by Seventhsonjr » Sat Dec 15, 2007 9:49 pm
Right now I am in the NE fighting off the cold and breaking my back to get wood in.
While I do not own the land I am on I have an option to buy it and designed it myself with a carpenter friend. Passive solar built into the side of a hill and surrounded with hay bales wrapped in plastic it stays warm and I use every combination of woodstove, fireplace, natural gas, and heating oil along with the solar design which captures the daytime sun in the winter nicely.
I harvest in the wild many fruits, herbs (both regular tea and medicinal) nuts (including ginkgo and acorn) and I am located next to a huge nature preserve and state park where I can get dead wood for free but I gotta haul it on foot.
I have dressed and eaten two deer killed on my back road (fresh)and a wild turkey as well as a guinea hen which a neighbor keeps but lets run around and was hit right in front of me.
I want one day to get off the grid and every day I learn new tricks to better survive with as llittle as possible.
But I have two teenagers and my daughter's boyfriend living with me so keeping up and keeping them happy is hard work.
It is possible and if we all learned to do this with the right government incentives to make it possible to get land and build ecosmart the whole world would benefit.
So this resource is a beautiful one. Shcumacher is one of the greats too (Small is Beautiful). With Buckminster Fuller and Schweitzer (Teaching of Reverence for Life) all things are possible for a wonderful living in harmony with nature.
