Panic-searching off-grid living

In the late 1960s and early 70s – when I was far too young to be aware of societal trends – the hippies went back to the land. I was vaguely aware of the movement, and since my interests (even as a child) have always dovetailed rural, I saw nothing unusual in people wanting to grow their own food and live according to the seasons.

I looked up "Back-to-the-land movement" on Wikipedia and noted some interesting passages:

A back-to-the-land movement is any of various agrarian movements across different historical periods. The common thread is a call for people to take up smallholding and to grow food from the land with an emphasis on a greater degree of self-sufficiency, autonomy, and local community than found in a prevailing industrial or postindustrial way of life. There have been a variety of motives behind such movements, such as social reform, land reform, and civilian war efforts. Groups involved have included political reformers, counterculture hippies, and religious separatists. ... But what made the later phenomenon of the 1960s and 1970s especially significant was that the rural-relocation trend was sizable enough that it was identified in the American demographic statistics.

[I]n the decades after World War II, "The world was forced to confront the dark shadow of science and industry... There was a clarion call for a return to a life of human scale." ... Many people were attracted to getting more in touch with the basics just mentioned, but the movement could also have been fueled by the negatives of modern life: rampant consumerism, the failings of government and society, including the Vietnam War, and a perceived general urban deterioration, including a growing public concern about air and water pollution.

Now keep this in mind for a few minutes as I draw your attention to an article I saw this past week: "Americans Panic-Search 'Live Off Grid' As Housing Crisis Worsens And Democrat Cities Implode."

It seems what's old is new again. While we may now remember the back-to-the-land movement of the 60s and 70s with the softening of nostalgia, it was based in the harsh and desperate reality of the time, including war, corruption, environmental concerns, and skyrocketing inflation (something I do remember as a child since it impacted my parents so badly).

"What's piqued our interest," begins the article, "is the sudden panic by some Americans searching 'live off grid' on the internet, hitting the highest level in five years. The driving force behind finding a rural piece of land for dirt cheap, buying or building a tiny home, installing solar panels, and sourcing your own food and water might have to do with the worst inflation storm in a generation while cities implode under the weight of soaring violent crime."

The article cites urban violence, the affordable housing crisis, and the availability of rural internet as some of the fuel behind this latest back-to-the-land movement. Tiny-home kits, solar panels, and RV living are all aspects of the undertaking.

I have no illusions that "panic-searching" for off-grid living options is born of anything less than desperation, much as the last one was.

Where it will lead is anyone's guess......

"A job to go to"

In reading the comments from folks in response to the quasi-humorous "Leaving California" meme I recently posted, several people expressed an urgent desire to flee the state toward greener pastures, but are hampered by the need for employment in a future place -- a "job to go to," as one reader put it.

I thought this would be an interesting and helpful topic to open for discussion. How do rural people make a living? How many "go to" a job (i.e. are hired by someone) versus how many create jobs for themselves?

We (the Lewis family) subscribe to what I call the "many irons in the fire" philosophy of earning an income. We make money a variety of different ways -- primarily from our woodcraft business, but also through freelance writing and other assorted odd jobs we've done over the years. Our primary focus is to take whatever work we can do from home.

Why home? Because it allows us to live as far away from urban hubs as we wish, without being tied by an umbilical cord of commuting to cities for employment. We have neighbors who commute, and it's tough.

But working for ourselves also means financial uncertainty (which is why we prefer the spend less vs. earn more financial philosophy), and it also means we do more than one thing to make a living (i.e. irons in the fire). This, too, is common among rural people -- holding down multiple jobs.

I thought this would be a good time to open up for discussion what kinds of employment people can find or create in a rural location, keeping in mind everyone's experiences, education, and skills set are different. One advantage people have today over what we had when we first relocated out of California in 1993 is the internet -- there are many jobs that can be done online.

One universal piece of advice I'll give for those seeking to leave cities: GET OUT OF DEBT GET OUT OF DEBT GET OUT OF DEBT. Your income is likely to drop off a cliff, so don't drag any debt down with you or you may never climb out of the hole.

So let's hear some thoughts from those who successfully moved from urban to rural. How did you manage to make it financially? What advice would you give others who want to move rural?

Review for How to Move to the Country

I received a charming and very thorough review for my ebooklet How to Move to the Country by the folks over at Rural Living Today.

By the way, this is a really neat website and well worth visiting for those interested in creating country roots.

Disconnected

Here's an excellent essay by my friend Enola Gay called The Great Disconnect.

She writes: "When we were connected to our family, we were connected to our neighbors and we were connected to our communities. If someone was in need, we, as a family member, neighbor or community saw to that need. There was resolution and accountability. Taking care of each other was a matter of life and death..."

An excellent perspective. Go read the whole thing.

Letter to the Editor Rebuttal

It's always fun to get snarky letters from readers. Last weeks' column, "The Answer is Simple. Don't Hire a Woman" got its share of outrage from feminists apparently unable to read, because they misunderstood the entire premise.

Consider this Letter to the Editor:

Thanks for WND, but here's a suggestion: As a homeschooling mom, I wonder why you don't get someone more real than Patrice Lewis?

It's obvious that she and her family are on a farm, have a business and are probably much more blessed than the rest of us out here. She writes from her place of security in a manner that, to me, sometimes is a put-down toward those who don't live in her world, or share her attitude.

I, too, am a Christian woman, married, and I can tell you that I personally have suffered discrimination in the workplace, even having a man step in front of me and declare "You are taking a job away from a man with a family to support!" What are single women to live on when they have to support themselves, or children, too? Not everyone is married, or married with an affluent lifestyle.

It's real easy to be set up (blessed) like she is, and rant away against women in the workforce. In her most recent article, she takes a couple of catty slaps at women workers. Please be aware that not everyone appreciates this sort of thing, even Bible-believing people such as myself.

First and foremost, the lady (hereinafter referred to as “Jane” because I have to call her something) is quite right: we live on a farm and have a home business. And yes, I like to think we are much more blessed than those poor suckers forced to live in cities (smile).

But what seems unclear to Jane is what, precisely, “blessed” means. We are blessed with a happy family life; we are blessed with two committed parents determined to raise virtuous daughters in a corrupt world; we are blessed with living in a beautiful location.

What we are NOT blessed with, though, is money. This is, assumedly, why most women enter the workplace. So, if Jane is implying that we have an “affluent” lifestyle, I’d like to set the record straight.

My husband and I were two ex-professionals bringing in a combined income of over $70,000/year back in 1992 when we decided to chuck it all and move to the country. We adjusted from $70,000/year to about $15,000/year (sometimes less) in a matter of weeks. What fun!

And now, almost seventeen years later, what is our income? Well, after expenses (our woodcraft business has a lot of expenses), our profit is about $30,000/year. We support a family of four on approximately $30,000/year. I dunno, does that sound affluent to you?

How do we make it on this kind of income? So far, by NOT having me enter the formal workplace. I earn a little money through freelance writing, but NOT – repeat NOT – through my WorldNetDaily articles. For the record, I am not paid one thin dime by WND. Didja hear that? Not a dime.

Due to the downturn in the economy, my husband recently took on a second job. My “job” here at home is to make sure our limited funds are stretched as far as possible. This means the following:

• No meals out. Ever.
• Cooking from scratch. Pre-made meals from the grocery store are out.
• Buying in bulk. I usually get 150 lbs of flour at a time, for example. Beans, rice, etc – all in bulk.
• No new clothes. Ever. Well, with the exception of socks and underwear once a year.
• No entertainment frills. We don’t have cable TV (actually, no TV reception at all), we don’t go to movies (ever), we don’t attend concerts (except my husband and I try to see Riverdance when it comes through Spokane every three or four years), we don’t play golf or go to “fun” centers.
• We don’t buy electronics. Ever. No CD’s, no DVD’s (except when I find one at a thrift store), no iPhones or iPods or whatever the latest whiz-bang stuff is. We didn’t have cell phones until a few months ago when two separate friends upgraded their phones and gave us their older models.
• No new cars. We have an ancient farm truck we seldom take off the property, and one small used car for running around. No car payments, of course.
• We don’t use a dryer because propane is too expensive. I hang our clothes in front of the woodstove on a drying rack (in summer I use the clothesline).
• We heat with wood we cut ourselves because all other heating methods are wildly expensive. Remember that we live in north Idaho, a couple of hours’ drive from the Canadian border, so winters are cold. The average temperature in our house in the winter is about 60 degrees. When one of us gets chilly, we go stand in front of the woodstove for awhile and defrost.

These are some of the typical things we do to cut costs. Our biggest expenses are our catastrophic health insurance (which, naturally, we pay for ourselves since we’re self-employed) and taxes (astronomical). We are able to raise our own beef, milk products, most of our vegetables, and some of our fruit – all because it’s a hell of a lot cheaper than buying it at the grocery store.

So Jane – please don’t toss such accusations of being “affluent” around lightly because we live in the country. And unless and until you can demonstrate that your frugality beats ours, don’t assume I’m making light of women who work. Remember, there’s a reason most people live in cities. Rural areas are almost always very poor. Jobs are scarce and usually don’t pay more than minimum wage. Yet people make do out here because we believe raising our children in the country is better than raising them anywhere else.

Jane asks what single women, or women who are supporting a family, are supposed to live on? Well, the answer is simple: they live on their salaries, just as everyone else does. Am I against women in the workforce? Heck no (unless it jeopardizes their families, of course).

The premise of my column was NOT that women shouldn’t work. Do you honestly think I’m naïve enough to believe that? Women have always worked, and even Hillary admits that equal pay for equal work was put in place *forty years ago*. The premise of the column was that women don’t necessary work *equally hard* when compared to men. The premise was when government tries to legislate employers to the nth degree with legislation like HR 1388, there are unintended consequences. The unintended consequences are that people are more wary of hiring women, with good reason.

Women often must work. Great. But until you can verify and document that your work performance is *precisely* on par with a male counterpart, quit’cher bitchin’ that his salary may be higher than yours.

I received lots of emails from readers in response to the column, and quite a number were from male employers (probably because they knew they could vent safely with me) who testified how much harder men work on the job than women. I can’t verify their observations because I’m not in the office with these men, but when I get numerous unrelated men all reporting the exact same thing, I’m forced to conclude they may be onto something.