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I would venture to guess that there is a considerable number of people who choose to live "off the grid" or like a pioneer but you won't find them posting on the internet.
Some are wackadoodles (as evidenced in the post above) but then you have people who do it because they just prefer the simplicity of that lifestyle.
On facebook, I subscribe to several eco village pages/sites, as well as, sustainable living sites. There are many sites out there. I belong to one, sporadically posting, but informative called Homesteading Today. Get to one site then start linking....
Are you looking for a commune or doing it by yourself ?
My wife and I love history. We love old houses, old cars, old furniture, old music, old movies, etc. Furthermore, we're old enough to see how our society is crumbling... and we think... "how cool would it be to live like it was long ago?".
Thus far, we haven't figured out what our "target year" would be... as in, "we're going to live like it's [year], and the only things we will use that are newer than [year] will be medical technology on an as-needed basis, and things that have become basic necessities of survival in today's America (whatever they might be)".
I watched a video about a family that did this - their target year was 1986. I think they were only intending to do it for one year, and the only new thing they used was a newer car.
The Amish do a good job of it, as I understand... but they tend to clump together such that there is a support group inherent in the area. (Amish areas have stores that sell antique-style farming implements and the like!)
Assuming we're not going to turn Amish, do any of y'all know of anyone who is doing this? If yes, where can I find it? My Google searches turned up very little.
Yeah, Cheektowaga_Chester provides the links here:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cheektowaga_Chester
Yes, there is. It's the forum where all the paranoid doom, revolution, nuke shelter, bug out survivalists post.
In the 1970's my wife and I lived in this tipi (see the bear?) for two years on my property in the mountains in Northern Idaho close to the Canadian border. We had no running water and no electricity and only a campfire for cooking. We did have an outhouse. We had to walk a mile through the woods everyday to get to our vehicle to drive 25 miles to work. It was snowshoes during the winter months. Temps would regularly drop below zero in dead winter. During the summer we bathed in the nearby river. In the cold months we took showers at a country store that rented showers and towels for a dollar. Does this qualify?
Sidenote: Both of our sons were born there. But by that time I had built a 'primitive' cabin. We did upgrade to a wood burning stove.
That's nifty. One thing I've always wondered about, regarding tipis - do you heat them with a fire in the center? If yes, are they designed such that airflow across the top will take the smoke out? If yes to that one, it would stand to reason that outside air has to circulate in through the bottom. Wouldn't that make sleeping somewhat uncomfortable on unusually cold winter nights?
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Originally Posted by ChrisC
I've been working toward this for quite a few years. it's a slow process. Interesting you say that your favorite years are around the turn of the last century--mine too! I've done a lot of reading on the "everyday history" (lifestyles and daily living) from colonial America up through the 1920's. I'd fit right in at about 1880 up to the 1920s.
I'm not sure that I'm married to that era, but I guess it would depend upon how many modern conveniences I'm willing to give up. The further back one goes, the more conveniences are gone. I've often said that the time period immediately after the Civil War in the 1860's would be a good target time... or, heck, if we forget about slavery, since it didn't exist in every state anyway prior to the Civil War, maybe a bit further back.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ChrisC
As for our new/emerging technology today... I lost interest about 30 years ago. And after that I lost interest in even much of the technology that was around when I was a kid in the 1970s. I look at much of what we have today as nuisance. Yes, I have this computer (at one time I was actually a computer major in college), but I seriously wish there were no such things. I've never liked telephones. Cars drive me insane these days. Loud, obnoxious noises of modern "technology" drives me nuts. If you are a person with serenity at the top of your life priorities, you are living in the wrong era. That's certainly me.
You must be my twin brother from another mother. I was a computer major also. At one time, I could blow my peers' minds with the programs I created. I started losing interest in 2002 when it became obvious that all of my advanced technological know-how did not get me ahead in life. I have never had a "smart phone" and I wish I could get rid of the cell phone I do have. Cars drive me insane too... not so much the machines themselves but the driving experience. (Of course, I've been getting sick and tired of my vehicles having problems because of the failure of some computerized part. My first car didn't have any computerized parts because it was from 1972, and it was still running well at 122,000 miles by the time it got wrecked in an accident.)
I sure do like serenity. My wife and I like to look up at the stars at night when we're in a remote location - something we couldn't do when we lived in a well-lit urban area. Even now, I'm sitting in her old bedroom at her parents' house, which is located on a main road, and all I hear is cars going past on the road outside.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ChrisC
As for people living a past lifestyle, they are around, but it's typically in the form of "re-enactors."
That's something we've considered doing as a profession. I wonder how you get into it...
Quote:
Originally Posted by ChrisC
As I said, I've been slowly working toward a simpler, less "techie" lifestyle. At some point, I won't have this computer, I won't have a telephone, and if I can find a practical way to do it, I won't even have a car (at least a modern car), and I won't have a lot of things that I consider clutter and unwanted complications to life.
Anyway, good luck. Don't listen to the people who will constantly bash your goals. Just smile at them and say, "to each his/her own."
Not long ago, I boarded a plane for Omaha so I could pick up a car I bought. Each and every last passenger who was in his/her seat by the time I got on the plane was furiously banging away on some touch-screen communication device. I sat down, looked out the window at the sunrise, and thought... "Right now, some Amish person is taking a leisurely buggy ride to the farm supplies store after eating a delicious and nutritious home-cooked breakfast."
I tried repping you again but apparently I've done that too much...
Quote:
Originally Posted by ChrisC
Couple of more thoughts on this topic, since it's one of my favorite subjects to discuss:
If, like me, you question the direction our technology has taken us and the direction society has gone in general, keep in mind that the "seeds" of our modern world were actually planted in the late Victorian era to a large extent (the period from about 1870 through the Edwardian era of the 1910s). The technological advances exploded, the social climate "exploded," the idea of consumerism exploded, the concept of specialization in the workforce really took hold, the migration from largely rural/small town to largely urban really took off. After reading more extensively on this era, I sort of have a love/hate relationship.
You may be right. Like I said, for me it's a matter of what I could live without. Perhaps if I do more research, I will find that I'd rather live in an era before such seeds were planted.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ChrisC
The Victorian Queen Anne style, Second Empire, Gothic Revival, and similar styles were simply wonderful. Those old homes have an aura and beauty that hasn't been matched since.
And will never be matched henceforth, due to building code regulations. (Strangely enough, though, the government doesn't seem to recognize how tough those old houses were. If they were so poorly built, and the "proper way to build", as evidenced by the modern building code, would be horrifically infracted were some modern builder to construct a home to common 1880's spec, why is it that so many of them are still standing today?)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cheektowaga_Chester
Yes, there is. It's the forum where all the paranoid doom, revolution, nuke shelter, bug out survivalists post.
You have to admit, hard times are coming. When we're getting into debt by more than $1,000,000,000,000 per year and our WONDERFUL government prints money like it's going out of style... just as the tip of the iceberg... it's easy enough to see how that can't last forever. When ~50% of the country supports the other ~50% and becomes more restless about doing so by the day, that's not sustainable.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AnnieA
On facebook, I subscribe to several eco village pages/sites, as well as, sustainable living sites. There are many sites out there. I belong to one, sporadically posting, but informative called Homesteading Today. Get to one site then start linking....
Are you looking for a commune or doing it by yourself ?
A commune would be great, but I don't know if I could live with people of that ilk. They tend to be WEIRD, if what I read is correct. I'm not entirely normal myself, but let's just say that I lack sufficient information. If I could live on a commune with like-minded people who weren't psycho, that'd be ideal. After all, it doesn't have to be a cloistered community - just a bunch of people living in the same area the same way, supporting each other in the lifestyle... sort of like the Amish do.
Googling for information about how to live in the past. Sounds a bit weird. Googling about how to do without Google, sort of.
I don't see anything wrong with using the portions of modern technology that you wish to use, and avoiding others. You would probably use modern technology to build a residence that would not need the portions you didn't want.
Tumbleweed Houses has some ideas, if you want to go small: Cottages
Here's one man's custom approach to being laid off:
The fire is indeed in the middle and the cold air does come from the bottom. One has to leave a little space at the bottom so the air can come in. But, on the inside there is a liner that comes all the way down to the ground. The air travels up and between the outside fabric and the inside liner. The heat from the campfire will keep the inside air warm. The smoke travels up and out of the top where the poles cross. The rain runs down the poles to the ground. The poles have to be very slick so as not to drip inside before it reaches the ground. The inside liner is attached to the poles with a rope that is wrapped one time around each pole. Two small sticks have to be place on the bottom side if each pole where the rope wraps in order to leave a gap for the rain to run down.
If I recall, someone wanted to know why we lived like that. Well my wife (ex) was part Native American and wanted to experience what her ancestors experienced. So we did but we did have a vehicle but one mile was as close as we could get from about late October to about April, or so. They did not. We did have a garden and free access to water in town where I worked. Most of the wood for the cabin was bardered. I did welding jobs in exchange for free lumber. Both of my sons were born there, in the cabin.
Be careful what you wish for and make sure you aren't looking at Amish through idealist rose colored glasses.
I lived in one of the largest Amish communities in the world, had neighbors of the oldest and most strict Amish orders. They are the hardest working people alive in the US today. They work from sun up to sun down doing hard manual labor. Families have upwards of 10 children, and each child is there to help with labor. My neighbor girls would be outside at 8 am weeding gardens, using manual push mowers, hand washing laundry and scrubbing windows...all barefoot with small children in-tow.
The men spend days plowing fields with horses, working in the hot sun, raising livestock and putting up loose hay by hand until a massive bank-barn was filled to the roof.
It is back breaking work.
The Amish I knew all yearned to have modern conveniences, but confided in me that their elders kept very tight reigns on them. They are heavily controlled by elders and their religious institutions in order to keep them Amish and prevent them from having too much English contact.
I used to have 2 sisters stay at my home to help out when I was gone, and they were in pure heaven. Having running water, a stove, heat, a refrigerator, a washing machine - those are all things we take for granted. They were soooo thankful and excited just to be able to take a warm bath in my tub. Their eyes would light up with the hugest excited smiles when I would ask them to house sit for me; for them, it was literally like taking a vacation of a lifetime.
I felt so bad the last time they stayed before I moved. They rode their horse to the grocery store, and when I returned, they had my entire freezer filled with junk food and ice cream. Something as simple as being able to buy ice cream and keep food chilled was a luxury for them. They were amazed with my microwave, and before they left the last time, they microwaved and entire box of frozen fish sticks, placed the sticks in between slices of white bread and took their fish stick sandwiches home in the buggy with them.
These people live in tight knit communities and are very dependent on those communities because of the harsh way of life. Self-sufficiency is a bit of an oxymoron, because in reality you need every bit of support you can get when it comes to living without modern conveniences to help you along.
Living with the Amish definitely teaches you to appreciate the little things we take for granted...
No fake bear, my friend. That pic was taken in about 1978 and has been in a box in a storage room for almost 35 years. I cropped it to bring the bear closer. She was about 60 ft. from me when I took the shot. Our neighbor lady killed it the next day. About 10 minutes before the pic was taken it was on my front porch. The bears were a real nuisance and can be very dangerous if provoked. We had a problem with them tearing the tipi to get to our food while we were at work in town. Hense the building of the cabin.
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Why is this still in the history forum? It belongs in the survivalist/prepper forum.
