Living off the land for one year

[Village Idiot]

Following through with this is an idea I've been rolling around for years, but three things have stopped me from following through:

1. I have a wife and a family.
I'm not about to eat different meals than my family. We eat together, which isn't that common these days, and I intend on continuing doing so.


2. I have a job, which prevents from having the time it would take to be a hunter-gatherer.
I'd love to spend my days gamoling about the forest, but I don't have time. If one thinks about it, being a hunter-gatherer is easier than it seems. Once your job is done, your done, no matter the time of day. I can see myself being finished finding food by 9:00 in the morning, then having guitar time for the rest of the day. But my schedule won't allow it.

3. I am lacking in the knowledge it would take to pull something like this off.

I know more than a lot of people, but not enough. Protien is easy, there are plenty of mammals, birds reptiles and amphibians out there. There are also nuts and berries. Mushrooms are plentiful in the spring an fall. There are ways to preserve them all.

What I now nothing about is vegetables. There are wild parsnips in Iowa, which are not native, by the way, and wild carrots. There are several leafy plants, which I don't think can be preserved.

It's just a thought, and I'm rambling. Maybe, when I'm retired, I can give living off the land for one year a shot. If the opportunity ever comes, I'll still buy good beer.

[iamjohnne]

Oooh Todd,

Think of the money you would have for beer if you wern't actually buying groceries!!

[Village Idiot]

Exactly, Johnne. That is my motivation.

[aquaduct]

Gotta hand it to you, bud. That's brave.

Next thing you know you'll be off the grid living in a yurt.

Personally, I can't think of anything I'd rather not do.

But I gotta give you props if you pull it off.

[Cosmic Wonder]

Todd, I have been living off the land for quite a while now. For instance, I spent a good part of the evening esconced in a overstuffed recliner, watching the telly. I see absolutely no reason to resort to sitting on dirt.

Mike (I'm always thinkin'} Wonder

[Deleted]

I lived in a tipi for awhile in southern CA. It had a solar panel that gave me about 2 hrs of light once the sun went down. I had a kerosene lamp for heat in the winter (it gets mighty cold in the winter nights there) My shower was outside (!) and it was pretty chilly sometimes getting washed up out there. I did have some mice in my tipi that I never saw but only their nests. Lucky though cause once someone saw a rattle snake near my tipi but it never came in as far as i know. Each night though I'd have to inspect the place to be sure there was not a snake or tarancula or something in it. That part gave me the willies, I have to admit. Otherwise, it was a good experience.

[timfarney]

I have no need for most of the creature comforts of civilization. I have no doubt that, sans family obligations, I could live in a burrow or cave, off of what nature provides...

as long as I had cable TV and a high speed internet connection.

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Tim

[andrewg]

You'll be fine as long as you keep up your subscription to Subsistence Monthly; the deadly fungus pullout was a good one.

[kenlarsson]

I remember reading a book in 5th or 6th grade called "My Side of the Mountain". It was about a kid who got separated from his family, I forget how and why. Anyway in the book he ends up living in the woods in a hollowed out tree, trapping his food and gathering edible plants. Sounded real cool and exciting at the time but if I did that now I wouldn't be able to post here and watch sports on TV. Probably wouldn't be too good a lifestyle for the guitars either.

[sekhmet]

I would miss stuff - like this computer and my camera and the photographs - in short, what I do, how I self-define.

But I admit - the idea of getting off the grid and being free again - because it is about being free to be what we really are, which is an animal living on the good sweet earth under the deep infinite sky, yes, like Masaai used to be ... isn't it?

In the winter of 1974-5 I quit my job in the city as a pressman and moved to my little house in a clearing about 40 miles north of where I am at this minute. I had a roof and four walls, a car, a bed, dishes, a wood stove. I had no water. I had no electricity. I had no woodpile even.

Every day I woke to a frozen water bucket. I woke to deep stillness and quiet. The white light bounced around the bare walls from seven in the morning until four thirty or so. I had a lantern and a few flashlights, but slept with the sun for the most part.

The winds howled in the woods. The massive sugar Maples creeked and snapped in the bright sunshine. I walked in the beech and butternut woods on snowshoes. I was happier probably than I had ever been in my life in the great stillness of each day.

Twice a week I followed the plow to town, down 15 miles of twisting road, and rented a bathroom in the old hotel to take a shower.

In the spring, the mud swirled around my house, I felt the whole earth in movement, breaking open to release the grasses and wildflowers, the wild ginger and the trillium.

It was lovely, my Innisfree.

Lake Isle of Innisfree
W.B.Yeats

I WILL arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart's core.

[Deleted]

There's that TV show, 30 Days, that was created by Morgan Sperlunk (sp?) the guy who did Supersize Me. The premise is to take someone and put them in an uncomfortable, unfamiliar surroundings for 30 days and see how they adjust or what they learn. One of the episodes was called Living Off The Grid, about two city folks who have to live on a farm full of hippies with only solar power, farm food, bio diseal cars, etc.

They couldn't have picked two more annoying people, but they ended up ok and pretty used to it by the end. We bought the dvd for around 18 bucks and it has six episodes. We thought it was a really good watch for the money.

[millring]

Ken,

I loved that book. They made it into a (pretty lame) movie too.

Todd,

Ever eat a pine cone? Some parts are edible. --Ewell Gibbons

Me and you and a dog named "Boo", travelling and living off the land. -- Lobo(tomy)

[TDR]

Inneresting notion, VI. Does living off the land mean you eat zero industrial foods? Does it mean you don't use electricity or petroleum products at all? Does it mean you wear only clothing you have made yourself? Like the pre columbian native Americans or the mountain men of 200 years ago?

Seems like summertime shouldn't be such a problem. Lots of produce and critters in the natural grocery supply. After November or so, you are gonna have to survive on what you have put by. You could hunt all winter, if there is game where you live. But I don't think your state Fish abd Game dept is gonna be real sympathetic.

I've made stone points and primitive weapons (bow and arrow, spears you chuck with an atlatl, bone fishhooks), but I think one of the prerequisites for living like our hunter gatherer ancestors is you have to live someplace where there is plenty to hunt and gather.

[paulschlimm]

VI,

When I was a kid, I read a story somewhere about a guy who got fed up and walked into the Jersey Pine Barrens for a year. Most folks don't associate New Jersey with wilderness, but the Pine Barrens are miles and miles of nothingness (southern Jersey). He was one of those guys who had a lot of outdoor education as kid, but still....

I changed my definition of "civilization" back in 1996. Back then I was working for an organization that did some work in eastern Laos.

Eastern Laos is remote. When you fly out of Savannakhet in a helicopter to the base camp, you can see the karst rising from miles away. It is pretty breath-taking.

The area we worked was in a bamboo forest, where some of the bamboo rose to 80 to 100 feet.

The local were amazing. Some of them walked for hours each way to work for us. They used cross-bows made from teak and arrows made from bamboo to hunt food. They built our shelters with nary a t-square or a level, but damn if what they built wasn't square and level.

They were proud, tollerant, hard working, and respectful. I was in awe.

I remember thinking, "Good Lord. Drop any average westerner into this place and he'd be dead within a month."

Who is civilized?

Paul

[Deleted]

As tempting as this might sound (and it does) I would guess that it would be MUCH harder than most of us suspect. For example, what would one do if slowed by illness or food poisoning or serious injury? Could be why mortality rates were so high generations ago.
But what do I know? I grew up and live in an urban area where a golf course seems like wild country.