posted 13 years ago
This will be long (I apologize in advance) but I have several thoughts about all this (your quotes are in bold here)...
My partner and I and 2 other couples...
Who are you and your partner? (And the 2 other couples.) Names, ages, brief bio (where you got your education, what fields of study and what degrees if any; work experience) basically a resume, please. You are asking to be considered for something that is without doubt a job -- even if you may like to think of it as some sort of idealized lifestyle, trust me, you won't be living in Eden. You won't need to give this stuff here on the forum, obviously, but if you expect to have someone take you aboard in some capacity, these are details you should be prepared to give. (You will want similar info from them as well.)
...learn form mentors here.
You may want to give a brief description of these mentors and what their precise role has been. Also did you pay them, or what sort of arrangement did you have with them? It might be instructive to see what others have worked out along these lines.
We are looking to remove ourselves from the enslaving systems in America and find creative ways to counter them.
This is quite ambiguous, and pardon me but, it sounds a bit trite as well. All systems -- American or otherwise -- are not enslaving. Be specific about what you want to opt out of. You can't opt out of everything, and until you have a clear picture of exactly what you are opposing, you will not be very successful at replacing it with anything of lasting value.
We are all passionately pursuing sustainable practices such as self relient communities of people because we realize that even with 6 people we can not be TOTALLY sustainable with out help from others.
Have you asked yourselves why can you not be totally sustainable without more people? Perhaps you should reassess your idea of sustainability. It really depends upon what your goals are. I think it would be quite possible to be completely self-reliant alone if your needs were simple and basic.
We hope to find land, build houses out of cob and such, create our own energy and supply our daily consumed resources. There are some obstacles though, most of us have student loans... So basically we are looking for someone who owns alot of land and would like to share with us and be shared with!
Please don't feel insulted by this, but I think you should carefully consider a couple of hard truths here. You are not going to "find" land to do all these things on. You are asking someone to "give" it to you. You are hoping to find someone who already did what you cannot or will not do -- BUY a piece of land to work and live on and then allow you to come in and start doing the "fun" and creative part without having spent a dime or suffered a day to create the initial infrastructure of the homestead.
I do understand that poverty can preclude or postpone enjoyment of a lot of things. We would all like to have enough of the green stuff to buy a solar array or windmill, etc. and hire a contractor to come in and build our green dream home for us so we could move in and start raising our herbs and veggies and living the free life pursuing art and music and walks in the woods all day, but...
If I may be forgiven a not-so-brief divergence to share some personal history, I will try to convey a sense of what I am getting at here...
I was already 35 when we managed to find the place we have now. My husband and I thought we were so old and had waited way so long to find our homestead that we would have no time left to enjoy it by the time we got things together. Before that, we did everything we could to find an easy way to get all the stuff we wanted at once so we could start “living the life”. (Honestly, I think we worked harder at not having to work than we ever do at real work.) Then one day it sort of hit us. We really were going to get old and die before we realized our dream if we didn't get up off our asses and start building it ourselves.
This was so-called "unimproved" land when we bought it. (We were lucky to find someone willing to take a relatively low down payment and finance it for us.) There was absolutely nothing here to start with -- no water, electricity, well, home site or anything else people pay extra for and think they have to have. We literally unloaded the U-Haul trailer into a clearing and set up camp.
We worked hard (and believe me, we had NO money to make it easier -- plus we each had substantial student loan debt to repay). We lived in a tent for 4 months during a very cold winter in which we bathed in water from buckets (from which we had to break the ice off before using), then managed to upgrade to a 7' x 30' vintage (as in old and falling apart) motor home for 7 long years. It had no water, sanitary facilities or electricity and we could fit almost nothing but a couple of chairs and a bed inside without bumping into one another constantly, but at least it was warmer. All our other possessions (stacked on pallets and covered with tarps in that clearing) finally had to be thrown away after years of mice and condensation rendered them unusable. (It is amazing though how little of all that was actually needed or missed.)
We carried all our water from the creek a 1/4 mile away for bathing, laundry, dish-washing and drinking. It wasn't until we had been here 12 years that we finally managed to save enough cash to pay a well driller to come out and drill our 450' deep well. Even then, we set all the pipe for that well ourselves using nothing but our collective 4 hands, a rancher's helper and a tripod with a pulley. (We were actually pretty impressed with ourselves after that.) We installed a hand pump to get it to the surface, so even with the well, there was considerable work involved bring water from a static level of almost 200' to the surface by hand.
We spent an entire summer tearing down three houses in the way of a highway expansion project in a nearby town to salvage all the wood, doors and windows for our house. (Even so this house is a temporary structure to be turned into a studio and storage area when we finish the hybrid tire, strawbale and earth bermed house we ultimately want to spend the rest of our lives in.) It has no running water and only minimal electricity. We did manage to finally buy a solar pump for the well, however, so at least now we have running water via a garden hose for watering our garden and bringing it to our animals.
We still salvage for windows at every opportunity to build the large greenhouse in our future plans, and we now have enough to build a structure of enormous proportions. (Hopefully, next year's BIG project.)
We have lived here 20 years this September. We have 3 large, productive gardens; 5 fenced and cross-fenced acres for our various animals; chicken house and goat barn; a good well; electricity on site (slowly being converted to solar as we raise the cash -- with the ultimate goal of being off-grid in 2 more years); 50 acres of restored glades; 25 acres of restored woodland; and good roads and trails into and across the property. We still are nowhere near being done and somehow I think it will never be completely finished. (I would be sad to say there was nothing left to do because it would be like saying life was done too.)
Anyway, this long diatribe was meant to make the point that in addition to an initial outlay of money to purchase a place, there is a lot of hard work involved in building a homestead. Those of us who chose this lifestyle did the time and paid the dues to get this far.
I am not being rude or sarcastic when I say this. What benefit would there be to any of us to allow someone else to come in and enjoy the fruits of all our years of labor? What makes you think that your merely wanting to live in harmony with everyone, or having a few skills that may prove useful around a homestead will be an equitable trade for the years and sweat equity those of us who already have land and homesteads put in to get where we are?
These are questions you and your friends really need to ask yourselves. For one thing, your skills -- however useful -- will, in most cases, be redundant to someone who already has a homestead. Most of us have already read the books you mention -- and more, probably, if we have been homesteading for any length of time. We have mostly all built houses, ovens and stoves or drilled wells, done blacksmithing, cooked over campfires and on woodstoves, washed in creeks, herded goats, raised chickens, gardened and preserved our harvests, etc. In short, what can you and your friends expect to contribute that will be a reasonable exchange for getting to opt out of all those intense years of developing the homestead you want to move on to? You should be prepared to answer that BIG question.
You also said For me I would like to remove myself from the broken ecomonic and goverment systems COMPLETELY! The ways I can imagine today is to either make or trade all good I might need or do with out.
This is an extremely generic and easy thing to say – like "All I want is world peace." The problem is that it requires real-life solutions and you need to have a good idea what you would like those solutions to be and how you would go about making them happen. This is something you need to have firmly set in your mind or you will have trouble achieving the desired result. Idealism is only really useful when you are clear about what it takes to realize it.
A couple of other, minor points...
You mention a few hopes... I hope to facilitate a forest garden intigrated with animals to sustain my diet. I hope to build my own house for little or no money out of available resources like for example cob, timber and thatch. I hope to either make hydroelectric energy or do without.
These are things you would need to be very specific about if you want to involve yourself in a communal life with people who own the land you "hope" to do these things on. For example, many of us (myself included) are quite environmentally minded and would not consider putting domestic livestock in our forests to upset the natural ecology there. Neither would those of us who are vegetarians (for 30 years in our case) raise animals to help "sustain [our] diet". (Hunting may be problematic as well.) Power supplies and home styles would also need to be compatible with the current owner's plans.
Another point to consider is that your choice of home will depend heavily upon the sort of resources available where you end up. You would do well to keep an open mind on that score. Here in the Ozarks (where you have indicated a desire to live) we don't have dirt. That includes clay -- except in some localized areas. Earth-bermed or cob structures are not impossible, but probably not the best materials if you want to avoid buying them elsewhere and trucking them in. You would be better off with timber and rocks as your main materials. Don't plan to dig anywhere – unless you are lucky enough to find bottom land somewhere, the soil is going to be only about 2' deep and then you will hit rock.
Your hope for a hydroelectric power source will depend upon finding land with a good supply of year round running water. This is a karst landscape, so we have a lot of water, but it tends to disappear underground just when you need it most. It is not impossible to find a good year round creek or spring, but it will cost a lot more than land that does not contain such a gem, so you may want to consider solar power in your backup plans.
The fact is that to live the life you choose with the greatest degree of freedom, you really need to own your own land -- not move in with established homesteaders. You may luck out and find someone compatible in every way, but for that to happen, you will need to be very specific about what you want and what you can bring to the arrangement that will allow it to move beyond what the current owners are already able to do for themselves. If you and your friends are compatible, you would probably be much better off to find a way to purchase a place together and make your own way as most of us have done.
One last question... I went to the link you provided. It looks like a great project, but I noticed that the backers of the project were all Christian churches. Were you or your friends missionaries there or is that coincidence? I only ask because religious differences may be another thing of major importance to consider in looking for a compatible community.
Well, I really did not mean to write a book here, but I did want to help and I really felt you may have overlooked a few things in your enthusiasm. I do wish you good luck in finding what you are looking for. Your goals seem good as far as they go, but in my opinion, (and it is only my opinion, of course) you would do well to define them a bit more.
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