Ever lived "old school" in the woods? Even temporarily? (acres, house)

[thatguydownsouth]

So to frame the background I am an Eagle scout and have spent my fair share of camping trips eating nothing but ramen and granola bars while backpacking through the blue ridge etc. While working at my 9-5 accounting job I often find myself harking back to those imaginary days where I could live in a log cabin in the woods trapping for fur and roasting stew over my fireplace and trading with locals. Have any of you ever lived completely off of the grid like this before? Im thinking candles for light, whittling for entertainment, etc? It would obviously by a hard life but there is something romantic about the notion of it..

[AK-Cathy]

Yes to a degree.

I spent a summer in a back to the earth group (commune) in the mountains in Arkansas in the late 70s. We did have commercial power but only to one building, a community meeting building where no one lived. We all lived in cabins or sheds and one dilapidated school bus of varying levels of comfort and size. I lived in the "girl's" cabin shared by four women in our late teens/early 20s.

We hauled water from the creek or springs, chopped wood to heat water and cook food, did wash in a old thrash washer, line dried clothes, took baths in a #2 washtub, used an outhouse, grew a communal garden, milked goats and one dairy cow, gathered eggs. Bought supplies monthly when we sold eggs in town. Entertainment was reading or sing-alongs as several residents played instruments. Several women had babies there with a mid-wife in attendance. It was a very interesting experience but the community wasn't my "tribe" as I was the "Yankee" girl.

It's as close as anyone here likely has but not for as long of a time.

[MTSilvertip]

Originally Posted by thatguydownsouth

So to frame the background I am an Eagle scout and have spent my fair share of camping trips eating nothing but ramen and granola bars while backpacking through the blue ridge etc. While working at my 9-5 accounting job I often find myself harking back to those imaginary days where I could live in a log cabin in the woods trapping for fur and roasting stew over my fireplace and trading with locals. Have any of you ever lived completely off of the grid like this before? Im thinking candles for light, whittling for entertainment, etc? It would obviously by a hard life but there is something romantic about the notion of it..

Spent most of my formative years as a kid living that way, except we had some tractors and sometimes we had power, (depending on if the lines were actually up)


At 12 years old I spent all summer in a line camp herding cattle on my own. No power, had a transistor radio, but could only listen for a short time because I didn't have a lot of batteries.


It sounds romantic, in reality it's nonstop work. Keeping wood for the fire, cooking, packing water, heating water to wash everything, trying to keep the mice and other varmints out of your food, in summer, you use your stove ash to try and keep the flies down in the outhouse, but it doesn't work.
Don't stay up after dark because you only have so much kerosene and candles, and you may need it if there's an emergency at night when something attacks your stock. I didn't have time to whittle to pass the time because if I wasn't working the stock, I was trying to keep up repairs on my equipment. Trying to take care of stock is a full time job in itself, but when there are 0 amenities, it's tougher.


Winter would be much worse because of the weather. If you weren't wet nursing a bunch of dumb cows, it would be easier, but complete silence for months on end can drive you bonkers. While I ran a trap line all during high school, it would be really tough to do it now because I'm not as young as I used to be, and I also understand the dangers inherent in living in tough country.


I have a cabin now that is way off the grid, and it's a lot of fun to go there and get away for a couple weeks, still no running water and still has an outhouse, no good signals for radio or cell phones, I love it up there and plan on spending a lot of time there after retirement in about 10 years or so, but to live that way all the time is just flat work.


The older I get, there is a nostalgia about it, and since I can get away from it, I enjoy digging out creeks and hauling water in a bucket, chopping wood, I now have more access to mouse and bear proof storage so that really helps, but now it isn't a matter of survival but my choice so it's a lot more fun. Plus, I don't have to depend on my cows or trapping to be able to buy food when Ma Nature turns rough. Starvation is always a possibility when you are living hard, as are diseases and injuries that keep you from collecting food.


It's a grand dream, but reality bites even though there are a lot of benefits, there are a lot of drawbacks as well you need to be well prepared for before doing that kind of thing.


I love living primitive at my cabin, but I have a lifetime of experience to draw on. For someone just coming in, you need a backup plan.

[Nor'Eastah]

Right after I retired 3 years ago, two male relatives and I came up here to rural Maine to build a small ranch house on the 33 acres I had bought. It was tough work, as there was land clearing and building up a narrow driveway to be done.

The property was, and still is, off the electric grid. We arrived there in May, and by October had the site work done, and the house mostly finished. We were 3 guys out in the middle of nowhere. 2 of us were staying in a 30 foot travel trailer, and the 3rd was living in a 5th wheel camper. We all grew beards, and our hygiene wasn't the best...but who was around to care?

We lit with propane lanterns, cooked mostly over a campfire, peed in the woods, and would go into town for groceries and laundromat. So I guess we had it pretty easy. Being summer, we'd be out there tanned, bearded and bare-chested. Just three crazy old guys livin' it up, for probably the last time in our lives!

When I got home to RI, my wife was horrified! She made me get rid of the beard, and I gotta admit that it took some getting used to, after 6 months in the woods, to using a flush toilet, flipping a switch for light, and eating grub cooked indoors.

But it was fun while it lasted!

[Submariner]

I have neighbors who live like that. Sometimes I see them thumbing a ride into town, I give any of them rides when I see them.

[ognend]

Never. Well, for 10 days tent camping and riding our horses in Wind River area of Wyoming. I would never live like that though - my parents are both educated, my brother is educated, my mother and father in law were educated, my wife and I are educated professionals. I feel I deserve a cushy life (if I am willing to work for it of course). If my choices were only "live like an animal in the woods" but not have to work or live a good life somewhere else but I have to break my back working (I am exaggerating, I do not do manual labor unless it is by choice), I will take the latter any time I do not like to mix with people who live the former lifestyle either.

I think one of the biggest frauds that is sold to working people in the city is the "back to the land" thing and the kumba-ya that apparently comes afterwards. Sitting in a meadow, smelling flowers, birds chirping, you working the land.... Yeah, right . It's a whole industry of books that tell you how to do it and what to do and promise all sorts of stuff. But it all boils down to this: none of them tell you that you need a big phat bank account to get started and maintain the lifestyle in a rural/woods area. No jobs there, not many services etc. etc.

For me self-sufficiency has grown and evolved to be a good, clean lifestyle with home grown food, honey etc. on a nice, clean estate I can be proud of, in a pretty place, powered by solar/wind/whatever and funded by a job from home over the Internet, no mortgages needed.

[jamies]

Pretty much. When I was a teenager my family fell on hard times and my mom couldn't get work. We moved into a tent in the forest and mostly lived off the land for about eight months, from May until December (and yes it snowed). Nowadays the state probably would have taken us and put us in jail or something, for our own "good."

But we shot our food, dammed up the creek and fished up all the stocked trout before they could get downstream to the fly fishing tourists. Everyday was hunting season, on anything that moved and was edible. The rule being... don't get caught. But we didn't waste anything. What we couldn't eat we sold to a couple of local restaurants "no questions asked."

OK, I get the conservation aspects now that I'm older. But at the time, at age 17, with no govt assistance, depleting the deer herd wasn't big on our priority list. Eating was.

I kind of liked it. One day I was hiking down the four mile dirt road to our camp and I realized I could go anywhere and do anything and I didn't need anything beyond my knife, guns and knowledge of living off the land.

And this my friends is why my idea of "camping" now is the Presidential Suite of whatever hotel I'm staying in.

[bigpaul]

I lived on a small piece of land for 12 years in an old wooden caravan/trailer, no mains services, water from the river, cooking on a camp fire in the summer and an old paraffin(kerosene?) stove in the winter, storm lanterns(paraffin again) for light, toilet was a hole in the ground, bath was the river, grew all my own fruit and veg, shot rabbits and squirrels for meat. loved every minute of it, would do it again given half a chance.

[509]

Originally Posted by thatguydownsouth

So to frame the background I am an Eagle scout and have spent my fair share of camping trips eating nothing but ramen and granola bars while backpacking through the blue ridge etc. While working at my 9-5 accounting job I often find myself harking back to those imaginary days where I could live in a log cabin in the woods trapping for fur and roasting stew over my fireplace and trading with locals. Have any of you ever lived completely off of the grid like this before? Im thinking candles for light, whittling for entertainment, etc? It would obviously by a hard life but there is something romantic about the notion of it..

Did this for several summers working in the middle of somewhere. No cabin, we just used a wall tent with a cook stove in it.

At one spot, we did run several hundred feet of garden hose up a creek so we had running water!!! These were the days before solar showers so all those were cold.

The hardest part was working eight hours a day in the rain and cold and then coming home to cook dinner and try to warm up.

Did enjoy the days when the helicopter brought the mail. Sort of like Christmas in July.

Funny though, in all that time I never did have a imaginary dream about working as a 9-5 accountant in the city.

My mother, however, wondered why I got the degree from one best public universities in the world so I "could sleep on the ground". She never got it, that it was that degree that gave me an education and a job where I "could sleep on the ground".

Those were great memories. We do have an off-grid house these days. However, it is hardly "basic". You can rent it for $300/night.

[Fat Freddy]

Originally Posted by thatguydownsouth

Have any of you ever lived completely off of the grid like this before? Im thinking candles for light, whittling for entertainment, etc? It would obviously by a hard life but there is something romantic about the notion of it..

Thousands of Americans enjoy this Romantic Notion.

They are called "The Homeless".