Do you want to be a peasant?

Nah. I’d prefer to do all that on my own plantation/mansion/compound.

Yes, I would be in but my wife and 3 teenage daughters probably would not stay with me. They would probably kill me if I tried something like that.

Only if the trees have a USB port!

I can certainly see the appeal, a simpler life and all that, but you’d still need to have an income. After buying that acreage and building that house, even if you paid cash, you’d still have to pay insurance and taxes on them. In any case, I don’t think I could stand to have no hot water, no indoor toilet, and no electricity. If the home did have those things, you’d have to find a way to pay for them, too.

@all To clarify. I’m not asking you to be my peasant.

Nah, it’s simple enough to be off the grid and still have hot water (solar), toilet(composting) etc. I’m thinking about doing away with the electricity (wind and solar?) though. While an income still would be necessary I could live nicely off 10,000 a year. Which when it’s compared to what I’m making now (and wasting by being a consumer, though my television is really nice) isn’t that hard to get. I’m from the sticks and even though seattle is nice I can’t wait to move back to the middle of nowhere.

I already am in the middle of nowhere! Yesterday I spent helping my brother butcher chickens. Today we made sauerkraut (using the kraut cutter brought here from Germany by my great grandfather). Last week we canned 40 quarts of green beans. Next will be freezing sweet corn and more chickens. Some things are fun, some are just hard work, and some are rather unpleasant but necessary. You might want to try the life style out first before you make a huge change like that! Goats are more work than most people imagine- and they are very noisy!

I think most people who romanticize manual labor haven’t actually done any.

It’s not really a lifestyle jump in my case. I grew up like this. Chickens, pigs, sheep and an outhouse. I just got back from 5 months living and working in a village in Africa on a banana plantation. Manual labor isn’t really a stranger to me. I just prefer it to what I’m doing now which is wasting my time on a computer while getting paid for it or hanging out with friends pretending to study. This question was basically due to the fact that I’m homesick. Seattle is pretty different from my home state. :)

(Goats, though, have always been a sore point. I’m still not convinced that there’s anything such as a goat proof fence.)

No, we have tried suburban living. Hated it.

We have tried country living. We like it, but are horrible at practical things (except I can garden).

Our favorite lifestyle is small city place right downtown and weekend country place. That is what we hope someday to achieve.

Meanwhile, we are urban dwellers and enjoy it very much.

@greylady Butchering (barring the occasional fish) isn’t something I’ve ever done. I’m a vegetarian, but for animal welfare concerns, not health ones. When I was younger my dad usually handled that end and being a girl I could beg off that duty. I’ll learn to do it though. Right now I’m staring down a long tunnel of about 6 years in the city. :(

count me out, I’ve gotten spoiled on my gadgets.

It is my backup plan for life. If all else fails, move to family “farm” now its more like woods, a house, and a barn and live off the land. I often entertain the idea :D

@Pinky. There is nothing about country living that a person can’t learn to do- it is just that so many people don’t know what is involved in it. If you are willing to learn it, you can start practicing some of it even now, to get yourself ready. Lots of info on the internet, books, etc. Of course butchering chickens, deer, etc. is not necessary if you don’t intend to eat them. It sounds to me like you have a pretty good idea of what it is going to involve, and that is surely going to work in your favor. (You are right about the goat fencing! They will eat up all the poison ivy, though.)

Is good to be some one like that becouse you aclualy creating.This can makes you proud of your own work.It is live creating witch produce something in side of yourself.I mean like flovers,trees or good lokeng plants.This is not only about.,,,,Yea it looks great,,,,,but also about good work and After that the nature will supries that one who was takeing care of by satisfaction form booth sides.The harvesting season is the best time.

My parents moved from a big city to a small village. Everything changed for them. My mother used to be very nervous and stressed and now she’s just happy with her cats, her dogs, her chickens (she even has baby chickens now) and all the fruit and vegetables they grow on their own. I think they grow about 80% of what they eat. Nothing buys that.
I don’t know if you heard about the truck drivers strike here in Europe. I couldn’t find any milk, meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, etc, on any supermarket for three days. That’s scary.
Ask them if they want to go back to that stressful life again… Nope.

I think everyone should have to live this way for a month, especially the highly spoiled city dwellers. It really puts things in persective. when I was in my mid twenties, I lived on the shore of the intercostal waterway in Florida with my husband in a tent. We were travelling an our car broke down and cost more than we had to fix. So it was pretty much just a storage facility for us. We pitched our tent near the river, and ‘fended off the land” from May until October of that year. I could have easily changed our circumstance with a simple phone call to my parents, but somehow even then, I knew I was about to learn a valuable lesson in life.

I now appreciate everything I have.

@phred78 Yeah, I read about that strike. It made me wonder what would happen if the deliveries to grocery stores in the states were disrupted for even just a week. Not a pretty picture. There’s a lot of security involved in trying be self-sufficient.

@pathfinder Exactly. It’s a huge ego boost (and mental health boost) to stop being so much of a consumer and actually be responsible for producing some of your own necessities. The high I get from creating something just doesn’t compare to getting paid for wasting my time.

@scamp That’s a great experience! It’s good to know that you’d be able to do it again if necessary. And you always have the “Well, the kitchen may be on fire, but at least I’m not in a tent.” Calm you down rationalization.

Honestly, I would love that. Im thinking, that when I get older, I wont buy my own groceries. Ill grow them.

Yep. It’ll be great to be tromping around fields, digging around in the dirt and doing hard manual labor in the blistering sun when you’re ninety and have heart and back problems!