Getting started

Becky and I met while working under contract for the US Forest Service in Nevada. We fell in love, and when our contracts expired, decided that we wanted to find a way to stay together. I have a degree in Outdoor Recreation and she in Environmental Studies. Field work is plentiful in biology and related fields for people of our schooling, but the positions at each location are usually limited. Prior to meeting Becky I had worked several short term biology jobs at various locations in the country, she had done the same.

That is usually how it goes - as long as you are willing to live a life that necessitates condensing all of your possessions down to an amount that can be transported in one vehicle load, move across the country on short notice every three to six months, and never becoming too attached to anyone you meet - you can move from field job to field job fairly easily. You can make a fair amount of money too, you might not get rich, but you can put a little away.

At first this was an exciting adventure for me. I was young, single and interested in seeing different parts of the country. But after a few years of living out of my truck or in job-provided housing or a tent, I got tired of it. I was ready to find some permanent work and settle down. Not that I wanted a permanent job forever, just one that lasted more than a few months and could allow me to put down roots and get started. "Started on what?" you may ask.

And an idea had been growing in my mind. I had been reading a lot and and some of the material had gotten me thinking about what kind of life I really wanted. I had always just had a vague notion of getting a job, and working it until I could retire and then relaxing. But then I started dwelling on how tragic and awful that sounds. Even jobs that I really enjoyed would be soul-crushing after long enough. Don't get me wrong, I'm a hard worker and don't mind doing so, but to work in one place for 30 years or so? No thank you. What I came to realize is that I would much rather work twice as hard to provide more for myself than to drone away on autopilot just to have cash to fill my needs.

The idea kept growing. Earlier in life I had visions of being a loner in a cabin somewhere living off the land, maybe trying to write a book while sequestered behind thick pine log walls, my freezer full of venison and the potbellied stove baking off heat as I pecked away at a typewriter. Or something along those lines. The idea evolved from such romanticism to something more practical, something doable.

A farm.

Now that sounded like a winning bet. And I'm not talking about hundreds of acres of corn and soybeans. I'm talking about self-sufficiency. A big garden, a root cellar, a few laying hens and some broilers, maybe a pig or two. Something small enough to manage without a lot of overhead or equipment cost, but large enough to support my needs.

This idea suited my needs and became something to work toward. Then I read "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michale Pollen and it reinforced the idea that it isn't a bad idea to separate myself from industrial food. I continued reading and found lots of other great books on that subject and other related topics. Here is a quick list of required reading for would-be homesteaders or people interested in food culture:

1. The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michale Pollen
2. Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
3. The Self Sufficient Life and How To Live It by John Seymour
4. Everything I Want to do is Illegal by Joel Salatin
5. The Foxfire Series edited by Eliot Wigginton

So there I was in Nevada (not the best farm land) with a head full of dreams of running my own farm and six months left on my contract. Enter Becky. After getting to know one another I found that she too wanted to live on a farm and...the rest is history. When our contracts ended it was more important to us to stay together than to each find another field job in our discipline. So we opted to move to Omaha, NE together as I had a friend there that could get us both set up with work. And there began our attempts to ease our way into a more sustainable life style. Omaha was our original experimentation area, though success was not great.

Next time: Omaha and beyond!

Where to Start?

The title of this post says it all. I don't know how/where to start a blog...also I don't know how to start the kind of life I want to lead. Let's start with me. I'm an average white male in my late twenties living in central Michigan. I like music (playing and listening), books, writing, hiking, camping, hunting, fishing and a plethora of other activities.

What do I not like? Working my hind end off 40 hours a week at a job I hate, in order get money to buy things that - if I didn't spend all my time working for money - I could be producing myself. Kind of a catch twenty-two right? You need the money to get going, but can't find the time to get going because you work too much. Whew. It's exhausting and an emotionally draining even to think about it. But I'm getting the cart in front of the horse here.

The other major player is my girlfriend (I hate that term! Partner or lifemate would be better.) Becky. She is in her mid-twenties, beautiful, and looking for the same sort of lifestyle that I am. She enjoys many of the same activities that I do and she is also a wonderful botanist, which is helpful if you are trying to grow your own food.

Did I mention that yet? Growing our own food and getting away from (as much as is possible) the centralized mega-food system is the main goal here. But here looms the big scary question....How do you do it? Just going for broke, buying an old farm and diving in seems like suicide to me. My romantic and idealistic heart loves the idea, just cut the cord, quit my job and buy a small place with our savings.

But what happens for the first several months before anything grows? What happens if nothing grows? What if we can't effectively store what we produce for the winter? Even if we can feed ourselves, what do we do for money for land taxes and car insurance, health insurance, savings for "retirement"? These and a thousand other questions plague our minds as we try to think of a way to get out from under the iron umbrella of industrialized America.

I think a lot of people are discouraged by the same questions we have. Trying to plan a massive lifestyle change and to look into that future for some idea of what to expect is like looking into the blackest moonless night and straining to see some light. All we see are fireflies, a few scattered ones winking on and off, hopeful points of light, but certainly the big bright light is still veiled. We decided to change our lifestyle one bit at a time, to do on a small scale now what we hope to do on a large scale later. In following posts I will explain where we started, where we are now, and where we hope to end up. As I figure out how to use this program more effectively I will try to start adding relevant photos. Thanks for reading!

Testing out the Blog

This is my first blog! Just trying out the software and giving it a whirl.