Book excerpt: Rancho Costa Nada outlines the principles for the dirt cheap desert homestead, including transportation, sanitation, food storage, electricity, and much, much more, plus fascinating portraits of the desert homesteaders who are Phil Garlington's neighbours. This book is an American classic, full of ingenuity and good old Yankee know-how, and making do, and living way off the grid, and getting by on your own without kissing anybody's ass, or being a slave to the consumer economy. This is an amazing tale of what can be done on a low-tech scale with good old American free-thinking in these high-tech times.