting, homestead/farm/garden services, coaching, digital products, local permaculture/gardening/homesteading announcements and events, etc. If you offer any of these things, please do list them!

If you want to be involved with this project in any way, we are looking for friends, partners, collaborators, influences, contributors, and investors, so let us know.

If you have any questions, or feedback about what you like or don’t like about OffTheLand.net, I would LOVE to get your feedback here!

Just FYI, we are only in United States for now, but hope to serve you in other countries in the future.

Website:  OffTheLand.net

Welcome to permies, Vadim! We're nice people here; please come back often!  

Great idea.  Will peruse the site thoroughly later today, I'm so interested.
An apple for you!

Thank you, Susan!

Definitely let us know what you don't like, or how we can make it more interesting and useful!

Vadim Lazarev wrote:Definitely let us know what you don't like, or how we can make it more interesting and useful!

Vadim -

Can you add a zoom feature to the map?  Plus/minus buttons or whatever?

I am north of 45 degrees latitude, so there isn't anything shown in my immediate area (this is just getting onto the time of year to start cold hardy or early things in a greenhouse, for most people).

Without a zoom on the map, I could only look around by drag panning.  I don't have a mouse on this machine, so maybe wheel zoom would work for the map, I don't know.  But, buttons might be a good backup, for Luddites like me!

This is a great idea.  I hope it takes off.  I'll pass the link on to my nephew, who has been selling through farmer's markets, direct sales and to the local grocery store (they'll pay rack rate for local produce).  But, another way of making connections with other local growers and customers is great.

Kevin

Thanks for checking it out Kevin, and for the helpful feedback!

Yes, we need to make sure that it's easy to navigate regardless of the device.

Just curious, are you using a device with a touch-screen? Ex: phone, tablet, etc...
If so, you should be able to "pinch to zoom" with two fingers over the map. That either zooms in or out.

If not, you can use the "+" and "-" keys on the keyboard to zoom in and out. Also keyboard arrow keys should let you explore further from your set zipcode

Thank you for telling your nephew. Hopefully he can adopt it to interact with his customers directly. We will be adding free features so that his customers can know what he will be bringing to the farmers market. Maybe even let them reserve the item? Looking to hear back.

Thanks!

I seem to be running into an issue, when I click the website link it is setting my antivirus off (AVG) as an automatic blacklist.

Just wanted to give you a heads up.

Timothy Norton wrote:I seem to be running into an issue, when I click the website link it is setting my antivirus off (AVG) as an automatic blacklist.

Just wanted to give you a heads up.

Definitely thanks for the heads up, Timothy!
I reported the false-positive to AVG

Hi Vadim,

This is such a great initiative! Looking forward to the expanded version (outside the USA included) !

Nina Surya wrote:Hi Vadim,

This is such a great initiative! Looking forward to the expanded version (outside the USA included) !

Thank you, Nina! We got a long way to go, but we'll serve you there someday!
P.S. I like your Instagram!

Brilliant idea! If it's all small (shared) potatoes, hopefully the revenooers won't be interested. Barter, though, is technically a "transaction," and might be complicated. That's the catch. Stay under the radar!

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:Brilliant idea! If it's all small (shared) potatoes, hopefully the revenooers won't be interested. Barter, though, is technically a "transaction," and might be complicated. That's the catch. Stay under the radar!

Agreed, Douglas!

We want to empower individuals to source their products locally, to know how their food was produced (hopefully beyond organic/regenerative), and to build dependable networks with likeminded people nearby. Food sovereignty!

This is a stunningly good idea! Backyard gardeners everywhere could participate pretty painlessly in this and it seems like it would be a lot easier (and less weird) than FB marketplace. In fact, I would make it your goal to ensure that this is a really frictionless for the backyard gardeners that might only occasionally have a bumper crop of fruit or veggies to sell. At the same time, you need a way to filter out the scammers that infest broader online marketplaces. (Staying niche will likely help with that.)

Question, right now all I see are a few postings for Florida and nothing for anywhere else. Is that all there is at the moment?

Sandra Graham wrote:This is a stunningly good idea! Backyard gardeners everywhere could participate pretty painlessly in this and it seems like it would be a lot easier (and less weird) than FB marketplace. In fact, I would make it your goal to ensure that this is a really frictionless for the backyard gardeners that might only occasionally have a bumper crop of fruit or veggies to sell. At the same time, you need a way to filter out the scammers that infest broader online marketplaces. (Staying niche will likely help with that.)

Question, right now all I see are a few postings for Florida and nothing for anywhere else. Is that all there is at the moment?

Thanks for the encouragement, Sandra!
I so often personally wanted to share (sell or giveaway) some of the excess from the garden, and there was just no place to turn to: CSA would be overkill, Farmers Markets want a lot of fees, FB marketplace was more for garage and decor stuff, so this is where OffTheLand idea was born.

Agreed, the easier it is to post listings, the more gardeners will be willing to try it. I would love to get your honest opinion if the listing process evokes any sense of that "friction", and we'll try to improve!

Regarding your question, yes, I am in Florida, so that's just where my personal network is at, but we're looking for visionaries all throughout the USA to create a listing, and to begin building out their own personal networks of gardeners & homesteaders nearby.

As far as scammers, yes, we've been previously hit with a huge wave of spammer bots (hundreds of thousands signups within hours) in the past, but we evolved. I'm sure there will be other tactics in the future, and we will adapt.

Thanks for taking the time to check it out!

Yes, I tried to do the sign up but didn’t get the confirmation e-mail so I’m not sure it went through. I am sorry to hear about all the spammers, wish we had out own web robots to track them back to the source and ……

Anyway, I will definitely give it a shot later this fall when my paw paw crop comes in—it’s been getting bigger every year. And I’ll watch for listings to spring up in my area in the meantime. Is there a way to promote this discussion? I’m sure other permies would be interested.

Sandra Graham wrote:Yes, I tried to do the sign up but didn’t get the confirmation e-mail so I’m not sure it went through. I am sorry to hear about all the spammers, wish we had out own web robots to track them back to the source and ……

Anyway, I will definitely give it a shot later this fall when my paw paw crop comes in—it’s been getting bigger every year. And I’ll watch for listings to spring up in my area in the meantime. Is there a way to promote this discussion? I’m sure other permies would be interested.

Sandra, could you please check your "spam" or "all messages" folder? Sometimes it lands there.
If you think it's lost, you can always click "Request email" and it will send the verification link again.

I look forward to seeing that paw paw listing pop up

I would love to hear your feedback on how best to promote this discussion. I'm sure permies far and near would be interested in knowing that they can FREELY build nearby food networks AND generate some income from their knowledge/garden/and hobbies