Homestead mailing list

[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

> I would love to live the life you decribe, but one can only be a
> homesteader of that type if one has no debts (including mortgage). 

I'd have to say you are correct.  At least, the way I'd put it, is that one 
can homestead as I describe it to the extent that one is not otherwise 
occupied 
in servicing one's debts.  That is, a person is going to eat anyway.  Whether 
they work at a job to buy food (with part of the money) and pay debts with 
the rest, or else work a little less (to pay the debts) and raise their food, 
is 
a wash.  With significant debt, we are going to work in the world of debtors 
to satisfy that whether we are homesteaders or no.  But we are also going to 
eat and heat our homes, and we can STILL (says I) do that by direct economy 
or 
by working for cash.  I know I'm talking in circles, by you follow my gist.

There

> is some truth to Frank's suggestion that people have to have money to
> 'afford' a simple life. 

Again, you and Frank are correct.  But expressed in my parlance, a person has 
to have money to service their debts, or to make a shot at being debt free.  
The simple life (direct economy) is the simple life whether we divert a 
portion of our energy and attention to addressing the issue of debt or not.

My posit is that supplying oneself with food, buildings, in many cases 
cooking and heating fuel, etc. is less consuming of our time, energy, and 
life force 
than working to buy those things, no matter what portion of our lives we 
spend in prusuit of them.  Servicing debt?  Not so.  Debt must be taken back 
to 
Mt. Doom whence it came and destroyed in the fires that forged it.



>> Increasing property value
> only hurts a homeowner unless he is selling the property or borrowing
> money against it (two things homesteaders loath); I'd have been better off
> (tax-wise,too) if the value of my farm plummetted.

But there's the rub.  It is in all likelihood that your farm was appraised at 
the peak of the property boom.  Now property values are on the wane.  There 
are those who expect a great deal of deflation to take place and continue for 
years.  


> >like market gardening.
> I tried and it didn't work (no one here is willing to pay even supermarket
> prices for local food), but I'm glad I gave it a shot.
> 
> 

I tried it too and I'm also glad I did.  But it didn't work for me either.  

Just for what it's worth, and it may ammount to nothing, but I've noticed 
that manufactured crap from China is getting sharply more expensive.  One of 
the 
things I make and sell are wooden divided crates, like the (very) old soda 
crates, that hold mason jars, one for beer bottles, the one that holds pint 
jars 
also holds Grolsch bottles.  Vaguely similar injection molded crates from 
China sold for only slightly higher than half what I was asking for a wooden 
one.  
I still sold some.  Now those injecton molded crates cost MORE than mine.  My 
costs haven't gone up, only shipping has and that's an ebbing tide that 
grounds all ships.   I am beginning to match head to head the retail price of 
some 
items made in slave labor shops in Pakistan and Indonesia.  

My Nostrajamus prediction is that this is a trend that will continue.  I 
think we are entering an era when the energy costs of making and shipping 
goods 
will make them ore expensive than hand made ones from cottage shops.

What I'm suggesting is that farm produce and a job off the farm might not be 
the only two flavors it comes in.  Hope not!   </HTML>