Love 'em, when kept outdoors. Had a flock of about a dozen Araucanas in the 80's in the backyard. Crazy birds, liked to sleep in trees, laid blue-green eggs, attitude out the wazoo, about 2-foot tall. Had a couple of roosters and mostly hens, and man, were those eggs tasty at breakfast! Here's a pic of a rooster (if the image doesn't load, click the link below it.)
> How do you not have bugs? Are you above the treeline?
Hardly, I'm at about 1800 feet above sea level, and there's trees all around! :)
For some reason, the bug population is minimal even though I'm at the edge of what was once a potato field (in the 30's), and certainly there are bugs in the field and woods, but they don't seem to bother me much outdoors, or get into the house. Just have normal screens, so things like no-see-ums would be all over me if they were in the area. Gnats at sunset, sometimes, yeah... Occasionally I get an outbreak of large, stupid flies in the house for a day or two, swat 'em all, that's that.
Off-grid, my power budget is pretty low (I run from a set of photovoltaic panels my ex and I put up in 1989 when we started building the first house (this is the second, first one burned :( but the panels survived and still produce about 90% of the power I use. The rest comes from a generator and dead dinosaurs, when the sun refuses to shine for 3 weeks in the late Fall.
It's a good life, and every morning I wake up and first thing, I thank the Good Lord for another day here. :)