My Back to the Land Fantasy
And why it feels more real every day.
Where is home?
"Can we talk about something other than the end of the world?" someone asked me the other day.
Okay, I suppose I do talk about it a bit much lately. The feeling has been there for a while. It comes on strong whenever I stand in line at the Safeway and look at the magazines filled with stories about Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt, or watch television, wondering, when did it all get so dumb and pointless? It's a terrible thought: maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing if the planet went through a people purge.
There's an odd split in our culture at the moment. Doom and gloom glowers from news headlines and movie documentaries. But the cars roar up and down Vancouver's Oak Street night and day, the coffee shops are full until midnight, and the price of real estate, especially anything with even a distant view of water, continues to shoot through the roof. A big lie maintains we can continue to have our consumptive lifestyle, and stave off environmental chaos, if we use only one coffee cup at Starbucks, turn off the lights, walk to work and recycle plastic bags. We can have our cake, and everyone else's cake too.
And yet, underneath the ordinary activities of daily life, many people have the anxious sense things have gone too far, and something is coming that will push it back in the other direction -- hard.
I live in a two-bedroom apartment over Oak Street, and when I say over, I mean it. You can watch people on the bus from our window, and virtually read over their shoulders. It's not really home, simply a place to be for now. The roar of traffic is like a river of white noise, you get used to it after a while. But when I returned from a summer in the Kootenays, where I was raised, the noise began to seem unbearable. And I am thinking a lot lately that there has got to be better way to live.
Mom the farmer
My mother is no sucker for back to the land romance. She was there during the great exodus of the 1970s when, driven by some mysterious impulse, people fled the cities and suburbs. "I watched it happen. It was like lemmings. People got old milk trucks, VW vans and made their trek into the country. They arrived without any money, or any plan, just the idea that they had to get out. The height of it was about 1974 and by 1979 it was over. Whether it was because people came to realize how much work it really was to do everything yourself -- make yogurt, grow bean sprouts, milk goats -- I don't know. But it ended as mysteriously as it began. After a while, all the hippies either blended in or went back to the city to become yuppies.
"But for a while there it was a lot of fun."
I was there as well but mostly what I remember was a lot of naked adults, drinking goat's milk, being told carob was chocolate and wearing a kerchief on my head when really all I wanted was skin-tight satin jeans. Yes, it's true, we made our own butter, our own ice-cream, our own root-beer. We rode horses, chased cows, spent hours wandering the woods, building fires, going exploring, swimming, skating, it was a different world, a different time, when children left the house in the morning and came back at night dirty and tired from an entire day of roaming like a wild thing.
Haying season, in particular, sticks in my mind with a deep affection -- everyone working together all day long, coming in at lunch to eat around an enormous table, shouting stories one over top of the other, knocking off in the heat of the afternoon to go swimming, staying until evening and watching the stars step onto the immensity of the summer sky, like some insanely grand Bob Fosse production. I remember the thrill then, of simply being alive in the world.
My mother, being my mother, has her own opinion on these issues. I'll let her tell it:
"I have often deliberately introduced myself in groups or at conferences as a farmer. It is interesting to watch the confusion on people's faces when I say this, especially if they know that I also have PhD and a list of published books. But the initial assumption is that farmers are stupid. So how can I be both? These contradictions fight themselves out on their faces. Perhaps I am not a real farmer, then, but a hobby farmer, a pretend farmer, a landed gentry, the kind of farmer who rides about on her horse to see how the peasants are getting on. But no, I'm a poor farmer, the kind who began young and got hooked on the life and can't or won't quit because, for me, it is the only life that makes sense, or has ever made sense to me.
"And yet, in those odd and endlessly despairing conversations people tend to fall into these days about the future, the one place people won't go is the idea of small farming. Why? The chances are good that either their parents or grandparents or uncles or someone was a farmer, raised food, grew animals, lived rurally. People who got to visit their uncle's or grandparents farms tend to remain endlessly nostalgic about the place, while completely denying that living such a life would ever be possible for them. And they are probably right. In my experience, you pretty much have to be born a farmer to become a farmer. Over the years I have watched many bright-eyed idealistic people arrive to 'help' me on my farm. And then leave again for a variety of reasons.
"The new back to the land movement that we in rural Canada are experiencing has nothing to do with survival or rural living. It's more about people buying a postage stamp sized piece of land on a mountainside, building far too large a house and then using that place for a week a year. The modern myths that most people hold about rural life and country living are endlessly backed up and supported by a media that treats 'country living' as the property of the rich, with occasional walk-ons by quaint, cute, folksy 'rural' people." (That would be me my mother is describing.)
'People will wait for rescue'
She continues: "There is also a constant onslaught of stories about the 'natural' world, and these tend to get published in a variety of places, outdoor magazine, travel magazines, environmental magazines, or 'nature' writing. They always take one of the many standard lines; nature as savage, or cute, or lost, or sentimentally, and nostalgically beautiful.
"Rural life has changed completely over the past 50 years. In the past 50 years that I have lived on our farm, I have watched as our rural community has been completely replaced by suburbanites, both the summer and the year round variety. They are, on the whole, nice people, and we tend to leave each other alone. I don't know how they see me, and certainly they don't ask and clearly aren't interested in who used to live here or what the community used to be like.
"To me, what is ironic and even bizarre is that the ideas that were generated by that back to the land movement 30 years ago are steadily being rediscovered and reiterated by the new apocalypse movement: organic farming, locally grown food, alternative energy, conserving energy, getting off the grid, simple living. Only somehow none of these ideas seem to involve actually living on the land where they can actually be implemented and thus they tend to remain just that, ideas.
"Do I think that there will be a new wave of back to the landers? No, and I certainly hope not. I think if something does go wrong, most people will huddle in the suburbs and wait to be rescued by the government."
So this impulse to remake society, which fuelled the first wave of back-to-the-landers may not be quite the same the second time around. It is true that many of the ideals of the counterculture, the freedom-loving hippies and their communal ambitions, wrecked on the rocks of sexual jealousy, or fell victim to plain old bad behaviour. If that history offers some cautionary lessons on the inherent difficulty of living with other people, might we learn from that, and get it right this time?
Counter to cyber
In his new book called From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism, Stanford professor Fred Turner writes about the long and winding road travelled, from hippies communalists to digerati. "Between 1967 and 1970, for instance, tens of thousands of young people set out to establish communes, many in the mountains and the woods...For these back-to-the-landers, and for many others who never actually established new communities, traditional political mechanisms for creating social change had come up bankrupt. Even as their peers organized political parties and marched against the Vietnam War, this group, whom I will call the New Communalists, turned away from political action and toward technology and the transformation of consciousness as the primary sources of social change."
Which all sounds rather lovely. Too bad it didn't actually work out that way. Except for a few -- now seemingly joined by a constantly growing trickle of people heading out of the cities and making a life for themselves in rural B.C.
Consider writer K Linda Kivi, who lives in her own mountaintop fiefdom in the Kootenays. Her land was originally a women's co-op, but now men live there too. The co-op generates its own power, grows much of its own food, but several members work in town and membership tends to shift as people move back to the city for careers, school or relationship.
Kivi says, "I don't think there is a second wave of back to the landers, it's more like a bunch of ripples. I certainly don't consider myself as a back-to-the-lander. I'm more like a forward-to-rural-radicalism type. In terms of the back to the land thing, I'd say I and my land partners have more realistic aspirations and less fantasy. We make the lifestyle work for us instead of us working for it."
It does seem lately as if a lot of people are having similar notions. A recent issue of The Sun Magazine includes a number of articles about living sustainably. An interview with Bill McKibben could have been taken from any number of conversations I've had in my own head. Read it and see if you don't feel like dropping everything in your life and fleeing for the hills.
McKibben agrees with my mother. "It's only been one generation, in which we seemingly lost touch with our farming background. The story of what happened to American agriculture is probably the single most important news story of the last century. We went from 50 per cent of the population living on farms to less than one per cent."
I have a dream
At our family dinners, the imminent demise of society has long been a favoured topic. But lately, our Armageddon fantasies, which used to seem so distant, are composed of one part Little House on the Prairie to two parts Mad Max. Conversation tends to focus on, during some unspecified disaster, what we will need to survive: enough people who know how to do useful things (such as plow a field, skin a cow, or can peaches); enough gas to actually get ourselves back to the family farm, and then enough weapons and fortifications to fend off marauders.
And with each conversation the voice in my head becomes louder, more insistent. I keep asking myself, is it time to head back to the land? And: will the land even have us any longer?
I like to believe that when you winnow human behaviour down to its most fundamental basics, there are really only a few things that matter. You need some place to hole up for the night (preferably some place safe and warm). You need enough to eat and drink. And you need to pass on your genetic material. On these few basic appetites is predicated most of human culture.
I like to remind myself that the most memorable thing about the PBS program Frontier House, which returned a group of families to the 1883 existence of homesteaders, wasn't the daily struggles of pioneer life, but what happened after everyone went back to the ease and comfort of the 21st century. I don't think I've ever seen a sadder sight than the young son of one of the families sitting wanly bored to death in front of the TV in an enormous suburban tract house. The siren call of comfort is offered in lieu of hardship, but hardship and struggle can actually be rather good for people, whereas endless comfort is not.
And last night, I had a dream. It's actually a reoccurring dream that I've had for the past 20 years or so. I'm on the B.C. Ferry, it's always the same. I'm usually missing the boat; sometimes I'm frantically trying to get in line for the cafeteria. There is always a level of anxiety attached. But this time was different. I walked off the boat in mid-passage onto an island, a meadow actually. A great yellow curve of open space, and I lay down and hugged the enormous haunch of the land, like it was a huge warm animal, and the most intense sense of comfort came over me, the purity of feeling that is only available in a dream. Part of me thought, I should get back on the boat, but I couldn't make myself get up and go back, and the boat sailed off without me. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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alex.aylett
5 years ago
Comments on "My Back to the Land Fantasy"
Damn I am sick of escapist fantasies! Returning to the land is just as much a lie as thinking that we can solve our problems by recycling plastic bags. We need more than dreams, and more than escapism, we need to work! The challenge is not (once again) to run away from the problems that we have created for ourselves in cities. We have to create solutions that will make our cities more liveable.
In the same way that a small farmer takes responsability for the land that supports them, we city-people have to take responsability for maintaining and improving our urban environment and the lands that support it.
It is time for all of us to become farmers? No. But it is time for us to recognize the valuable work that they do. To defend the agriculturally productive land that surround Vancouver from real-estate development, and time find our own places in making cities friendlier both for the people that live in them and all the things that do not.
Dreams and fantasies may help us all sleep better at night. But what we need to do is live better during the day.
Fiat lux
5 years ago
Wake up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The present dreams and fantasies of the neocon/neolib/neoclassical economic theory are forcibly depopulating the countryside, by ruining the family farm system and forcing people into unsustainable mega cities.
Look what happened in Mexico after NAFTA, with millions of farmers forced off their lands and into shantytown cities.
This has been going on for years, but intensified with Campbell and Martin/Harper.
Their idea is a countryside, forests, agricultural lands, owned by mega multinational corporations and serviced by camps of imported foreign slave labour. The negotiations for this plan have been going on under the GATS, at the WTO in Geneva, for years.
A new report, by some outfit called Trillium, just advised the closing of 8 schools in the Cariboo, on account of dropping population and enrollment, as people are replaced by automated machines and forced into cities, "where the jobs are", in our politicians' and economists'
warped and paid off minds.
How do you make cities and the economies sustainable, when every newcomer puts on great pressure in increased energy/water and resource inputs to keep them there? Whereas in the country they could live on a fraction of the inputs, but the sacred GDP grows with every new city dweller, and demands more and more of the same to jack up the phoney stockmarket values?
Ed Deak, Big Lake.
ianmack
5 years ago
brilliant. you've crystalized many thoughts in my own head. though a part of me wants to believe we can fix things without sacrificing human technology entirely -- it's just the way we weild it. and that change starts with ourselves.
Fiat lux
5 years ago
What our miseducated, brainwashed and braindead economists and politicians will have to realize one day is that:
"HUMAN LABOUR DOESN'T COST ANYTHING TO AN ECONOMY"
The businesses that employ human labour, and I was an employer once, are NOT THE ECONOMY BUT ONLY PART OF IT, therefore neither they, or any other sector, or any ideology, should be permitted to dictate the terms of any economy.
It has to be done in cold blooded, physical terms, cut off from all ideological and religious dogmas, based strictly on the long accepted laws and values of physical efficiency.
In other words: "THE LOWEST PHYSICAL INPUTS WILL ULTIMATELY BE THE CHEAPEST IN REAL ECONOMIC TERMS"
People replaced by automation will always raise economic costs, but channel incredible benefits to a certain self interest sector. This immediately destroys the theory of forced urbanization as an acceptable economic reality.
The present robbery and a crime wave of the neoclassical/neocon theories must be stopped ASAP, unless humanity wants to commit suicide.
Ed Deak.
doggone
5 years ago
Could not log out on another thread but this one is pretty tastey:
I did leave Vancouver at about that time and more or less followed the patern described in the original article. I have no regrets and I won't be coming back.
My wife wanted to give our girls some exposure to the "Big Smoke" so in '83 I went back to UBC, she worked and the girls were enrolled in school. It did not turn out too badly - the city does have a lot to offer. We were just visiting, however, and kept our place here. Went back for a funeral about 10 years ago and was shocked by the uptick in pace there - I made the mistake of driving a standard shift car into the traffic and my calfs were cramping from the tension.
I'm totally in favour of Alex's above comment: Please figgure out how to live there well. I'll do what I can to help. The "country" can not handle all of us and I already own waterfront.
Percy
5 years ago
A friend of mine went "back to the land" about 8 years ago, invested all his savings in a large spread in northern Ontario that had been abandonned by original settlers as unsuitable for agriculture. He discovered they were right, but not before he was on the verge of starvation. He tried to earn some cash by cutting down trees, but one fell on him and he died.
Fiat lux
5 years ago
An outside income is necessary, but it doesn't have to be very much. We live on our pensions very well, are healthy and do physical work at ages, 79 and 78, when most people are chairbound.
We also live on land "unsuitable for agriculture", but we managed to establish large organic gardens, now used only for ourselves, with 3 large freezers full of organic produce and meats. We have cattle for sale, but have to subsidize them about $300./month from our pensions and still have all the money we need.
People who want to live on land have to know a lot of skill and be ready to tough it out. On the other hand, the freedom we achieved is worth every and anything. Ignorant people need the cities where they can survive on others' knowledge.
Lived in Vancouver for 24 years, but my wife hasn't been back for 26 and I for 18. Had we stayed there, I for one, would long be dead. Here we use no medications and need none.
The world can not sustain more mega cities poisoning the atmosphere and fill it with garbage.
Ed Deak.
doggone
5 years ago
Percy:
That's exactly what it's all about.
There are risks involved in everything we do even if we live in a gated community and spend all our time watching tv or playing on the internet we have an appointment with death somewhere along the line.
I've been lucky so far: I did not try to farm: My wife works and I am a self proclaimed "Handyman" - which means she subsidizes housing in our local neighbourhood. Though I still own a chainsaw and like to keep it sharpened and fueled I have scared myself too many times felling trees and now we hire professionals.
No - doing real things (farming, logging, construction) is not a walk in the park. It's not for everyone. There are casualties.
However, I'd rather build a concrete foundation for my neighbour's garage than dress up in a suit and climb into an elevator any day.
maestro
5 years ago
Yes...back to the land.
Sure. Yup.
First you have to find some. Most of it has been bought, staked out, often Yuppy-fied , often not cheap.
We are talking self sufficient,correct, not a cabin. Don't watch Hollywood movies. Lassie won't save you. Learn to live with power outages...maybe even no phones. Don't buy in the summer...kick the tires by buying in the fall/winter.
Be careful on the purchase offer...make sure you can get most of your money back if you have to sell.
Vivid memory: Wife's co-worker(City Gal) came to visit us upcountry...we had power,... but NO plumbing...aka outhouse-only ...she left the next day.
Fiat lux
5 years ago
Of course, zoo animals can't survive in the wild, either.
Land prices are high because of worthless "foreign investment" and corporate grabbing
for chemicalized monoculture, now spread all over the world in the name of "globalization", in other words, colonization.
Ed Deak.
jwstewart
5 years ago
Maestro;
Here is some land, cheap too! No interest, either.
Some looks close to Ed Deak as well, maybe he could advise if it's swamp land.
http://www.dignam.com/properties/west.html
NDN_Coach
5 years ago
You know,
A wiseman (or wiseass, depends on your point of view) once said:
"When Europeans came to this land, there was no taxes, no government, no debt, and women did most of the work. Somehow they thought that was too savage and sought to find a better way."
The more this world gets crazier and crazier and the more we rely on technology, the more I wish I was outside on a day like today (-29 & snowing). Out on my snowshoes, carrying a pack, and and checking traps on the trapline. Is it hard? You better believe it is, but I kind of now know why my grandpa liked it so much.
No one owned him. He didn't work hard, he went without. These days one has to work hard to keep all the credit hawkers off your doorstep or your inbox.
His life just seemed a little more simple than mine.
doggone
5 years ago
Outhouses:
The best "B.M." I ever had was in a log outhouse with no door looking out at the Nechako sifting silently past a few meters away. If you have been there you know what I mean. I've tried composting toilets, low flush, squat plates, built innumerable "Sani slabs" in some African country. There is still nothing better than a hole in the ground!
One problem for the city dweller is finding a peice of ground in which to dig. But - trust me, I was a logistician - you will find it if the sewers back up. The immediate remedy is to identify a "shitting feild" a peice of ground where drainage will tend to keep effluent out of local water sources. The next level of comfort will be the "trench Latreen" and eventually you can build a "V.I.P."
We actually designed a package (no idea why this product is not on "Canadian Tire" shelves) which provided a "squat plate", light frame, and shrouding. All you needed was the:
hole in the ground
Fiat lux
5 years ago
Sorry JS....the land in the ad is hundreds of km from here.
Ed.
dude
5 years ago
Great and honest article Dorothy. I lived on the Gulf Islands for ten years-until a few years ago- I basically got to be a lap dog to the rich (and usually absentee Americans)-no hope ever of owning land-or the tyes of cars that were popping up around me-what ever happened to Island Beaters?
Bottom line: self sufficency starts in your own backyard in vancouver or Victoria or anywhere, rooftop, balcony...and use a bike-that's a very good start oreleiveing the pressuree on our planet...
Fiat lux
5 years ago
BC now has new laws demanding that septic tanks have to be designed and installed by registered professionals.
The last I heard, the cost could be up to $30,000 per and there are about 3 such professionals in the whole province.? Correct me If I heard wrong.
I grew up with outhouses in Europe and have used one here in the beginning for about 10 years, all told, for close to 30 years of my life. No big deal, except in -40C, but they're also outlawed now in BC, although everybody around here has one for when the power goes out.
On the other hand, how long can forced urbanization afford 6, or in most cases 13 litres of water to flush down .5 litre of pee several times a day, costing 540 litres of water use, per city person per day ?
Think about this!
Ed Deak.
maestro
5 years ago
My eldest takes a course at school which is an expanded extended version of Phys.Ed. ,....and the first major outing was to camp out and learn to be be self - sufficent.
Given a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the current BC weather, I think these types of practical survival skills should be part of some mandatory curriculum.
I am sure many of us can relate to these basic- yet -crucial skills taught to us from Ma and Pa while ourselves in our youth going camping, if not more involved in Scouts etc.to learn these skills. However, nowadays I shudder to think if and when we have some major disaster,natural (or man made) ie earthquake, fire, flood ice storm etc. how many would actually survive after the event.
Probably look like a zombie movie with dazed looks wandering aimlessly and falling over.
My neighbour once said in such a disaster scenario, he would make sure his house was burned so he could collect insurance...whereas I rebutted that I figure I would have enough material to build a lean- to and have enough firewood to cook and stay warm for a while.
So called " progress ".....often leaves us addicted, dependent, and thus vulnerable.
doggone
5 years ago
Ed:
news to me that shitting is now prohibited. Wonder what Gordon does when the urge strikes.
Death and taxes can sometimes be delayed but as a functioning organic organism here and now when I gotta go I gotta go.
Legislate that, Idiot!
(not you,Ed)
maestro
5 years ago
Ed:
My understanding is that the responsibility is downloaded onto the Private Contractor who does the work...ie the Installer must be certified and thus acts as their own Inspector. Anyone who does so can do BOTH. I know of one person who did the installs only ...now he does (i)the inspections to his own work and (ii) signs off on them.
Whether one likes it or not ie "Fox guarding the chicken coop " analogy, this "downloading" seems to be happening more and more and not just with septic systems.
In the CRD, they had a person who was the bureaucrat in charge of septic systems...then wrote a Master's Thesis on the topic...then recommended all sorts of NEW regulations, then conveniently accepted a position elsewhere.
I know one old timer who used to excavate his outhouse contents..so as to recycle the old hole....if you catch my drift.
$30,000 ? thats cheap....given the newer systems within say the GVRD are becoming so "anal" (no pun intended) $40,000 -50,000 is more like it(of course based on the "perk" test).
Finally ... the Gov'ts self interest of course is one's Property Assessment rises due to these " Improvements".
maestro
5 years ago
jwstewart:
Yes, admittedly there is "cheap land"...but often many of those that yearn for living off the land are not prepared for the WHY the land is cheap....something to do with farther from civilization and amenities away is inversely porportional to cost...(give or take the odd town closure ie Gold River...Tumbler Ridge, etc.)
However, the best Turkey we have ever cooked was using an old McClary cast iron wood stove in a cabin with no power,.... nor running water.... nor insulation.
Fiat lux
5 years ago
Going back a few years.....
The horrible devastation and damage to Europe in WW2 was cleaned up and rebuilt, because there were a lot of people who had trades, knew how to use handtools and build things out of junk. In other words, there was no GDP, but lots of self sufficiency and trade guilds that made it sure their members did good work.
They could even add, subtract, multiply and divide without calculators, because there weren't any.
Imagine what would happen today with people without skills, apart from button pushing, completely helpless, even to add simple figures.
When cities are destroyed today, it is brought in machinery and trades that do the jobs. The majority of people just stand around wringing their hands.
We learned our lesson at a very young age and have been working toward self sufficiency for over 50 years and it paid off very well.
Ed Deak.
anarcho
5 years ago
"By 1979 it was all over" BS! Ever gone to the Koots, or Hornby Island? Many people stayed in the rural areas after the early 1970's migration. While most of the idealistic communal ideas fell through, the people that remained found ways of living off the grid , as we now say. This is more of a propaganda device which is to promote cynicism, and thereby keep people helpless - like the BS that all the counter-culturalists became self-centered yuppies. Asa for the back-to-rthe land idea, not everyone can live in the country, not everyone is suited for it, but you can still find a lot of self-sufficiency in town if you have a yard or an allotment even.
doggone
5 years ago
Had to venture out in the snow (I drive an old ford 4x4 pickup) to get more smokes. What am I gonna do when they stop providing cigarrettes at subsidized prices?
Anarcho:
I don't interpret the article in quite the way you seem to: Yes some of us did stay and some of us signed up. I don't see a problem in the author's (nor her Mom's) statements. Settle down: it's gonna be a long cold winter and you and I are stuck with each other commenting on this site.
rac
5 years ago
Its pretty easy.
Don't drive.
Don't eat meat.
Only buy stuff you really need.
You'll even save a lot of money.
doggone
5 years ago
Ed:
So the old farts like you and me (I'm coming up 60 next year) could possibly be useful someday?
knowing how to make an internal combustion engine fire or cut a tree off the road without killing the operator could be courses at your local college?
Sorta like the indian (FN or "Native American" or whatever we wish to call it - my Indian friends don't seem to care how I refer to them) elders with modern technology.
You are correct in my opinion: until recently most countries relied on a population (not nessessarily "skilled") who had grown up with things like outhouses and axes. When the connection goes down we will have to rely on our memory.
Mine is gettin' "IFY"
Umslopogaas
5 years ago
Doggone, when you get to old to hunt buffalo, you just teach younger hunters how to interpret buffalo shit. Most younger people don't know shit.
Alcibiades
5 years ago
I tried to post a simple LOL to that and got hit by the 'too short' nazi.
Still LOL re young people.
Fiat lux
5 years ago
I was left a homeless refugee, a schoolboy, all alone in a foreign country at the age of 18 by WW2 and had to learn fast how to survive. Then came 5 out of 6 years of camps and barracks, living out of backbacks and suitcases, by my wits.
Many years of studies proved to me that anybody who completely relies on an economic system, the accent on the "completely", as obviously we must be part of systems, can be deadly wrong. Haven't trusted any economic system since and hate all ideologies with a passion.
Just watched the news with the commercial, urging people to prepare with food and water for self sufficiency for 72 hours.
I think, we could survive for 72 days in an emergency, without any brought in supplies. It would be tough, but nowhere to what we have gone through, thanks to shithead politicians, prophets and ideologues, when we were still in our teens.
Vancouver sits in an earthquake zone. I hope it will never happen, but think of the mentality of our economic system that would account the damage and the rebuilding as "growth of the GDP", without the slightest concern about the immense losses and suffering to and of the victims.
Ed Deak.
doggone
5 years ago
I have (just now anyway) more than enough snow to provide fresh water for all of us for 72 hours and an adequate supply of fire wood which I will be happy to burn to melt the snow if nessessary. If an emergency situation ( no Hydro, telephone, Tv, or cable internet) lasted longer than 3 days I do still have a pencil and some paper somewhere around here. and I've been meaning to do something about those damn deer coming in to the yard. Haven't got any (registered or not) fire arms 'cause "herself" is not comfortable with them about the house. A number of people I cared for took their own lives with guns so could be she has a point.
In fact fire arms are a bad choice for defence: unless you are prepared to shoot someone do not bring it on stage.
I guess what I'm attempting to address is: assuming some of us do garner away survival bits and parts, how do we keep them without an army protecting our "rights". Whatever you do about this do not collect fire arms. Guess who will be the first target of robbery in an emergency situation
RickW
5 years ago
That was about the year that the word "Yuppie" was coined, as the hippies of the 70's, realizing just how much work back to the land was" decided they would just make money, then buy the yogurt and soy socks..........
These Yuppies today are retiring in flocks, having ruined the countryside by investing in mega corporations for the dividends (ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies), which in turn control everything that Ed mentioned, and now they are set to ruin the next generation, by usurping all the pension money..........
pure
5 years ago
The big change took place from 1960 to 1970. During 1960 people were civilized in Vancouver and by 1970 the young folks were out of control with loud music, lack of respect to everyone and for some reason really didn't care about the future.
----------------------------------------
It's not really home, simply a place to be for now. The roar of traffic is like a river of white noise, you get used to it after a while. But when I returned from a summer in the Kootenays, where I was raised, the noise began to seem unbearable. And I am thinking a lot lately that there has got to be better way to live.
----------------------------------------
My wife and I lived in a highrise at lougheed mall for the period: 1986 to 2005. That type of lifestyle drove both of us crasy living in a sardine can or concrete piece. The noise, lack of air quality, elevators breaking down, car damage and break-ins,people throwing items over the balconies,counsel waisting money on numerous projects, some people shitting in the hot tub and you name it.
* We purchased a home in Chilliwack and love every minute of it. We now have close to a 1/4 acre with a 5 bedroom home and the best water in the world. It was a great move that we made.
pure
5 years ago
The big swing was 1960 to 1970.
DJT
5 years ago
Doggone: I know what Gordon does when the urge strikes. He just shits on all of us!
jwstewart
5 years ago
Hi Ed;
Ok, I though about it, and there appears to be something wrong with your math, or maybe some type of economic externality you neglected to mention.
540 liters flushed per day at 13 litres per flush equals 40 pees, which at 0.5L per pee is 20L of pee per day. I can't ever remember peeing that much, even when I was young enough to drink 6L of beer per day.
Maestro, Doggone.
Once you have the land, you can get the accomodations here..
http://www.coastmountainloghomes.com/Price%20List-International.htm
and the stove here...
http://www.berryhilllimited.com/b-cart/Product.asp?pid=99902
and the protection here..
http://www.marstar.ca/
I guess I have a back to the land fantasy as well. Funny thing is that it could cost less than some peoples SUVs.
RickW
5 years ago
pure:
That was when the balloon was punctured and the dream sullied. AFTER that, in the manner of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the dread Yuppie emerged triumphant. The only difference between this analogy and yuppies, is that Dr. Jekyll took a hike and hasn't been seen since............
Fiat lux
5 years ago
The 540 litres is the estimated water use by each city dweller, according to some TV newsclip figures a week, or so ago. Not only into toilets, but all forms of use.
Some years ago I inquired the daily use per person in communities from the Ministry of Environment BC, and was quoted 1,400 US gallons. Yes, per person, per day.
So, figure out which is correct? I would bet on the 1,400 gals.
The majority of this water goes into industrial use. E.g. The production of a 15 cm computer chip allegedly needs 100,000 litres. That's why they make computers to last 1-2 years these days.
In cattle feedlots, according to US figures, it takes 1,500 gals to grow 1 pound of beef. This, of course, includes the cleaning up the incredible mess caused by feedlots, but doesn't include the poisoning of the countryside for hundreds of square km. by the concentrated manure, which also includes the ruining of the water tables. No figures for this.
Cattle we raise use a tiny fraction of that water and cause virtually no pollution. But when we sell our organically raised calves, they go into feedlots and so on, because nobody wants organic beef. They'd rather have junk meat filled with grease and chemicals, amking people fat and sick.
But it drives up the GDP and everybody is happy.
Ed Deak.
anarcho
5 years ago
As I before stated pure BS. While some stayed in the country, some also went back to the city where they went back to being activists in the environmental, womens, anarchist, coop, and trade union movements. Others opted for the arts. The myth of Yippie turned Yuppie was as I before said was created to sew a sense of hopelessness in the population, that everybody sells out in the end. Neither I nor any of my friends did. The Yuppies came from another place. The counter culture was only a minority of the war and baby boomers. The majority were as we used to say back then "straights." The Yuppies came out of this straight cohort, not from mus!
maestro
5 years ago
Fiat Lux/Ed:
If you don't mind my asking....Just curious about a couple of side bar things re: your choice of locale and establishing yourself where you did.
Do you live in a LOG home?...or wood frame etc. construction?
Given your situation, have you allowed for a smooth transition of successor- ship of what you have built up...ie that your operation will continue once you move on ?
johninkits
5 years ago
I too would like to live in the country. In 20 years when i retire i'd like to pack up and go. i've got a plan, in four parts. each is five years long. Save up- buy somewhere, build, learn what i need, move. sounds simple right? when i told a freind this, her response was "oh subsistance living" man it took the romance out of it. will i do this probably but her words will haunt me for a while.
Fiat lux
5 years ago
Maestro, the choice of ur locale goes back to my childhood, when Canada was only a patch on a map in my school atlas. I was repeatedly dreaming about landscapes with forests, lakes etc. completely foreign to where I was born and grew up. We read evberything about Canada before we came here, after 7 years in England and crossed from Montreal to Vancouver by motorcycle in 4 weeks in 1955 to see the land and meet the people
The first time I came up to the Cariboo was in 1959, on a car rally, going by Clinton and the feeling came over me that I came home.
I brought up my wife on a camping trip in the following year and she felt the same. From then on all our thoughts were on how to get out of Vancouver and move to the Cariboo, We bought our first lakeshore lot in 1968 and our present land in 1975.
Couldn't live anywhere else, we never go anywhere and never want to.
When we moved here in 1979, we started building a large frame house of over 3000 ft., by ourselves, but we never got paid for the business we sold and were forced to live, with our teenage son, in 3 small cabins, totalling about 300 ft for 8 1/2 years, without outside electricity, running water, or phone, building custom furniture with a small generator. But we were happier than ever.
Now we're very comfortable, working hard and healthy. Our children didn't want the land, so instead of selling it, we gave it away to a Swiss family with 3 children
in return for helping us and looking after us till the end and continuing our environmentally friendly work. All legal, signed and registered.
We look at the quarter of a million bucks worth of land as the payment to live our lives out where we want to.
Ed Deak.
Alcibiades
5 years ago
Sounds like a wonderful deal to me Ed, and something you can be very proud of. If Canada had a few more folks like you and few less Robert Kiyosaki wanabees we could build a damn fine country.
My hat, if I wore one, would be off to you and your wife.
maestro
5 years ago
Ed....
Like I said before , your full story should be told, one way or another. The little bits you have already submitted add up to a fascinating story.
BTW, I personally built a LOG House...so I was simply looking at comparing notes with you. In hindsight, I think they are one of THE BEST structures one can build. The original attraction to build one was the aesthetics...but over time I also began to appreciate how practical they ultimately are.
Anyone looking at going back to the land should look into this LOG HOME option as well.
Fiat lux
5 years ago
The way we looked at it, if we'd sold the land it would have been clearcut by a logging contractor in 2 weeks, including our 250 to 400 year old trees we're guarding with our lives.
We would have had to move, while here we have our workshops, studios and everything we built for our own comfort and enjoyment. Moving and losing all this, our dreams, would have hurt, or killed us.
This way, our arrangement is working very well, everybody is happy, something the money could never have bought for us and our successors, who could never have afforded it.
Many people say " you could have travelled !" Who the hell wants to? My wife lived in 5 countries with 3 languages and 4 citizenships, I in 4 with 3 and 3. We've arrived, are the happiest ever, and want even our ashes to be spread here.
People also ask "What did your children think about what you did?" The way we look at it, they had the chance, we gave them the best upbringing we could, they all have skills and good incomes in their middle ages, so, if they were counting on inheriting money, I can only repeat Rhett Butler's famous words from "Gone with the wind: Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn".
This was also why we didn't do it through our Will, because Wills are not worth the paper they're written on. Courts can and do overrule them all the time, giving fortunes to people who least deserve them.
We thought about a loghouse, even have the logs on our own land, but while I was experienced in frame carpentry, never have done anything with logs, and to build the size of house we have, on 3 levels, with logs, would have needed more knowledge than I had.
I fully admire log homes and our next door neighbour is a master logbuilder, so if anybody has the time and the knowledge, the more power to them.
Ed Deak.
doggone
5 years ago
Here I am. Am I the only one complaining about logging in and out of this site?
Speaking of logs:
I've built a number of houses so far and never built an all log structure. My own house is post and beam with studded (insulated) wall infill. there are some very practical concerns with all log and a number of difficulties (such as wiring, plumbing and shrinkage) which to me made the all log wall a non starter. On the other hand I do admire the buildings - I am not prepared to go to the effort of making that type of building warm and tight.
If I did put up a log wall I'd probably stud the inside so I could run services and insulate.
Alcibiades
5 years ago
doggone
I almost never have to log in or out - even if I close the browser - I wonder what's up with your internet connection.
doggone
5 years ago
Wait a minute: you don't bother to log out?
I thought I was supposed to do that every time I posted. Where i got the idea I don't know. Maybe my (Scottish) mother. There is probably nothing wrong with my ISP - but thetyee system was a bit confused and giving me error messages.
Should I simply log in and leave it at that? (Incedently I do shut the whole system down when I sleep because the flashing lights bother me even when they are in the adgoining room.)
Alcibiades
5 years ago
That's what I do. Sometimes, if you open another browser window to go to another site and then come back to post you'll find you have to log in again - but sometimes not even then - give it a try.
maestro
5 years ago
Fiat Lux/Ed
After I got the Log House to lock up...and wired it( BTW "doggone"...its not that difficult to wire a LOG House )I also put in some kitchen appliances.
In the summer, when its opened up, it can be 30 degrees Celsius) OUTSIDE, and inside the Log House a cool 18-20 degrees Celsius...ie often about a 10 degree Celsius differential between the (i)inside and (ii) outside temperatures.
However, after the power is turned on (NOTE: NO dedicated heat source such as a fireplace or baseboard heater etc. is turned on), the temperature INSIDE the Log House rises overnite by approx. 7-10 degrees Celsius.
Wanna venture a guess as to why the temperature has risen ?
RickW
5 years ago
Dang it! Shoulda closed the border sooner..........
Amazing ain't it, how everything bad comes from away.....?
doggone
5 years ago
Now you have pissed me off (not any of the previous posters - the internet "Thought Police")
I am regularly required to reasure the "overseeer" that I remember my loggin name and password.
Meantime I loose the thread. As I said last night:
This site is compromised.
maestro
5 years ago
doggone;
The trick I use is even when it says on the screen as follows:
"Login successful.
Comment on this story
(Logged in as user: ______Log out)"
.......I would advise you to STILL LOG OUT out and then log back IN...ie type in (i)your name and (ii) password AGAIN.
.....Also : don't take too long posting a story or it may not work and you lose the topic.
Also, if you can bank your topic in cyber space ie COPY etc you can both save and add it later.
I agree, it gets to be frustrating, but learn the other options.
bisquy
5 years ago
I just wrote a half an hour on this comment and then was informed that I was not logged in.
sigh.
being an organic farmer is not always idealistic. for me it is a natural part of my being. the end.
bisquy
5 years ago
well, perhaps there is a time limit on log ins, and perhaps I wrote too long and was logged out.
therefore, shut up and don't write so damn much next time.
no matter what you do in life, the more unusual it is, the more others will try to convince you that it will never work. if you let others convince you to give up on a dream, regardless of its practicality or not, don't let go, because then what have you got left? drinking, malls, shopping, parties, blah blah blah, all boring, all consumer activities. go for the dreams and don't let discouraging people get you off track. otherwise you only contribute to what is wrong on this planet and for nothing. stop consuming endlessly and mindlessly and start living.
the end.
Bytesmiths
5 years ago
The waste of water is not the worst part of this. It's the waste of nutrients.
If we do not return to the land the nutrients that we borrow from it for the short period they are in our bodies, then we have to use natural gas and petroleum to make fertilizer instead.
Instead, most North Americans put those nutrients into a system whereby MORE energy is used to make them so they will not support life before they are dumped into watersheds.
This "waste" must be made lifeless before it's dumped in water, because it's NUTRITIOUS and would grow algae otherwise.
So, flush that nasty "waste" down, poison it so that it won't grow what we don't want, or use it to grow what we DO want. Hmmm... difficult choice... NOT!
When our bottle of ancient sunlight runs out, we're going to be forced into closing the nutrient cycle, just as we did before we uncorked the one bottle of ancient sunlight we'll ever have.
So why not start now? Pee on a tree! Don't flush it! That nitrogen does not belong to you! It belongs to the earth, just as you do! Compost your feces! It does not belong to you! You belong to the earth!
And if you really want to work on this, rather than just type about it, contact us:
:::: Jan Steinman, Communications Steward, EcoReality ::::
maestro
5 years ago
Anyway...
....back to my last post on this.
....before this topic gets ARCHIVED..
I found that the HEAT given off by my Fridge was ACTUALLY being recycled and it actually raised the indoor room temperature of the LOG Cabin (often by 8 - 10 degrees Celsius) to 25 degree Celsius or more. (The LOG Cabin was also very well insulated.) The Fridge was the only energy source available to do this.
LOG cabins are also great heat sinks..the logs , being made of wood, are composed of hollow wood cells which absorb, retain and then subsequently radiate back the stored indoor heat previously provided by the internal surroundings.
HENCE; Logs and LOG Structures are also great insulators , and thus perform a dual role of the storing heat as well.
Other LOG HOMES I have entered when ALL the heat sources have been shut down still feel warm on the walls, as the heat is now being radiated FROM the LOGS back into the room, .....using good old fashioned thermodynamic principles.
al_bedo
5 years ago
Check out J.H. Crawford's website...carfree.com...Crawford has wonderful ideas on CARFREE CITIES built to the human scale: his ingenious concepts would have our cities composed of individual districts; the size of each district is limited by how far the average person is able to walk in 5 minutes - walking from the furthest edge of the district to the central train depot - therefore, depending upon the density desired for any one district this human (walking) scale would limit the population of a district to around 16,000 at most. That ubiquitous "white noise" of automobile traffic would be a thing of the past, replaced instead by the twittering of birdcalls, the sounds of the wind soughing through the trees and the wonderful laughter of children who would now be able to roam freely and play safely out in the street. Districts will be bisected by below-grade rail transport which can string together any number of other districts; Living in such a city you would save the horrid annual expense of the personal automobile, but the best bonus is the realization that you also save a *minimum* of 70% of the land usage that would otherwise be given over to urban sprawl to accomodate these monstrous machines, which means that fresh food, parks, ball diamonds, ponds, creeks, swimming holes and lakes, trails, gardens, town squares, and other outdoor gathering and schmoozing places, etc would be within WALKING DISTANCE of each and every person in the city - no matter how large it finally became! I really feel that we must give immediate and serious consideration to Crawford's ideas if we are to have any chance at all for a saner future...