So what would I need?
First off, food and shelter… let’s say 20lb of dry beans to start and 20lb of barley and 20lb sunflower seeds, would be about $220 I believe? Then $20 on dairy to fulfill fat needs for a little while.
Now I need a place to cook them. A cast iron pot, say, $30? Let me start off by also getting an axe, say $50, and some wedges for convenience, another 50? Hatchet, $40, bowsaw, $10
I likely need somewhere to stay… let’s say five acres of wood and three field, $55,000… blankets/bedding for 0F, $180… Let’s say the field also contains sufficient cattails for all my needs.
For a bed, I lay down some logs lengthwise and fill in with pine needles, cattails, rushes, hay… this is only day three, so I’ve got to move quickly and yet thoroughly. I make a temporary A-frame hut with some poles, and thatch it with ratty tarps I got for free, overlapping them to cover up the holes in them. It would be easier if I had nails, but I don’t, and so I make do by leaning more poles up against the tarps to pin them down.
$20 for a good ferro rod and scraper.
About a week in, we are needing a clothesline… I take the cattails and make a big cord out of them. Also while I’m at it, I start on a basket from daylily and iris leaves secreted away somewhere. And some soap, because the ash doesn’t seem to do everything it’s supposed to for the clothes. (I know because I tried, not hypothetically.)
For a garden…I’m tired from all the work of being self sufficient and so I tarp an area. I don’t have a hoe either. I could plough if I weren’t alone, but in this case I am and there’s no one around to help. My potatoes are chitting and the sprouts are growing quickly. They need planting. So I go to a streamside area where there are some brushy shrubs, and build a fire around the bases of these shrubs to girdle them. I plant my potatoes in the softened earth. Up the girdled stalks I try runner beans. Most of these get eaten but a few grow. Up in the meadow, I tarp an area with some of those ratty tarps that seem to come out of people’s ears.
Mattock, $30. I am eating tons of nettles and the patch is running low, so I make sure to pee near them so that they stay productive. I am going out biking every day to gather more nettles and greens from other spots. Also working to cut back more growth and open up space for plants like hopniss.
I am getting bored, tired, and lonely. I bring some nettle barley bean soup to a potluck and enjoy what I can of the food there, but it is a slog to return.
$55,600 total spent. Near to giving up. Money cannot buy happiness… but motherwort tea may help!
I’ve no idea what next. I feel like this to some extent describes the limitations of my own skills and of the homestead ideal. The Midwest is far from home for me, so this would be extra difficult. And without high mountains…subtract a whole boatload of spoons.
