Subject: Re: Self sufficient

From: [email-masked] (Barb Bruns)
Date: Wed, 22 Feb 95 11:32:14 EST

On 02/21/95 at 14:53:06 [email-masked] said:

> I think we should redefine what we mean or at least expand the definition.
> What some call homesteading, I call self sufficient.  You can become much
> more self sufficient no matter where you live.   

Yes, it's possible that we are not all talking about the same thing.  I
agree that a degree of self-sufficiency (and each must choose what that
degree is for them) is a requirement for homesteading.

Your definition suggests self-sufficiency as an end in itself, which it
is for many people.  But for me, self-sufficiency is the means to an end.
When I go outside on a beautiful morning to feed the dogs or water the
garden, I want to STAY there, not spend my life in a cube.

I hope to get there some day.

Barb                                  Technical Communications
                                      [email-masked]

                                      I don't speak for LEXIS-NEXIS.

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From: [email-masked] (Don Bowen)
Date: Wed, 22 Feb 1995 09:52:58 -0800

>garden, I want to STAY there, not spend my life in a cube.

        That is also my goal and I have achieved it at times.  I do like
what I do to earn a living and that requires a certain amount of time on my
but in front of a screen.  Self suffiency reduces the amount of time needed
in front of the screen.  Another thing it has done is allowed my wife to
stay home and take care of the kids.  Now that they are mostly gone, it
allows her to return to school.  Money not spent on new cars and repairs now
goes to her schooling.  I may never be able to make my living entirely by
woodworking and farming but those things do ease the living I do make.

  Donald E. Bowen           [email-masked]
  Valley Center CA.         [email-masked]

  Software Engineer, woodworker, historian, beekeeper, farmboy
  1936 Farmall 12          1966 Corvair CORSA 140 convertible
  1 wife, 3 kids, 2 acres, 2 cats, 2 dogs, ? projects,  24 hours

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From: [email-masked] (Dean Osgood)
Date: Thu, 23 Feb 1995 11:43:16 -0500

One point that I have yet to see made is the trade off in time/energy/money
one makes by going to a "self-sufficent life style".
It takes a lot of time to garden, cut firewood, tend animals, repair
buildings, preserve food, handpump water, make cloths, etc. etc. etc.....
Then there are the areas in life where you need currency (or exchange
media) for "little things" like property tax, medical bills, medicine,
spices, powder and primers, fiber products( cloth, rope), repair parts,
lubrication, tires and fuel (chainsaw, tiller, truck or what ever),
batterys, flashlights, welding, grind stones, paint, string, shoes, boots,
raincoats, roofing,  etc. At the least I would guess that an individual
needs around $7,000+ a year to have some basics and some medical
insurance.....
Haveing tryed it once upon a time, I know that you need income from some
source, and unless you are going to go into some sort of agri-business you
can not make it just off the land. The smallest going concern that I know
of is one of 90 acres where the people raise cat-nip for pet stores on
15-20 acres, and that requires equipment (mower, binder, thrashing machine,
bagger,) that requires maintence, that requires parts. (they have 25 acres
flat as opposed to my 18 acres flat, and I found that there is not enough
money in livestock) Someday I will have enough to retire on, and will go
back to the farm, and I will run it as a HOBBY FARM.(Ouch, their, I finaly
said it)....
while some people try to live without a phone conection, IMHO the benifits
far outweight the problems. I tried it for several years, after the phone
company asked for $3,000 to instal a phone line to my farm. I used a radio
link to a friend for emergencys, but had reliability problems. Eventualy I
went ahead and got phone service to a pole in the woods 2 miles from my
house, from there I have run cable myself. I want the ability to call for
an ambulance, fire dept. , keep in touch with family, ask the farm at the
bottom of the hill if the mail has come in.....
Couple of people I know live off the grid(electric) in WV, andrun
everything on hybrid systems, mostly solar electric/battery storage,
woodstove heat/passive solar house, gravity water for some, hand pumps for
some, propane stove for summer cooking/backup lighting, and all of them
have to spend a couple of hundred bucks a year on maintence, and a couple
of hours a week on the system. Even a wood stove used only for cooking
during canning season, and as a backup to a passive solar house will go
thru 2 cords of wood a year, and thats going to take 4-6 days a year to
cut/haul/split/stack/etc..
I have figured that the number of hours an Amish farmer puts in are
probably well over 70 per week (12 hours a day, 6 days a week), and while
thats fine when your young, I want the time for the luxery of reading,
listening to the symphony, bird watching, fishing, etc.

Not to rain on anyones parade, but it is one side of the coin

OTOH, I cant wait to get out of town, and back to the farm on the weekends.
and  I will take being poor over a lot of the crazyness/crowding in the
citys these days.

Dean Osgood

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From: "bonni brooks" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 23 Feb 1995 12:41:17 EST

On 02/22/95 at 15:20:38 [email-masked] said:

>Hey Bonni,  you forgot about the well running dry, the pump breaking,
>someone getting sick, the soil losing fertility, aches and pains,
>the family refusing to eat another leek,  the root cellar leaking,
>and about a thousand other things.  Aren't you a little over
>optimistic <grin>.

>Jeff (vote with your lifestyle)

Oh, mercy me!  I'll take 50 lashes (with a limp spaghetti noodle).

;->
bonni

  IC | XC  |     bonni brooks "The Lone Quilter"          |  "We speak
  ---+---  |         [email-masked]                |   Byzantine
  NI | KA  | Kelly's Creek Homestead, Maidsville, WV  USA |   Catholic
           |   http://wvnvm.wvnet.edu/~u6ed4/bonni.html   |   here."

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 23 Feb 1995 20:26:53 -0500

Gangs in Morgantown WV?  What is the world coming to?? :-(

Have been reading postings on subject with interest (OK, I'll admit only got
interested because they automatically get downloaded along with the other
postings)  If I could put in my oar, I don't really have any orginal thoughts
on same, but having just re-read Walden while riding the metro {public trans
that works in Baltimore :-)}, I would suggest reading from someone who was
wrestling with  the same definition over 150 years ago, and book still reads
like it was written yesterday. Thought Henry David was a windbag when I had
to read him years ago, now realize he was one of the few individuals who was
not bound by paradigms around him.  (His essay on Civil Disobedience isn't
bad either - was where Ghandi & later MLK got their ideas on the same
principle.)

   Walden and other Writing by
   Henery David Thoreau 
   Bantam Classic, $2.50
   ISBN#0-553-21246-X

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From: "bonni brooks" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Feb 1995 11:44:22 EST

>Gangs in Morgantown WV?  What is the world coming to?? :-(

Personally, I think it's going to hell in a handbasket, and it's
largely because of television, but that's just my opinion.  I took
the bolt cutters to the tv cable a couple of years ago and have
never regretted it.  The difference it made in my children was
astonishing.

bonni