fundamentals-cheap homesteading

FRIDAY FUNDAMENTALS-CHEAP HOMESTEADING


A hundred and fifty years ago ( or thereabouts ) entire families packed up barrels of flour and beans, a muzzle loader and all their clothes ( with the occasional grand piano thrown in ) into a crappy wood wheeled wagon with so little room inside that a Yugo is spacious in comparison and set off at something like three miles an hour cross country through hoards of pissed off Indians who would not have been displeased to score a new white wife and a few scalps. Their promised reward was an undeveloped land for farming. Today, entire families pour over the latest issue of Backwoods Home Magazine and dream about saving enough of a down payment to have a thirty year mortgage on the perfect homestead. Nothing is ever done, but the dream lives on. They can’t leave the rented apartment until they can afford forty acres with trees and stream and blah, blah, blah. What a bunch of spoiled little pussies we have become. We won’t step out of our insanely comfortable zones. Little kids used to brave savages to have the privilege of working like dogs on the farm they would one day inherit. Today, not even adults will give up their central air, SUV’s and imported foods from the specialty market. They’ll pay a lot of taxes for a police force that keeps the modern savages away from their overpriced homes ( although, am I being fair? Isn’t a half million home worth being near the schools that can afford the latest propaganda textbooks? ), but they won’t give up the easy living to move far, far away from the crime and pollution.

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Hell, even the Hippies in the Sixties had more gumption to move away from all they hated then the supposedly militant prepper of today. Okay, the decision to drop everything and take the microbus to the wilderness to live in a teepee and grow their own food might not have worked out, and it might have been a decision influenced by a lot of peyote, but at least they did it instead of just talk about it. Moving to your own homestead is easier than ever, and you have no excuse not to. All you have to do is get that damnable picture of a forty acre farm out of your head and it all becomes quite easy. I think that all the back-to-the-land publications do folks a great disservice by pushing this fantasy. It either chains you to the bankers or it presents an impossible dream you will never achieve. And, no, Virginia, while there might be a Santa Claus, there sure as crap ain’t no such thing as homesteading while in an apartment. If you are renting, you are beholden to a parasite that eats off your energy until you die. You can grow canister tomatoes and dry your own fruit in the south window, but you are no more free than any other urbanite. And those buying a dream homestead on credit are at the mercy of foreclosure in any economic downturn, where all your ninety hour weeks of effort are for naught ( the forty hours at a paying job and the rest building your property up ). The original homesteaders of old moved out to have rent free land where they could sustain themselves and their families. They certainly didn’t endanger their lives to enrich the bankers.

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A homestead can be as cheap as you want it. No, you might not be 100% self sufficient in food production. But if you can’t afford to buy a fully functioning farm for cash, then you can easily lose your farm when you lose your outside job. If you don’t believe this can happen to you, you have not been paying attention. For the last FORTY FRIGGIN YEARS. A homestead should first and foremost protect you financially. It should be out of reach to those that would steal it. It should be yours no matter how long you are unemployed. Buy junk land. Then move there. If you are like 99% of the population, you have a car. Move there. And camp out. Sleep in the car, or a tent. You’ve just done away with rent. You might not be able to afford junk land outright, paid for in cash, but if you put a hundred bucks down and make payments, you have saved the difference between that amount and the amount you pay for an apartment. The payments should be accelerated so that you get out of debt quickly. Say, in six to twelve months. Of course, that only works if you find a job at your new location. If you don’t think you can, sell assets to buy the land for cash. At the moment, no one is going to starve in this country. If you have a place to stay rent free, you can suck off Food Stamps as needed.

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You can move to your land just like your ancestors did. Pull up in your wagon and camp as you build your home from local materials for free. Yes, there is zoning issues in most locations. Of course you want to take that into consideration. The point is you can camp until you can arrange some other form of shelter. And camping is easy. A soft pad to lay on, shelter over your head, a way to sleep warmly. A propane camping stove. A cooler, a sawdust toilet, jugs of water. You know how to camp. And if you know how to camp you can start at your new homestead. All it takes is the will to temporarily suspend your luxuries. It takes almost no money. Just gumption. Take a break from your spoiled pampered life, rough it for a few months, and you’ve freed up at least one half of your income from rent or a mortgage. Yes, it might be slightly more complicated than that. You might have to live in a lot less space. The home might take five years to build on a cash basis. You’ll have difficulties here and there. But if you have the will, you don’t need the money. Nothing is free, your cost will be discomfort and inconvenience. Your reward will be a huge increase in freedom.
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You can get my free homesteading book at
http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/homesteading-under-%243000/543210

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