Homestead mailing list

[bob ford <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>]

After all of the years on and off this list and reading and ignoring my 
homesteading type magazines and books, this 'clicks" somehow. 

 a future , I might just be able to adequately handle in a realistic way.

When you have used the term "subsistence", over the years, I always think of 
some starving farmer in Africa, but I guess I'm just unimaginative.  

That's all I want to do.  I can buy or lease the land and build an adequtate 
shelter (and even buy or rent a small place in the nearby town, if my wife 
doesn't 'fit' full time in the woods.  But, I don't want to work 10 hours a 
day just to feed myself. 

 I like being in the woods, I like watching and helping things grow;; I don't 
mind working.  But, I don't want to move from a stressed-out city existence 
to a stressed-out rural existence.  That's what I've been saying lately.  
People I know in rural areas are more streesed out, especially lately, than 
people, I'm around, in the city.

I make money in the city, doing very little .  I've also lost most of my 
personal wealth in the past few years, again, doing very little.

  I'll be d*mned if I want to move out to the woods to drive to a job 
somewhere else. Besides,  I haven't worked for another man in decades, I 
wouldn't know how, so it's not even really an option.

 I don't have children, and I don't care about impressing anyone (haven't in 
a long time).  I just have to provide food, shelter, water, and some joy in 
life.  The latter, I've been missing for years.  I don't much like anything, 
anymore.  This country is run by morons, who are elected by morons, who are 
all better credentialed than me.  I just want out.  

 fencing is an area of expense that I believe will be costlier to do right, 
than almost any other upfront cost other than shelter.  I have to learn more 
about fencing.  I don't know if my ideas will work, in the real world 


After I finalize things with the revenuers, I'll still be flush enough to do 
what I have described, I think.  Maybe not as comfortably as I could have 
before, but still ........bobford

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--- On Sun, 10/26/08, Clansgian AT wmconnect.com <Clansgian AT wmconnect.com> wrote:

> 
> The subsistence mindset says, I get SOME meat for NO money.
.......

> 
> In the paradigm I'm suggesting, you don't think up
> a number of animals you 
> want to raise on your place and then go out and buy the
> feed for them.  Rather 
> you analyze the natural carrying capacity of your land and
> that's how many 
> animals it allows you.  And that's the type of cuisine
> you eat.
> 
> 
> James