The Self Sufficiency Itch

If there is such a thing I have definitely been hit with it. I have started to be consumed with it in a sense. The Amazonian Liber Vortex rejuvenated itself and began sucking volumes of self-sufficiency writings out of the world and to my mailbox. There were seven in all I believe so let’s start there with the super duper numbered list:

1. Possum Living: How to Live Well Without a Job and with (Almost) No Money

I have ready about 3 or 4 chapters so far. It was written by an 18 year old girl in the Carter era. I have mostly enjoyed it but there are things I have a difference of opinion with but nonetheless a good read, and a quick read too.

2. The Organic Farmer’s Business Handbook

Haven’t dug in to this one yet

3. The Good Life: Helen and Scott Nearing’s Sixty Years of Self-Sufficient Living

This looks to be possibly a worthwhile practical read but far from a beneficial ideological one. Though I have not read far enough into it to know their bent I am assuming at this point that this couple had socialist, communist, or collectivist sympathies so it will require a heavy filtering

4. You Can Farm: The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Start & Succeed in a Farming Enterprise

This one is from Joel Salatin, most widely known from the Food Inc movie. I have read through probably a chapter and so far I like it. I have heard Joel described as a Christian Libertarian, we shall see. I suppose there are some compositions of this I could agree with.

5. Mortgage Free!, Second Edition: Innovative Strategies for Debt-Free Home Ownership

I have yet to read any of this but it definitely lines up with what we are trying to do and applies to a necessary step in our process, getting out of debt and becoming mortgage free.

6. Concise Guide to Self-Sufficiency

Title speaks for itself.

7. The New Organic Grower: A Master’s Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Mar…

I was hooked by the preview chapter on Amazon that spoke about ages old farming techniques.

I also picked up seasons 1-4 of Good Neighbors, which airs on PBS. It was broadcast as the Good Life in the UK but possibly because of the content and title of the book here of the same name it had to be changed. I’ll watch those shows often for dream fodder. It’s good to keep dreaming about your vision.

Hooked would be a good word for my mood lately, I really believe we can do this. Really do without things that are just not important. Who honestly NEEDS cable nowadays. The stuff that comes out of that television is mostly tripe and garbage anyway and of little to absolutely no intellectual value. News channels are hopelessly bias, sports have become an entirely self-serving business venture with the fans being an afterthought. Documentaries are crackpot jokes, the History channel is two steps away from weekend long smutfests describing the history of sex, oops I think they’re already doing that aren’t they. The Science channel is anything but scientific, Home and Garden is in a perpetual hunt to find and promote homosexual males with a flair for color, and even Sesame Street is hosted by such denizens as Jack Black and Russell Brand. MTV is practically the Sodom and Gomorrah of the airwaves and reality TV is the unwashed appeal to the corporal and fleshly of the world. It’s all garbage. And we pay for it.

Just recently Brighthouse has started loading up its HD channels with pornography, unabashed pornography. You can’t access it unless you pay for it of course but have you seen the titles they unashamedly have no qualms about displaying on the screen for any 8 year old with a remote?? It’s horrid.

I haven’t quite figured out the Internet route yet. That may be a necessity. If we are going to maintain a website and do some other things it may be a necessity. I know we can go to the library but that just may not be practical. Plus if weve eliminated many other things it might not be a burden.

Little by little things are starting to fall into place, at least upstairs. We will share more as we perhaps put it on paper and firm things up. I would drop it all tomorrow and start if I could. We will just continue to pray that God will open up doors for this to happen and be patient as best we can. We will also use the time to make this 1/4 acre a training ground for what is to come, if anything is to come.

I don’t care too much about money anymore, I am more interested in rewiring our brains to find ways to do without it, where our first instinct is not to go out and buy whatever arises as a need or a want.

Now I am off to read and to squeeze in the monthly budget meeting for the home. Until later!

Book Hiatus Allowance, Walden

In what will appear to many to be a first crack in the armor, I need to take a small step back in the non-reading reading plan. I need to make an allowance for myself.

I just received and am going to allow myself the pleasure of reading Thoreau’s Walden. I have read a lot about it being a classic and how he spent two years in the wilderness on his own, roughing it so to speak. So I am going to permit myself this luxury in the non reading book reading plan. Read Walden.

I was discussing with my brother how I seemed to remember Thoreau having rather different spiritual beliefs than mine. My brother agreed and we placed him somewhere in the “Hemingway interesting” cubby hole. While aware of his transcendental beliefs neither of us felt too concerned. We are both more interested in his experience out there.

So dear friends, I sha’nt feel a tinge of guilt, nor hypocrisy, although ye shall wail and lament of my shallow fortitude. Walden it is and Walden it will be, until it is Walden no more.

More Books A-Comin’

I went a touch crazy today on Amazon. I’m not sure how this will work , given my self imposed book hiatus, more on that in a post to follow.

I bought several books recently that kind of tie in with my earlier post on solar projects.  One is on off the grid cabin construction and the other on wind generators.  Here’s a list:

New Book on Mini-Farming

I don’t believe I have included a review on this book yet so while I am under inspiration it is best to get that done.  I forget exactly how I came across this one, it may have been one my random perusing sessions on Amazon or it may have been in the back of one of my rarely heard of magazines but I found it to be a good one however it was found…

New Book Under What,Why & How

In the beginning we created a page to hold the books that have helped us along or driven us along on our quest. One category of books was the What, Why & How category. The WWH books are the ones that drive us along, they are big motivating factors for why we are doing what we are doing.

I just finished reading one that we have added to the list, it is extremely eye opening in light of current economic events and the political events that have responded to them. It is a clear and awakening cause and effect look at our current situation that will probably cause you to seeth with indignation.

It was written by Thomas E. Woods, a Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama. I highly recommend everyone get a copy of this book and look it over, if for no other reasons than to gain exposure to the Austrian School of Economic Theory and the alternatives we have out there to get out of this mess.

Here’s a link:

Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse

Ultimate Guide to Wilderness Living

I am a little ways in to UGWL. To give you background the book is endorsed by Les Stroud and he attended survival classes put on by the authors. Stroud says that when he watches his show he can see their teachings peeking out and I agree. So far I have read about fire starting, fire material, flint knapping and tool making, and already I see things that come up on Survivorman. Later on we will post pics and videos of most likely me practicing and honing the skills illustrated in the book.

The Arrival of Survive!

Major score at the mailbox today! I was always interested in Survivorman and what he was able to do but I think part of me always said “Uh-uh I don’t want to leave my A/C and recliner to go play like that in the woods, guess you have to have a passion for it” but then the thought occurred to me “What if you HAD to do it? Can you? Or would you just flop around like a fat, pasty, suburban lard fish hoping someone else could?” I realized it was probably the latter. Hello, I’m James; the fat, pasty, suburban lard fish…