I’ve been thinking about this for years. A small community, maybe with a shared garden and car or something. Maybe a few essentially normal people that want to hook up and not be all alone and maybe be more self-sufficient. My idea is unclear; an “intentional” community?
But no I don’t think a comet is going to take us out, or believe in the Mayan prediction, or that we need to stockpile arms or buy dehydrated rations…
But still.
Anybody know what I mean?
I’ve been meaning to bring it up but what pushed me was a call from my half-sister last night. (For some of my history maybe go to my posts and look at my Fios thread.) We talk maybe once a year. She was upset with spending 100 hours on the phone trying to resolve problems with companies that transfer and transfer and the tile people who gave her one year to pay in total for something or get hit with a 1600 buck interest fee and who just weeks before her “year” was up declined her single double triple triple payments… And the bank this and the credit card company that and, well, more…
This my life, I told her. We’re surrounded by vultures. One needs an actuary just to pay the phone bill.
I think about this sometimes, but then I remember that people I only occasionally see get on my nerves after awhile. So I’d go absolutely batshit crazy if I was stuck out in the middle of nowhere with the same set of people, listening to the same stories over and over, observing the same (sexual) drama playing out over and over, avoiding the same malodorous person over and over…
Also, I don’t do well philosophies–especially other people’s. Intentional communities are usually built around certain philosophies which means there’s inevitably some Nellie Olson person that takes upon her/himself to moralize and police behaviors. Even if I were in fundamental agreement with the prevailing values, I don’t want to be in a place where I’m not exposed to other points of view and where someone is telling me that I have to do something a certain way.
As much as modern society bugs me, I’m fine with being an urban hermit.
I have been joking about selling off the farm and 90% of our possessions to buy a sailboat with to drop of the map with. We probably make enough with mrAru’s navy retirement to keep the insurance and registration on a small sailboat, and we get our medical care and prescriptions dirt cheap from the Navy retirement package he has.
Other than food, medication and registration/insurance, we don’t truly need much more. I am getting tired of the whole rat race anyways. His job hunting is wearing me out. I have only to assume that it is as upsetting to him as well.
Do you have resources on that property? Like a well for water, and trees for firewood? Can you haul up water from a well and make it potable, 365 days a year? What if you have bad harvest weather for a few months? What if a tree falls on you and you become handicapped? Will you go back on-grid? There are lots of reasons going off-grid isn’t a workable solution for the vast majority of Americans. It is freaking HARD to gather water/food and truck water and plant gardens and take baths and do ALL of this during daylight hours because you don’t have electricity. What will you do for meat? You can go vegetarian or vegan, but you won’t get very far without grains and vitamins (which cost money). What about bread or pasta to supplement your produce-diet?
You mentioned a car. Unless you have a petroleum distillery and oil reserves (or a counterfeiting machine) on your property, it’s impossible to go off-grid entirely. Gas costs money. If you intend to sell things to get money for gas, then that’s going to take even MORE of your time to accomplish. The modern world is not as complicated or terrible as your sister makes it out to be. Civilization is a GOOD thing, because it allows most of our citizens to focus on things besides fighting for survival every single day.
Going off-grid wouldn’t be a pleasant or leisurely experience at all, IMO. Maybe a nice compromise would be to live in the modern world, but go under-the-radar as much as possible. Get a plain bank account at a very small bank and have your paychecks deposited directly. Don’t buy into contracts for cable or phones. Just get a basic cheap landline phone and turn it off when you don’t feel like taking calls. Don’t have a computer or internet connection. Live within walking distance of your workplace so you don’t need a car. Get your entertainment by reading paper books at the library, maybe go fishing on the weekends. Things like this will greatly simplify your life, without all the fuss of going off-grid.
I haven’t been a 20yo in a long time. I’m not thinking of living like the Unibomber. Just better. Easier. Nicer. Not all alone against the machine.
I think one can be a regular citizen but have limits and be less dependant on Them.
Personally I couldn’t do this by myself.
ANyway, the prop I have now has county water and cable and gas and all the stuff it didn’t have when I bought it 102 years ago. And it ain’t my dream destination but it’s what I got.
I know what you mean. During the height of the recent recession, I was thinking about how many things I pay for that my grandparents didn’t pay for during the Depression.
2 cars instead of 1 - purchase cost, repairs, fuel, insurance
Cable TV
Internet
Online games
Buying music and movies
Multiple phones - land and cell
Netflix
Going to movies
Going almost anywhere
Eating out
Computers
Kitchen Gadgets
Entertainment gadgets (TVs, DVD players, MP3 players, Wii, etc…)
Most of that is tied up in entertaining us. Yet most of it is done without really interacting with people. It’s a lot of doing “stuff” without actually accomplishing much.
There are definately times when I think about simplifying my lifestyle. it wouldn’t even require moving to the boonies. I just have to convince myself and others that an evening playing cards is still a fun thing, and that working in the garden is enjoyable.
I would love to move “off grid” but my long term concern is old age. How am I going to fund a retirement when I have arthritis and can’t dig the garden anymore?
How do I fund the kids’ education?
Still have to pay rates [local government tax] on my land.
If I had no income in Australia I could rely on some government handout but that is not in my nature.
I would happily sell you the freaking thing, I think we owe about $50k on it still. 2.7 acres ‘more or less’ [Ct is sort of vague like that. :dubious:] Currently 2 microbedroom house, barn with semilegal studio in it [bedroom on the top floor, roughly 15x25, bathroom is on the second floor, workshop on the ‘garage’ floor] Kerosene and a match is starting to look real freaking good right now.
Sailboat is cheaper to run than a houseboat. I drool over Shannon sailboats, on in the 35-40 footish range would work out well. I have experience sailing a 31 meter 1921 John Alden. I dream of Shannon’s 38 foot motorsailer. Getting the recreational licensing is roughly $70 for anything up to 65 feet. If mrAru was fresh out of the navy, for $600 he could get the commercial/merchant marine licensing, but they want 360 days, 90 of which are in the recent 3 years. [ok, and I lust after the 53’ motorsailer …]
2.7 acres more or less is a FARM? Dang I got 5+ ‘more or less.’ I still don’t know what five acres looks like. The thing is all woods. I live in Manhattan. Well except for the word live.
SOme of you younger folks may want to look up keyword: 9-11
Using Manhattan blocks–how could I figure out what five acres Is? (I’m going to ask in factual…)
I logged back in in just for this. OK and to avoid two x-box playing wastes of skin.
I don’t know anything about sailboats. Here, In The GhettOHHHHH (sing along) my dreamboat is a bassboat with a trolling engine. Oh and when I grow up I’d like a car. I’m 56.5. How’m I doing???
I have an acquaintance (FOAF) who has partially dropped off the grid. He’s been living on a large sailboat for about 4 years now. I don’t know the exact kind, but it’s built for very long ocean voyages and he is sometimes out of touch “out there” for 5 months at a time. His boat is equipped with both wind and f-fuel generators, along with two watermakers and huge storage tanks. He tells me he sometimes gets in the trades and can honestly sail for weeks with only occasional autopilot adjustments. His life seems to be just lounging around reading and visiting odd places. He actually has some sort of limited email ability and will send brief hellos. Last year he was in Greenland, and before that he sent messages from Guatemala (sp?). Last I heard he was wandering in the Pacific, but I haven’t heard from him in 6 months or so.
It can be done, in a limited fashion. Obviously, he had a life “on-grid” for quite awhile to amass the savings required for this.
Oh hell no. I am a middle-aged bourgeois technocrat with several health issues. Going self-sufficient would literally be a death sentence. Do you know how to make insulin?
cynyc, an acre is a piece of land that contains 43,560 square feet. It can be square, rectangular, a circle, or some oddball shape bordered by a loopy river, a cow path, and the county highway.
If it helps you visualize it, I used Google Earth to pick a chunk of land in Manhattan that might help. Picture 2 blocks on the east side of Central Park, say E 68th to E 70th streets, and go in one block, from 5th Avenue over to Madison Avenue. That’s roughly 535 feet by 500, depending on where in the street you measure it, and that’s 267,500 square feet, or 6.14 acres. So scale that back just a scootch, and you’ll have 5 acres, more or less.
Actually, I would love to get a small apt. in Manhattan–that is the best place to be a hermit and live totally “alone” and unbothered. It worked for Garbo!
This will take some setting up to keep the vultures away while you are not home, but have you considered a long distance hike/backpack, such as the Appalachian Trail. In hiking it you are a traveling community, people start at the same time in the spring and need to travel a certain pace to make it in time to the end before winter. So you are all traveling together and will get to know your fellow travelers. It may give you the sense of community as hikers do have that quality above the average ‘Joe’ in my experience. It will give you a sense of ‘off the grid’ living and self sufficiency (such as water gathering), but also a tie to the grid and community as you will need to resupply.
It is sure to give a life changing adventure, and also has a end point, which joining a commune has no set end point other then death or the arrival of the Motherwheel Spaceship.
I have useful skills and spent my teen-age years living in an isolated area. I’d join you, but in short order would set myself up at the head of a cult of personality. All women, guns, and intoxicants in the compound would be my personal property, just for starters. While I would strive to be an enlightened despot, you all would probably grow unhappy over time. Especially when I ordered construction of the pyramid.
Well, we live in what is zoned farmland, and have raised sheep though we only currently have geese, chickens and guinea fowls, which since we buy a majority of their feed, we do not need 3 acres in assorted grains. We can have a full acre of garden if we wanted [but don’t, we are being lazy this year and doing some house renovation. Hubby is currently outside my window assassinating a forsythia that has lurked pollinating at me for 20 years. I am allergic to the blasted thing and I am tired of it filling my poor sinuses with cement.:mad:]
His job hunting is wearing me out. I have only to assume that it is as upsetting to him as well. 
