More Todd
A Realistic Plan and Time Line for Your Survival Homestead
As one of the doomier members of this forum, I’m really only posting this thread as a heads up for those few members who think they will move to the country when the going gets rough. My guess is that almost all city people underestimate what goes into establishing a homestead. And, most importantly, how long it will take – if you start the process today, you should be ready for the peaking of petroleum some time in 2010.
No doubt someone is going to look at the following time line (a total of 7 years – 2 years getting ready for the move and 5 years actually building the homestead) and believe they can beat it. In fact, I consider the time to be optimistic but if you think you can beat it, I wish you all the best.
I also have no doubt that other people might do things differently or in a different order. That’s fine with me. Nothing is written in stone.
The purpose of this plan is to allow you to continue to live in the 20th century for 10-20 years in the event of total disaster. We rely on a lot of technology and that technology has a given lifespan. Most things like motors, lights, batteries, inverters, and refrigerators eventually die of old age and it will be impossible to replace them so there is no point in planning for a longer period. Although abandoned cities might be “mined” for replacements, this hardly constitutes an acceptable plan for generational survival.
This 10-20 year timeframe can be extended indefinitely by the simple expedient of incorporating generational/sustainable technology right from the start. I’ve touched on it in other threads.
This plan assumes that you will be starting with raw land with no improvements. The advantage is that you can tailor things specifically to your needs while allowing time for your skills to develop. Yes, you could buy an old farm. However, I believe that old farms will ultimately cost you more and require significantly more time to rehabilitate than starting from scratch. Further, trying to fix up old stuff is more difficult than new construction. Things are rotted, out of square, foundations are lacking, roofs are shot or lack insulation.
The plan also assumes that all property is owned by a single family and that the work will be done by that family. I know a lot of people believe that a sharing/commune-type structure is the way to go. However, a community timeframe will be little different from that of a family.
I’ve learned a lot of lessons since moving to the country about 30 years ago. I should add that I also lived in a rural area until I was 12. However, I sure as hell don’t know everything and some of my suggestions are guesstimates. For example, I grew up around my neighbor’s draft horses but I’m not a teamster. There are thousands of others out there who live far more self-sufficiently than my wife and I. I’ve also had the opportunity to observe the successes and failures of other people.
The plan below gives a time line that allows time to develop necessary skills, spread out the cost and, most importantly, allows a long enough period to be certain country living is for you before investing everything in something you hate.
Let me begin with the psychological aspects since no one seems to ever discuss them. Not everyone has the personality to survive truly rural living. The vast majority of city relationships break-up within five to seven years because one of the partners absolutely hates everything. It might be the isolation. It might be the mud or having to put on the chains every day to get through the snow. It might be that there is never any time when there isn’t work to be done. It might be having little income. It might be the two-half hour trips each way to the school bus stop if you don’t home school. It might be personal growth. It might be the lack of cultural events. Or, it might be the difficulty of shopping or only being able to afford thrift store clothes.
There are also sex specific landmines: For men, it is the loss of image/status. There is no business card with the grand job title. They are just one more guy in jeans and work boots driving an old pickup truck. For women, it is the loss of support structures/friends.
So, here goes:
First, before you do anything – How much money do you have? Unlike buying a functioning place, starting from scratch means you can’t spread the cost over the period of the mortgage. For example, a septic system in my area of northern California costs between $8-10K including engineering, permits and construction. This money has to be paid out front.
Be sure you have enough money to cover all your living expenses for a minimum of two years in addition to money for construction, etc. In addition, you should have enough food for at least a year. This is a good way to learn food preservation skills
Second, you need to gather information. You need to know about riparian rights/water rights. You need to understand CCR’s. Are there any local or state ordinances or laws that may impact you? For example, there might be a grading ordinance that requires you to prepare an EIR and hire an engineer if you want to do significant grading such as putting in a long road. You have to find out how much things like power line extensions cost. In my area it is over $50/foot. Real estate ads might say, “Power nearby” or “power available” but it’s not at all unusual for lines to be more than 1,000 feet away (in fact miles isn’t unusual). A thousand feet is 50 grand or, more likely, putting in an alternative system.
Third, you have to realistically assess your relationship and whether you both share the same vision. Don’t even think about a country move if there are any problems.
Fourth, you have to assess your marketable skills and whether you and/or your partner are willing to take any job. Jobs of any kind are hard to come by in the boondocks. It is not terribly unusual for men to work so far from home that they live where their jobs are and come home only on weekends – not too good for relationships.
Fifth, you need to begin to learn needed homestead skills at least two years before you move. These include things such as engine mechanics, wiring, plumbing, carpentry, animal husbandry, crop production, food preservation, etc. You do not want to have these kinds of things become “on the job” learning experiences. You will go broke if you hire people for work you could learn to do.
Although you may begin using motorized equipment for fieldwork, it is assumed you will use animals once you are established. My preference would be draft ponies with a forecart/hitchcart.
You need to learn that there is no such thing as “man’s work” and woman’s work.” I can sew if necessary and my wife can run a chainsaw. Sexism is a good way to kill a relationship. I taught myself to sew on a treadle sewing machine when I was 8 or 9 so I could make packs for my trap line and I also do most of our cooking today because I love to cook whereas my wife hates cooking.
Sixth, if your kids are currently going to regular school, it might be a good idea to begin to transition them to home schooling (if that’s your plan). You can buy one of the many programs available and have him/her spend an hour a night on it. I might add that mom and dad should take this time to study their own stuff rather than watching TV while the kid works. In fact, I would suggest that you investigate community colleges for appropriate courses so you can really study too.
Seventh, your plan needs to be designed to do things in small steps so that failure won’t be a disaster. Start with 10 chickens not 100. Start with a small garden not a half an acre. Build a small building before you tackle a major building.
Year one –
buy land;
buy basic tools;
clear land;
buy used mobile home;
establish domestic and Ag water systems;
establish septic/cesspool system/outhouse;
establish power system or bring in power;
fence future garden;
plant permanent crops (trees, vines, etc.) in the fenced area;
establish small kitchen garden;
have someone custom fit and drill a high organic matter cover crop into future
pasture and crop areas;
build a combination chicken coup (and/or goat shed) and firewood storage building.
cut firewood.
City people seem enamored by land quantity rather than quality. The land will be your lifeblood and you cannot skimp on it. It is far better to have 20 acres of well- drained land with Class I soils than 200 acres of land with Class 3 soils that lay low and needs tiling.
Further, since wood will be of major importance for heat, cooking, future construction and, perhaps, woodgas, the land must currently support a sufficiently large wood lot to supply all your needs in perpetuity.
The mobile home is the key to your first year’s success. It provides instant dry, warm housing and a bathroom. Don’t buy a camper or fifth wheeler! They are too cramped and cost too much. Under no circumstances should you begin building anything large the first year.
Fertilizer costs money and may not be available. Although a great deal of increased soil nutrition can be achieved with legume crops, you really need animals for their manure. Yes, you could make compost from grass and plant waste. However, the nitrogen level of compost is not high enough to help many crops and should be viewed as a soil amendment that improves tilth but nothing more.
The chicken coup/goat shed/firewood storage building will give you a chance to practice your building skills.
Since feeding and taking care of your animals is labor intensive, it only makes sense that they provide some return for your work whether as food or by providing power for things like plowing.
The cost of tools is likely to be an issue. I’m not talking about little home stuff like a couple of screwdrivers. I’m talking about big, expensive stuff that you will have to buy. How do you deal with the reality of saying it is imperative that you spend close to a thousand dollars for chainsaws when your family can’t afford new clothes?
Year two –
look for work and get a job;
assess finances;
build barn/shop;
fence pasture into paddocks;
begin working fields on your own.
plant full garden and preserve excess crops;
get chickens or milk goats;
complete house design and any final clearing;
build cold cellar;
decide whether you are going to use corn silage, green chop/haylage or hay along with grains for animal feed, how you plan on harvesting them and how you plan on storing them (hay stacks, bins, silos, bunkers, Ag Bags);
cut firewood.
This is the make or break year in many ways. You’ve had your fun playing in the country. You’re starting to talk big bucks to build the barn/shop correctly – anything less than 30x40 or 40x40 is a waste of time. Be sure the door is high enough to get large equipment in and out (Know what equipment you might buy. Some equipment like combines require a 13foot minimum height – and yes, I have heard of ground driven combines.).
I’d consider using a large plastic septic tank or water tank for the cold cellar. They are watertight and all you need to do is stick it in a hole and cut in a door.
Someone has to start bringing in money. Someone has to build the barn/shop. The garden and orchard require significant work. Food preservation takes time and money. Someone has to be responsible for the animals every day. Deer and varmints are no longer cute and cuddly but have to be killed or fenced out. Cutting and splitting firewood is no longer fun. Sorry - forgot the kids. Time is always short.
You have to make a final decision as to what you are going to use for plowing and fieldwork around your place until you switch to animals. You could buy something like a Polaris Ranger 6x6 rather than a tractor. It can be fitted with a forecart/hitch cart for fieldwork but is safe for jobs like hauling firewood out of the woods. Tractors are good at being tractors but not much else. The only thing you’ll miss about not having a tractor is a loader. Incidentally, a forecart is a two-wheel cart that incorporates a manual, hydraulic three-point hitch and a place for the teamster to sit or stand. The advantage of the forecart is that regular, rather than horse drawn, implements can be used.
However, I would personally consider a different tractor alternative at this point. I’ve had a wheel tractor and crawler and what I would do were I doing it again is buy a beater, manual trans, non-emissions full-sized 4x4 and convert it to a “tractor” much like was done in the 20’s and 30’s with Model T’s. It could also be easily converted to woodgas when petroleum becomes expensive and scarce.
Don’t buy draft ponies at this time even if that is your final means for fieldwork. And, sure as hell, don’t even consider a draft horse. Large animals are going to be another burden you don’t need at this time.
I guess I should offer my rationale for draft ponies. In the old days, standard productivity was between 11 and 50 acres of crops per horse. The difference relates to the size of the farm – the bigger the farm, the more efficiently horses could be used. Your homestead will be quite small making the use of any large draft animal inefficient for the simple reason that big animals eat more than small ones and require more pasture. This, in turn, requires more work to produce the food for them. Also, draft animals get lazy if they don’t have work to do.
Typically, all the cutesy-pie, city ideas of making money like selling organic vegetables or arts and crafts prove to be non or minor money makers for the time they take. This is when city folks think “Let’s grow dope. All we need is 10 pounds per year…” I don’t care about this morally or even legally. However, everything you have including your land, car, generator, everything, could be confiscated, you could go to jail and your kids could end up in a foster home. Suit yourself.
Now, if you can’t make enough money to live on and can’t build the barn because you still lack the skills or are afraid of making mistakes while you learn, common sense says MOVE BACK TO THE CITY NOW!
Years three and four –
build the house;
establish permanent pastures including any additional fences and row crops like corn, grains and hay;
add large grazing animals in the late summer;
go to work and keep on doing what you’ve been doing;
cut firewood.
These are really the years from hell. By this time you may be wishing you had purchased the piece of crap house on the old farmstead with the falling down barn. You may be right but in the long run what you have will be better if you can stick it out.
If money is getting short (It’s always getting short.), it might be wise to think about something other than a conventional house. There is rammed earth, straw bale, soda can, yurts, domes, stone using the Flagg method and used tires. These can take a long time to build.
However, one idea I have is used mobile homes. You can buy used 10/12x50/55 mobiles for under five grand. If you bought three more, you could form a square with an atrium in the center. You could strip off the tin skin, sheet with rigid foam insulation and then wood sheeting and put on a regular insulated roof over the tin one. This doesn’t take much skill. Since there are no interior bearing walls, the interiors could be gutted and reframed to whatever configuration you wanted. An added advantage is that they won’t be taxed as a permanent improvement like a house. Think about it.
If I had lots of money, I would seriously consider building the house, including the roof, out of poured concrete below grade. With a sun scoop, light pipes or atrium, it wouldn’t be like living in a cave. There would be many advantages; essentially no exterior maintenance; little air infiltration; fire-proof; the soil would moderate the internal temperature; plus many more.
Year five –
add any final animals such as sheep or confined meat animals like swine (although swine can be run on pastures if you ring them);
try to finish what you started;
probably try different varieties of vegetables;
build a silage bunker if that’s your trip and grain storage bins;
buy a team of draft ponies and learn to work them (a forecart/hitch cart will work fine with them and a team can easily pull a one bottom plow which is all you need);
cut firewood.
Well, that’s it. I’ve left a lot (a whole lot) out but you get the idea. Trying to do it all in a short period of time guarantees failure. Lack of money guarantees failure. Not taking the time to educate yourself before your move guarantees failure. Thinking your partner isn’t working as hard as you are guarantees failure as does telling your partner what to do. A poor relationship guarantees failure. Being afraid to make mistakes guarantees failure as does someone bitching about not meeting some preconceived notion of perfection.
And, last of all, and most importantly, not taking time for yourself guarantees failure. I cannot emphasize this enough! When we were building our houses, my wife and I made a decision to stop work from 2 to 4 PM and go down to the creek to skinny dip each afternoon. Then we would work until 6, have dinner and then work until it was twilight and go to bed at 8:30 or 9. You have to do something like this because there are always 28 hours of work each day when you are establishing a homestead. You might like to read or sew instead but you have to nforce yourself to take a break or you’ll break.
You might ask how much a homestead like this will cost. All I can say is, “It depends”: It certainly depends upon the geographic location. It depends upon the skills you have or can develop. It depends upon the climate since this will influence how much food you can grow easily and your heating demands. It also depends upon whether you just want to establish a framework for survival without living a survival lifestyle.
It also depends upon how willing you are to “make do.” Those of us living in the country often “make do” for the simple reason that there is no financially viable alternative. For example, one of our cars is 19 years old, another 13 and my truck is 16 years old. They’ve been well taken care of and should last many more years. Same thing with chain saws – one is 2 years old, one is 5 years old and two are 29 years old. Why replace them when they run since the money can be used for something else… and I don’t believe in debt.
So there you have it. Time is getting short.
A Portrait of Our Place in Words
My wife and I fall into the latter category. We can provide all of our power, water and firewood but would have to expand our garden to include significantly more grains and vegetables, plant a few more tree s in our orchard and add animals again like chickens and, maybe, a milk goat. Maybe run a couple of cows for meat in my neighbor’s pasture and whack a few deer for meat/jerky and braintan their hides for buckskin. We can also hike to the ocean in 1½days for surf and rockfish. Salmon would probably be fished out by the time they got near steams by us. In any case, we have the tools and skills to pull off a change to survival mode.
Our transition to total self-sufficiency would hardly be earth shaking (not that it would be fun) because the framework is there. Our advantage is that we started so many years ago that any money outlays now would be relatively minor.
We bought our first undeveloped rural land in 1972. We developed it, built a couple of houses on it and sold it to start a new place in 1979. All the work on our first place was done by my wife and myself. I did hire a couple of buddies who had worked with me when I was designing and building houses for other people to help with the framing on our current place. The six-inch stud walls and a number of beams were too heavy for me to handle alone.
Here is a peek at our current place:
Land - 57 acres (main house on 40Ac, rental on 17Ac) at 3060 feet (top of the hill, solar city) in the Coast Range Mountains of northern California, 20 miles from the Pacific Ocean –we look out over it. Reasonably isolated. Radiation safe. Lots of trees for firewood or construction, little flat land.
With the exception of bringing in power, telephone and drilling the well, we have built and developed everything essentially by ourselves over the past 23 years.
Weather - 60-80 inches of rain from October through April. Most snow, 5 feet, some years, almost none.
Climate – highs in the upper 80’s in summer, lows in the upper teens in winter.
Water source – 450 foot deep well, some seasonal springs and a pond way down
the hill from the house. We store about 5,000 gallons of water for emergencies. Part of it is used to supply the rental down the hill that we gravity feed.
Main House – 2,400 SF, 82 feet long running east and west and oriented for winter sun; all daytime and early evening winter heat from solar if the sun is out at all (with a wisteria covered overhead for summer shade), the rest of the heat comes from wood; over 40% of the south facing portion of the house is glass. Lots of insulation (R47 roof, R20 walls and insulated slab.)
Power – grid; 8kw gas generator; 23kw diesel generator; 3.6kw (48-75 watt panels), 48 volt DC, 220volt AC all sine wave PV system; old, miniscule 70watt 12 volt system with an 800 watt modified sine wave inverter; an old, old 550 watt square wave inverter; parts and plans for large and small wood gas generators (I have gas and arc welders to make them). We had a 1.5kw wind generator but sold it because it didn’t really do what I wanted. With the exception of a propane dryer, we are an all electric house and shop. There is a reason for this – I can make electricity in several ways but I can’t make propane. To date, our big PV system has produced over 1megawatt-hour and we have consumed about 0.99megawatt-hours.
Shop/garage – 1,800 SF broken into five rooms. The biggest area is for cars and equipment. Only 600SF has a concrete floor; the rest is gravel. There were two reasons for this. First, stuff like my crawler would have destroyed a concrete floor. Second, we used to use a large portion to grow plants for our garden so we could set out huge ones and we wanted the watering water to soak into the ground. There is a wood heater in shop portion.
Hot water – electric heater with semi-concentrating, home built solar collectors preheating the water in the summer and a heat exchanger in our wood stove for winter. The preheated water is stored in a used 30gallon hot water heater I had (I’m cheap) and then fed to the main hot water heater. The main electric hot water heater is run off the PV system in the summer.
Cooking – standard 4 burner electric range and a 6 burner wood cook stove in the kitchen. Can also cook on wood heater in the living room.
Food preservation – pressure canner; steam and hot water bath canners; dehydrator; vacuum packer; freezers. Also have a Victorio strainer, hand meat grinders, grain mill, jelly bags, lots of canning jars and much more. I’m planning on building a small thresher as our wheat area expands.
We really haven’t canned much over the past few years for lack of time. It’s a lot quicker to just freeze stuff. We do vacuum pack lots of stuff like meat, etc. before we freeze them.
Equipment – Way back I had a Ferguson TEA-20 wheel tractor with a WM3 loader and box scraper. For those who care, a TEA-20 is much like a TO-20. I sold it because all I used it for was grading our mile long road (about 8 hours a year). A few years ago I bought a JD 540 crawler because I always wanted a crawler/CAT. I used it to drag firewood out of the woods. It was fun setting chokers and winching the trunks and cutting minor roads. It didn’t have ROP and I had two good friends killed after I bought it when their CATS rolled on them. I didn’t need that personally. It was a toy in reality so I sold it last year
What I have now is: 18hp garden tractor for mowing lawns and fields and towing a small trailer; 14hp garden tractor with a permanently mounted sprayer that is used for orchard spraying and weed control; Troy-Bilt tiller, Master Craft tiller and Mantis tiller
Garden/orchard – about 1 ½-2 acres includes about 30 fruit trees*, 8 nut trees, about 40+ grape vines, many kinds of berries. The vegetable growing area is about 2,000SF consisting of raised beds and beds terraced into the hillside. The growing area can be easily expanded.
We grow what we like, not what we would grow in a crisis**. We have grown everything under the sun over the years and have OP seeds for tons of stuff. If TSHT fan in winter, we will grow additional food hydroponically in part of the shop using grow lights run off the PV system or generators on wood gas.
I grow some OP stuff on a rotating basis for seed. This includes corn and tobacco***.
We have fertilized with a lot of stuff but are switching over to alfalfa meal/pellets and use either a 20-20-20 soluble or a 16-6-8/ 21-14-17 prilled fertilizer for things that need a quick boost. We also use compost but mostly mulch with alfalfa hay – it’s better than oat or wheat straw since it contains some nutrients.
We always cover crop everything except where the winter wheat is growing. We use a commercial mix with a high organic matter potential. It consists of fava beans, bell beans, vetch and oats. We seed once a crop comes out permanently for the year. I’m big on improving the rhizosphere.
Vertabrate pests – bears (the worst), deer (the second worst), bobcats, lions (they haven’t been around much for several years (I used to track them around the house and shop), raccoons, skunks, quail, grouse, songbirds (eating berries even through the bird netting), moles, gophers.
Weeds – the big deals are star thistle, Canada thistle and bracken fern.
Insect pests – cucumber beetle, bordered plant beetle, black attenious (sp) beetle, grasshoppers (minor; they’re controlled with milky spore disease)
Animals – none. We’ve had chickens and rabbits. They have all been destroyed by varmints. In a crisis we would use a 14x18 room in the shop building with outside access for chickens and rabbits that I can lock like a vault. There are several hundred acres next to me where I could graze stock.
Firewood – 6” and 16” electric chainsaws; 16”, 24” and 32” gas chainsaws; a couple of 2 man- 6’ handsaws; bow saws; splitting mauls and wedges; axes and hatchets; 30 ton gas powered hydraulic splitter.
Entertainment/vacations – Let’s start with vacations – haven’t had one in over 30 years. I like it here and I have better ways to spend money.
As to entertainment, well, I haven’t been to a movie in about 20 years or so. I have no idea what the multiplexes are like. We didn’t get much TV for the first 10 or 15 years here until we put in a big dish so we watch some now. Mostly, we have thousands of books, records, CD’s and videotapes and the joy of being here. We also have musical instruments like organs, guitars, banjo’s, etc. We also collect rhododendrons and have 120+ varieties.
I’ll be glad to show you what we did and how we did it; what we did right and what we did wrong and how we’d do it the next time. And, I really hope you’ll be interested in actually trying stuff like felling a tree rather than just looking around. PM me and we can discuss visiting.
Todd
*Fruit trees, nuts, berries and grapes:
If you don’t see it, it is because it didn’t work for us not because we haven’t tried growing it.
Apples – Gala, Macintosh, “Jumbo” Grav., Gravenstein, Liberty, Waltana, Sierra Beauty, King, Yellow Delicious, Spitzenberg
Plums – Santa Rosa, Howard’s Miracle, Red Heart, French Prune, and a couple of yellow jam plums.
Peaches – Reliance, Indian. The weather kills most of them within 7 years.
Pears – Moonglow, “Jumbo” Bartlett and two I forget.
Asian Pears – Shinsecki.
Mulberries – Black Beauty plus some standard fruiting ones.
Persimmons – Hichia, Fuyu
Nuts:
Only the walnuts have been worth the effort here.
English walnuts – Hartley, Franquette, Ambassador
Filberts – Four kinds. I don’t remember their names. They don’t set well.
Almonds – Forget the name.
Pecans – Got the seed from the Northern Nut Growers Assoc. Lossers.
Grapes – “California” Concord, blue and white Eastern Concords, Perlett, Thompson seedless, plus several others. The CC isn’t really a concord and doesn’t have as foxy a flavor as regular concords but it grows really well.
Berries:
Red and black cap raspberries, Baba berries, Ollalie berries, red and black currants, blue berries (Early blue, Blue ray, Late blue), strawberries (Seascape – day neutral), Triple-crown thorn-less blackberries..
**Vegetables:
We have done a number of variety tests over the years. For example, we grew 25 varieties of tomatoes one year. This year, we are doing a beet test and also trying Earlivee and Sugar Baby sweet corn for the first time. Since we transplant corn, I don’t think short season corns are worth the time but my wife wants to try them.
Asparagus – Martha Washington (all males)
Beans – Blue Lake bush (OP), white and black seeded Blue Lake pole (OP). Rattlesnake (OP), Venture bush (OP)
Beets – Ruby Queen, Red Ace, Perfected Detroit Red, Lutz Long Keeper, Hybrid Scarlet, Early Wonder
Cucumbers – Telegraph (OP), Parks Burpless, Ark (OP)
Sweet Corn – Butterfruit, Silver Queen (our main sweet corn), Earlivee, Sugar Baby
Kale – Vate’s
Lettuce – we grow a couple of romains
Peas – Sugar Snap (OP)
Peppers – Cal Wonder, Red Perfection
Potatoes – A russet I’ve saved eyes from and grown for years
Summer Squash – Park’s Creamy, Straight Neck
Tomatoes – Early Girl
Melons – Solid Gold, Haogen, Ark Drought Resistant (OP), Banana
Water melons – Moon and Stars (OP), Christmas (OP), Jean’s (OP), Florida Giant,
***Other open pollinated stuff
I grow a lot of stuff off and on to keep the seed going or to improve the strain.
Corn – Navajo Blue corn for meal, Navajo Red corn for tortillas, Hopi Blue, Hopi Pink flour corn, field corn, Japanese pop corn, sweet corn.
Peanuts – Jumbo Virginia
Soybeans – “Edible”, who knows what variety they really are
Sugar beets – California jumbo for a potential sweetener.
Wheat – I try to get about 30 or so pounds a year (about ½ bushel) but my real interest is in improving our strains. Tioga winter wheat from Geri (I’m still trying to make something out of it), Ark “winter wheat” (It didn’t show a variety. I’ve been selecting for larger heads and stronger stems for several years. It’s really a winner now. I love it.), spring wheat (This started as a mostly bearded wheat. After years of selection, it’s now a non-bearded, high yielding variety but no where near the winter wheat.) Wheat is a big deal with me.
Tobacco – About seven OP varieties.
Todd
I can remember one older house we had where I had to build a couple of new walls out of plumb so they looked right. Lastly, if this is a survival situation, the last place you want to be is in an area with a lot of other farms – and people.
Between my wife and I, we have had the following short and long term jobs/work over the last 30 years: fire lookout, lumber mill worker, substitute teacher (some states allow people with degrees to get renewable certificates if they pass a state teacher’s test; in California’s case, it’s the CBEST), home designer and builder, handyman work, custodian, groundskeeper, farm survey supervisor, small organic farm, custom rototilling and doing public opinion surveys. Not too bad for a couple of people with degrees and former pretty high-level jobs.
We didn’t do this on our first place. We lived in a 6x9 foot back packing tent for over 6 months in the sun, rain and snow and showered from a rubber bag hung from a tree limb before we moved into an unfinished house. Our pre-house kitchen consisted of a cheap metal table and a gas camp stove next to the tent.
I’d put in a crate Chevy 454 because it has lots of torque, replacement parts/engines will be around for many years and it will still be powerful if converted to wood gas. All you have to do is put on bar lug tires and rims (or make some large link chains), protect moving parts from dust and weld on a three point hitch using a snow plow hydraulic unit for lifting power or use a forecart. If you’re good enough, you could strip the front end body work and weld on a loader like a WM3 or make your own.
The first house I built was a 40 foot diameter dome on a three foot riser wall. The shell went up fast but it took forever to finish the inside because of the angles. All the other
Family/Individual or Community Survival – Which is best?
Bill P and I have spared many times over whether it is wiser to prepare to survive as an individual/family or as part of a larger community as energy and other resources decline. Bill believes that communities are the answer while I believe individuals have a better chance in a future with limited energy. I doubt that either of us will change our minds but I thought it might be interesting to compare, at least from my vantage point, the pros and cons of each.
I suppose the place to begin is to define what we mean by “individual” and “community”. By family/individual, I mean a multi-generational family group that can provide for all their needs including food, shelter, energy and clothing. By community, I believe Bill means a small group of people, probably less than 1,000, living in very close contact with each other (small village) or a community living facility where all residents reside and where there is a division of labor and resources.
For simplicity, let’s say that a community shares the elements of survival among its members (division of labor and resources) whereas individuals do not share the elements of survival beyond an immediate family.
However, historically, families have shared certain requirements with non-family members. One in the past was the threshing ring where a number of farmers co-owned a thresher and shared the work as it moved from farm to farm in the ring during threshing. A current one would be Amish barn raisings. I don’t consider actions like these to violate the concept of individual survival.
The question I ask myself as someone who can be self-sufficient if necessary is, “Why would I want to join with a bunch of people who didn’t have the foresight to get out before the pending collapse and have no useful survival/rural skills?” I can certainly see groups of people banding together since they have no other option. But I cannot envision people with the necessary skills joining such a group.
My vision is that of the 20th Century Motor Company in Atlas Shrugged where people were reduced to inhuman, whining things. I see this as unavoidable in a collapse because so few will be able to do anything productive. We have a number of city friends who come up one or more times a year and they marvel over our place – fruit trees, alternative power system, etc. But they have no concept of how they would do the same thing much less the skills to do it.
There are four issues that define the family versus community debate. They are: timing of action; the extent of technology transfer anticipated; the anticipated lifetime of the survival unit; division of labor.
Technology Transfer
This is THE defining issue – how much of today’s mechanical technology can be transferred to a resource poor world? Note that I am not talking about knowledge technology such as how to maintain soil fertility or how to prevent disease but rather the “stuff” of our era that require natural resources to produce.
For example, take electricity. It is almost totally useless by itself unless it is used to provide power to some sort of a machine such as a light bulb. And, further, a machine whether a solar panel or a turbine are required to make electricity in the first place.
Going a step further, all machines wear-out and must be replaced, requiring additional resources until the end of time. Take a light bulb, it requires mining for silica and metals, it requires turning those materials into starting raw materials using high quality energy and, finally, conversion of the raw materials into a light bulb. But conversion of the raw materials requires even more machines.
This pattern is true of all “stuff” technologies, that is, there is an interlocking network of machines requiring energy and raw materials or the network ceases to function. Now some might argue that science will develop something that allows this pattern to continue until the end of the human race. After all, they can say, look at what science has accomplished in the past 100 years. I agree science has accomplished a lot but are you willing to bet the future of your grandchildren’s grandchildren on what is now science fiction?
Therefore, I would argue that in the long haul, “stuff” technologies will vanish with a few exceptions. What might the surviving technologies be? Glazing/glass is clearly a technology that provides great value to its users. Cement is another technology that offers vast benefits. Adsorption refrigeration is another technology of value. Recycling of existing metals, that is, mining cities for their metal content as we currently mine ore. Primitive information storage also has a place (see below).
Note that I do not see a chemical component in the future. I worked in the chemical industry for a number of years and it uses huge amounts of energy and, in many cases, relies upon natural gas as a starting raw material. No chemicals means that much of the “stuff” we take for granted will cease to exist. Although many might believe that plastics might be the worse loss, I would argue that pharmaceuticals would be a far bigger loss and, especially, anesthetics.
At the same time, chemicals are the one area where it is reasonable to believe that many natural materials could be substituted. However, having said that, there are limits to the extent to which natural substitutes could be found.
Although much of today’s technology would be lost, there are many past technologies that could be of use. For example, is there an older technology to replace information currently stored on computers? Sure, it’s called microfiche. Microfiche, for those who aren’t old enough, were essentially highly reduced photos of the original placed upon a file card-sized piece of film. The film was placed in a projecting magnifier called a reader. With proper care, microfiche will last indefinitely and readers were nothing more than a few lenses, a mirror and an opaque screen where they were projected. A trunk-sized container of microfiche would provide a family with a truly vast amount of information.
But what about pictures? Well, there is an even older technology called the Stereoptican. The Stereoptican used 31/2” x7” paper “slides” that were placed in a viewer that allowed the user to see a scene in 3-D. I have a viewer and several boxes of slides and they appear to be from around 1910. This technology was re-adapted in the 50’s and a far smaller viewer was developed to allow kids to see images of cartoon characters and interesting scenes. Again, a vast amount of material can be contained in a small volume.
The advantage of each of these technologies is that they require minimal energy and labor to produce and contain highly condensed, long lasting information.
Although the foregoing technologies require some concentration of people and materials, there are other technologies that can be applied with few people, low energy input and minimal equipment. An example of this would be making grain alcohol by individuals for a lighting fuel or to run an absorption refrigerator.
The entire technological scope changes if one attempts to interject higher quality technology since it, as mentioned above, requires many networks of technology and large amounts of energy. But equally importantly requires a division of labor.
Division of Labor
Technology has little use for generalists. This is especially true of the sciences. Just ask any recent science PHD how finely divided knowledge is at this time. However, it is also true of everything from manufacturing to claims processing. There are thousands of people who are only cogs in a wheel. In fact, most people regardless of their jobs are cogs in a wheel.
The question is, Does a division of labor have a future?
A number of issues must be considered before it is possible to decide whether community or family/individual actions will have the most chance for success.
Timing – It is of vital importance to know when survival action might be necessary. To some degree it parallels stock market timing; too early and you lose money; too late and you lose money. In the case of survival, if you begin your actions too early, the worst thing that results is that you would have given up a higher standard living when you didn’t have to. However, taking action too late virtually assures failure. For example, the prime areas may already be unavailable because others have purchased/occupy them. Further, some crops you will need to grow such as tree crops take several years before they begin to provide food.
Families inherently have far greater flexibility than groups for several reasons. First, they can survive with a much smaller land base and smaller acreages are more widely available. For example, excluding very poor quality land, a family of 10-12 people could probably live fairly well on 50-60 acres (5-6 acres/person). By comparison, a community of 100 people would need to find a parcel of 500-600 acres and a community of 1,000 people would need a parcel of 5,000-6,000 acres.
Second, it is reasonable to assume that the members of a family will have worked out their relationships and philosophies of life and want to be together. On the other hand, it is very likely that some people in a larger group or community will not only dislike some of the community members but actually hate them. The best that can be hoped for in situations like this is that the group will not disintegrate or factionalize.
Geopolitical – In the case of groups, you have to assume that there is little local government at the time the move is decided upon. An example from my county is illustrative: There is a religious community in the county that consists of several thousand permanent residents. They keep to themselves and have never caused any problems. However, two years ago they wanted to expand their buildings by taking agricultural land out of production for the buildings and to draw additional water from a river that has many other users. The result has been lawsuit on top of lawsuit. The religious group has offered to “mitigate” any impacts. The agricultural groups say “Bullshit”, that land is zoned for agricultural use and solely for agricultural use. There are many reasons for the position the agricultural groups have taken that I won’t go into here. However, my point is that large-scale communities present many more complications to their establishment than are faced by families. I am willing to bet that there would have been no hew and cry if a family had asked for a zoning change on one acre to build a house and barn on this same land.
Location, resources and technology transfer – Realistically, most of our current technology does not transfer to an era of low quality resources, a non-existent technological infrastructure, minimal or low quality energy and disbursed populations. Sure, some technology might be transferred for a few generations, perhaps, by stocking up on it. But in the long run, most of what we consider technology is doomed. In fact, I would argue that most machines (ranging from computers to trucks) are doomed in the long run.
No single location in the world offers all the resources necessary to allow the continuance of the 21st century today much less in perpetuity. Therefore, the question of location revolves around what technologies should be continued and which must be discontinued. Clearly, the transferred technologies must center upon basic survival needs; food production and preservation, clothing, water, shelter, warmth. Quality of life is not as important as simple survival.
Therefore, the location selected must have good soils, a reasonably long growing season, animals for clothing (skins or wool), food and manure, water, materials to construct a shelter for humans and animals, water and either abundant year round sunshine or trees for heat. Unfortunately, there few locations that offer all of these requirements since they are essentially limited to land by lakes, streams or rivers where trees grow.
Under these circumstances, does either the family or community have an advantage? It really depends upon your point of view. A family can live inconspicuously and be relatively safe whereas a community is obvious because of its size. However, a community can protect itself from interlopers more easily.
There is no easy answer to this that favors families over communities. However, it is likely that the family might be more willing to adapt to a frontier life-style than a group thereby expanding its potential locations.
I believe that, to a great degree, how people view community survival versus individual survival depends upon to what extent they believe present mechanical technology will be transferred to the future. It is important to differentiate between knowledge technology and mechanical technology. For example, there is a vast difference between understanding which factors influence crop yields (knowledge) and the technology that allows the production of a 350 horsepower, articulated four wheel drive tractor pulling a 20 plow (mechanical).
I personally can foresee many elegant knowledge technologies being transferred while many mechanical technologies are forgotten. An example here would be microfiche and microfiche readers continuing while computers are discarded. Why? First, a microfiche reader is nothing more than simple lenses and a mirror, a light source (the sun could be used) and an opaque screen for viewing. There is little to break and, within reason, anyone could make one. Second, the microfiche sheets are simple to produce and, with care, will last for an almost infinite time. I have several boxes of Sterioptican (sp) slides and viewers from, probably, the early 1900’s and it/they work just fine. In a way, both microfiche and Sterioptican slides and viewers share a simple optical technology.
Compare this with computers: The range of technologies and rare raw materials is huge. And, they demand electricity to make and to function. Further, computers have no longevity track record. In fact, they are so complex they die all the time.
There are also other concerns such as the timing of establishing a refuge and where it is located geographically.
I see three key issues in the debate: First, whether community survival is more or less energy efficient than individual survival. Second, whether resource use is more efficient in a community or individual setting. And, third, whether or not a division of labor and resources promotes survival.
Energy Efficiency
It is a given that transporting energy results in energy loss. In other words, point source production and usage of energy is inherently more efficient. This concept can be expanded to include the transportation of resources. For example, to provide myself with firewood, I need travel no more than half a mile and can transport the wood in a hand pulled cart if necessary. By comparison, a community requires larger quantities and must, inherently, travel far longer distances to acquire it, wasting energy.
The same thing is true of food production, water, food preservation and many other items; transportation distances are greater in a community than in an individual setting and are inherently less energy efficient.
It might be argued that high densities of people allow for economies of scale and this makes them more energy efficient. This is certainly true in the chemical industry but is it true in a survival setting? In the case of chemical plants, the “savings” revolve around the cost of capital and reduced labor costs rather than energy efficiency.
In fact, in a survival setting, I believe one large unit is undesirable, regardless of how energy efficient it might be, for the simple reason that if it fails for some reason, the entire community is impacted whereas in individual settings the failure of a unit only impacts one family.
Further, my experience in the chemical industry suggests that complexity increases proportional to size. For example, in the pilot plant/semi-works that was part of the group I managed, there was one piece of equipment that was about 6 feet long and powered by a 10 horsepower motor. The whole unit could be shut down and immediately disassembled in an hour at most. A similar piece of equipment in a production plant was 20 feet long and used a 300 horsepower motor and remained too hot to work on for over a shift and then it would take another shift to take it apart. In the end, the production plant as a whole was far more energy inefficient than the much smaller semi-works unit.
I was talking to friend recently who grows 350 acres of alfalfa on the side (he has a day job). He uses a 100 horsepower electric pump motor for his well and pumps about 1,000 gallons per minute. He noted that his water table is really dropping because California hasn’t had much rain. His pump is no more efficient than mine but if he stops irrigating, he will lose a large crop (For those who care, he does seven cuttings with a ton per cutting). In my case, I grow a little, little, little bit of wheat. There wouldn’t be much of an effect on anyone if I couldn’t irrigate and it died. However, if push came to shove, I could go down to our pond and haul buckets of water to keep it alive. You can’t do that on large plantings.
Division of Labor and Resources
Distributed Energy Loss
Distribution of anything whether food, water or heat is inherently energy inefficient.
This is the key to the difference between community and individual survival units.
I think that some of our differences revolve around how far we anticipate industrial society to devolve and whether individuals or groups are prudent as to timing. Secondly, to what degree these new societies will attempt to maintain current technology. Thirdly, the lifetime of these new societies. And, lastly, how we define “quality of life”.
Short of elites controlling salves who provide for their wants, I believe society will devolve to the point where, while some technology is carried forward, it will be closer to previous Native American societies.
For example, I believe that electricity is a doomed technology because it powers things with finite life spans and that replacements for these things will not be able to be produced in an energy deficient world. In my view, anyone can produce alcohol, wood gas or oil for lamp fuel while few, if any, can produce light bulbs.
Time span is important. Anyone can come up with scenarios for technological societies that can last several hundred years or to posit technological advances to permit society to continue as it is in perpetuity. But, realistically, I believe what we are dealing with is letting go of most of what we now call technology.
As I look at society today, quality of life is no longer defined as freedom from want or having to literally work oneself to death to survive. Instead, quality of life is now defined as the accumulation of “stuff”. But I believe the future is going to have limited “stuff” with which to define quality of life. In fact, in a stable-state society, it is likely that everyone will have exactly the same, identical “stuff” whatever that may be.
Which is more energy efficient?
There is no doubt that group living potentially offers economies of scale. But is it inherently energy efficient? First, all resources have to be transported to the community from a location distant from the town or group living facility. This would include food, water and any natural resources used by residents for example cotton or wool to weave cloth.
One example is to consider water movement. Everyone knows that friction loss in a pipe requires either a bigger pipe to reduce this loss and/or more energy, that is, a larger pump to force the water through the pipe. In the case of a community, a very large water resource is necessary to provide for the community’s needs whereas an individual family can utilize a water resource that would be useless for a large group. Further, the transport distance will likely be short for the individual and long for the group.
The group water system requires a very large pump which in turn requires a very large energy system.-----------
Is division of labor good or bad? |
