The TV show “Unplugged Nation” returned to the area recently to film a new episode about a family trying out off-the-grid living, this time in Orofino.
A Philadelphia family of four filmed the FYI Network episode over Memorial Day weekend in a home owned by Damon Popovics and Shauna Britt.
The show gives people shopping for self-sufficient homes the opportunity to visit three properties for sale and
choose one to live in for four days. The series premiered in 2015 and one of the first episodes featured an Atlanta couple who stayed in a luxury cabin in Hells Canyon.
Popovics and Britt contacted the show’s producer at the end of the 2015 season after deciding to put their off-grid home on the market, said Popovics, a chiropractor and owner of the Orofino Wellness Center. The Cosgrove family looked at properties in St. Maries and Kooskia before selecting theirs to live in for four days of filming.
Britt and Popovics joined host Jay Gruen and a TV crew filming the Philadelphia couple and their two teenage daughters. The family got lessons in beekeeping, firearms and chopping firewood, said Popovics, whose four dogs, three horses and four chickens were included in the program.
Popovics said he and Britt bought the 8.75-acre property in 2010 and have spent years renovating the interior and exterior of the four bed, four bath home, outfitting it with a solar system and battery bank that powers the home, barn, shop and two wells. Other off-the-grid features include woodstoves, propane on-demand hot water, LED lighting, an orchard, garden, chicken coop, beehive, root cellar and solar security gate. It’s on the market for $550,000, according to www.idahoretreatforsale.com.
Popovics said he was told the episode will air sometime in late August or early September. After the visit, Popovics asked Gruen for his thoughts on his stay in the area and Gruen texted him that Orofino, “is about the location that I have visited that could tear me away from the Hudson Valley in New York … and that is saying a lot."
