Off-Grid Living for Agrarians, Part 10
This part is going to eventually be a continuation of the discussion on food and crop preservation, etc., but I have some things to say first (are you surprised?). I have appreciated all the great comments and emails about this series. I think one of the most interesting things to me has been so many people who have identified that the philosophy of "off-grid" living we talk about in this series is so radically different than that which is portrayed in the off-grid magazines and books. As I've said, so many people think of "off-grid" living as merely a way to avoid paying utility bills, or as a way to insulate oneself against disasters or emergencies, or as an eco-friendly lifestyle choice. The philosophy we are espousing is so fundamentally different than most people expect, it makes it necessary that I constantly (and in each part) remind everyone of the differences. First, we believe that this life (particularly of Agrarian Separatism) is one that God commands; and second, we believe that this way of living is the only way to preserve and maintain our family and our Christianity in the face of a world bent on destroying it and us. Our focus on separation, simplicity, and sustainability - means that many of the biggest features of what the world considers "off-grid living" are not going to be part of our long-term plans. Every single thing has to be questioned to see if it actually fits into our model. Every single process needs to be measured against these measuring sticks (and note that they are all interwoven/interdependent):
1. Does it increase or maintain our separation? Does it require more and more syncretism with the world, or less and less? If it requires constant maintenance and expense, is that requirement going to increase my dependence on the world and the world's systems? Does any item, product, worldview, or practice require continued worldly input? Do I have to work away from my land in order to support it?
2. Is it simple? Is it less complicated and involved, less likely to break or break down and need worldly attention, less gaudy, ostentatious, prideful, showy?
3. Is it sustainable? How much continued cost, expense, outside material, money, etc. will it take to maintain or continue? Can I produce it here, or can I produce what it takes to produce it here? Can I continue to use it/do it/practice it if the world system around us collapses? And how dependent am I on the world for it?
Of course all three of these measuring sticks are founded on the over-riding principle "Is it moral and Biblical?", but we will expect that you already have accepted that one premise. Now, here I need to stop and deal with some objections.
(Note, I'm not going to even begin to deal with the "be in the world, but not of it" myth perpetuated by false "christianity" today. I've handled that objection handily in my 'separation' articles.)
If there is anything I am an expert on it is not so much off-grid agrarianism as it is rationalizations, excuses, and false arguments. I'm an expert because I've used them all, and I've examined them all very, very closely. Right now, some of you folks reading this are saying "Hey, we're always going to need to have some contact with the world! You yourself have said, Bunker, that you cannot make sponges, salt, or aluminum foil, so you are going to have to buy some things!". Alright, granted. But the point can be taken in two directions, one which is illegitimate and one which is legitimate. If the reader says, "We must always have contact with the world, so we might as well have more contact than less", or, "since we must always buy some things, why not buy as much as possible?", then he has become illogical and he might as well go back to the world and maintain his life as a cog in a machine. This type of argument is made all of the time. People read what I write and they'll say, "Well, if YOU aren't living this completely separated hermit life with absolutely no contact with the outside world, making all your own equipment, growing 100% of your own food - then who are YOU to preach to me? We're all dependent on the world.... etc., etc., etc." Let's look at all the folly that can be derived from this type of argument. I'll give some examples:
"Almost every toothbrush has some small, microscopic amount of fecal coliform bacteria on it - so.... we might as well eat feces".
"Since many things we eat have ingredients which would be poisonous in large amounts or if delivered in certain ways, and we eat them anyway, then eating and drinking poison is perfectly fine in any amount" (for example, many of the fruit and nuts we eat have small and healthy amounts of cyanide in them, therefore drinking a glass of cyanide would be perfectly fine).
"Since we must all have contact/business/discourse with the world, then any contact/business/discourse with the world is authorized and acceptable to God".
These fallacies generally collide in the person making rationalizations with another great error - that of making oneself the standard. This fallacy basically works out like this:
"Everyone to the right of me is too far to the right, and everyone to the left of me is too far to the left, therefore I am the standard", or in politics, "Everyone to the right of me is a fascist, and everyone to the left of me is a communist".
This fallacy works out in Separatism and Agrarianism like this, "I am the standard, therefore anyone more separated than me is anywhere from 'a bit extreme', to 'violating God's commandment to go out into the world and evangelize, create disciples, etc.'"
Most dangerously, these illogical fallacies can collide in the adherent to right Biblical doctrines like Predestination, etc. and can be twisted into un-Biblical errors like Fatalistic Determinism, which would say something like "Well, this is where God has us now, therefore this is where God wants us".
I plan on adding an "answering objections and logical fallacies" section towards the end of this series which will go over all of this again, but I need to point out this here because I know the way the mind works, and I know the rationalizations the mind makes against the loss of comfort, status, etc. Especially in women (sorry ladies) but in all people, there lies a vast army of self-defense and rationalization that constantly wars against the truth and in defense of the status quo. Women are by nature created to be security and safety driven. The God-given nurturing and protection devices built into a woman are used by the enemy to rationalize sin and disobedience, just as the God-given desire in men for control and dominion can be used to rationalize immobility, laziness, and the status quo. Now, some few of you may be saying "but I agree with what you have said and the need for agrarianism, separation, simplicity, and God-honoring sustainability". For those who are not actively arguing against the need for separation, simplicity, and sustainability, there can be a more subtle foe at work. A very distinct truth can be taken to a false conclusion. Arguments like "I'm alright for right now", "look how far we've come", "this is going to take generations", "It's a process, so my speed is as good as any" can just as easily be used to rationalize disobedience. I don't mean to pick on any particular group of people, but those who still have one foot in the world and one foot in this life are the most susceptible to the disease of sinful rationalization and immobility. We all have to be on our guard against the enemy who, I can assure you, does NOT want you to go down this path.
Now, the reason I went off on that little rant is to emphasize that our philosophy is fundamentally different than that of those who produce most of the materials for off-grid living. I read many homesteading, agrarian, back woods, country style magazines, periodicals, and blogs, and there is much value in them. Any number of abilities, skills, and secrets can be learned by perusing their pages. However, there is always the danger that we will forget our fundamental philosophy and that we will get off track if we are not constantly watching and on guard. Most of the magazines push "off-grid" sustainable living as just a very great alternative, and as a way to accomplish self-sufficiency or ecological protection - but they never explain just HOW they are accomplishing these things, and they rarely explain how you are going to get certain necessary items if the whole system that supports your system crashes. For example, if you put in a very humble, inexpensive, and easily maintained solar power system just for some lights, fans, etc., and that system utilizes batteries - then the question is self-evident... "What happens to my system if I cannot get batteries?". This leads to the question, "What happens to me and my family if I am dependent on this system?". Nothing is inherently wrong (at all) with a solar power system (I have one), unless we are at all dependent on it and if the loss of it will destroy our ability to continue in our work and lives. So simplicity and separation are equally balanced with sustainability, and vice versa. Refer back to the earlier argument on intermediate means for more detail.
Ok, so see how nice this is for me? I have a trapped audience. By now everyone is screaming - "enough of the philosophy, talk about canning!".
Canning
Canning gets its own subtitle, but don't think there won't be any agrarian separatist philosophy in it, because there will be. Because, as you know, this is not a series about HOW TO DO things. It is a series about HOW TO THINK. If we think correctly, we will usually do correctly. So here goes... Some people, when I have written about canning in the past, are a bit confused by what we mean by that. By canning we should say "jarring", since the term "can" has changed and now makes people think about tin or metal cans - when for most people who store food, "canning" means "to preserve food for long term storage by preparing it in cans or jars and utilizing heat and/or pressure"; and for most of us, "canning" means JARS and not actual metal cans. That is an interesting commentary on how language has changed. Because "jarring" came first. Storing in metal cans happened much later, and still is mainly done by industrial means and in corporate food preservation, not too much by individuals due to its prohibitive cost. Canning is a relatively new food preservation phenomenon which was basically unheard of until the French Revolution, so, as far as Agrarian skills go, canning is not an automatic default option. It is a relative new thing. Long-term storage of fresh food in jars, cans, pouches, or containers, came about because of military necessity, not because European agrarians needed or developed it. Large bodies of armies, moving across lands that had already been stripped for dozens of years by preceding armies and endless wars, needed food supplies that could be carted along with the army. In the dark and middle ages, an army provided for itself and foraged (or stole) what it needed along the way. By the 1700's, there wasn't a whole lot left to steal, and many rural, town, and village people had become experts in keeping their "stuff" from marauding armies. A large French newspaper, motivated by the French government, offered a huge monetary reward to anyone who could invent a way to store large quantities of food cheaply. In 1809 a French scientist noted that food stored in jars and kept airtight stored a lot longer than those that were not. No one knew why for another 50 years when Pasteur proved that microbes were what was causing spoilage. Soon it was learned that killing the microbes would make the food stay good for a very long time, and the process of "canning" was born. All of this is to say that a lot of times we off-gridders default to something thinking it is the only way to do it, since our grandparents and their parents did it. Hey, I'm all for canning - my family cans all the time, and we will continue to do so, but canning, if looked at logically and unemotionally, does not completely fit all of the criteria we talked about above. There is always a continuous need for canning jars, lids, and bands - and pressure canning, particularly, is subject to disruption if we are unable to replace the pressure canner or its parts. Canning, then, falls into the category of "intermediate means". We will continue to can foods, and to use that resource as long as we can, but if we are inordinately dependent on canning for our continued survival, then we put ourselves at risk. You may put up quite a few spare bands and lids (like we do), and even store a spare canner, but in reality if any disruption goes on long enough, you will have to abandon canning as a means of food preservation. Ok, so along with our canning functions, we need to learn some of the more primitive methods of food preservation, like using salt, oils, sugar, honey, lard, etc., along with root cellaring, smoking, curing, drying, and other means of keeping our food for long periods of time. We also ought to consider some of the other ideas in this series, like relying on foods that don't require as much preparation or storage. Root crops can often be kept in the ground through the winter, and with the addition of root cellars, many food staples can be kept without expensive and time-consuming preservation techniques. We need to consider how Agrarians in past centuries (before the advent of modern techniques) were able to survive and thrive without these newer means. There is nothing inherently wrong with technology or progress. Nothing is bad just because it is new (except doctrine). But if we constantly weigh every process or product against our scale of separation, simplification, and sustainability, we will learn to go past the easy and immediate answers and look for longer term answers. If you are able to can and store a year or two supply of food, great! Use that year or two to learn the older, more permanent storage techniques, and acquire the skill to use them. Then you can feel free to can all you like, since you will be able to NOT can if you need to.
I've already mentioned it but I've been surprised at how many people really had no idea you could can meat. Freezers have been a default option for so many for so long, that not using them seems strange and bizarre - even to some very separated agrarians. In our walk, we hope to be learning and perfecting the arts of smoking, curing, potting, etc. very soon, and to teach it diligently to our children.
See you in the next part!
Michael Bunker
Kill the Rabbit, Kill the Rabbit
2/29/08 - 6th Day - After Breakfast. Preparation of the Sabbath. Just a short post this morning before I continue work on Part 10 of the Off-Grid Living for Agrarians series. Yesterday I taught Tracy how to butcher her first meat rabbit. We had planned on it for about a week, and we decided to do it on Thursday, then, in the morning, she came to tell me that she had just had 7 more kits born. This brings to 10 the number of fairly new kits she has, and I think she has somewhere around 15 rabbits now total. Well, when the rabbits start to multiply like that it is time to either start selling them, or start butchering them. The rabbit we butchered was not one of those we had raised. The Sustaire's had an old buck that wasn't "doing his job" so we gave them one of our good productive males for the old buck so that they could start their production. This is the rabbit who would serve in our butchering class. Mary Gurau came over and we butchered up "Mr. Buffalo" as he was called. In general, the rabbit is easier to kill and clean than a chicken, though someone who is good at any one of them can do it pretty fast. I had never killed and cleaned a commercial meat rabbit, so it was a new deal for me. The skin was pretty tough and it is hard to do any fine knife work when the fur is so thick, but we finally got it done. I think we are going to prepare it today - and I haven't figured out which way to cook it yet. I've cooked and eaten rabbit a lot of different ways, but this is the first commercial meat rabbit we have cooked, so it will be an adventure.
Finally it seems some moisture is moving in from the gulf, so we might get some rain before Monday. It has been very dry and we have had high winds adding to the fire danger.
Well, I have to get to work. Y'all check back in a few hours for Part 10!
Michael
Short Intermission
2/28/08 - 5th Day - After Breakfast. I hate to interrupt the Off-Grid Living series in order to update y'all on the ol' homestead, but I will anyway. Daytime temperatures have been from mild to warm, but we did get down to the mid 20's yesterday morning. It was in the 70's by mid-day though. Today is supposed to be warmer, but we have had this breezy/windy situation going on for a week and it will probably continue today. Right now it is sunny and nearing 50 and I am about to get started out in the garden.
Yesterday Danielle was off doing laundry so Tracy continued canning Turkey and Bacon all the day long. I think we got all the Turkey canned, but we have more bacon to do. Robert, Jennifer and I worked on the garden... well... I worked on the garden and Robert and Jennifer made trips up to the front of the land with a wheelbarrow to get a lot of the well-aged manure up there. We have a LOT of manure to move. It looks like all of my plants made it through the cold night the other night, but the wind is taking a toll on some of my lettuce. Everything else is looking really good. I still have to move some of my seedlings and three of my tomatoes in and out of the house each day, but I hope to have some of the tomatoes planted and in the wall 'o waters by tomorrow sometime.
I've been getting reports that the other gardens in the community are moving along too, and from reading the Ante's blog I can see that their seedlings are doing well. If I get the third double-dug/raised bed done today I might post a picture tomorrow, but we'll see.
I did buy some asparagus crowns for an asparagus bed - I just have to figure out where to put it.
Anyway, I should be working on Part 10 of the Off-Grid Agrarian series later today. Make sure to comment and let me know what you think I should cover or if you have any questions.
Your servant in Christ Jesus,
Michael Bunker
Off-Grid Living for Agrarians, Part 9
This section, which is still a part of the discussion on homestead food, will be about preserving and keeping the harvest or crop. It will likely take several parts to discuss this topic fully. This series is really not very cleverly organized or laid out - but it has been a bit difficult to maintain the balance that is necessary for folks who are really new to this concept. As I've said several times, the concept of moving from a colonized urban or suburban worldly life to an off-grid agrarian life can be very overwhelming - even debilitating. I can tell you that there always seems to be more to do and more to know, and sometimes (certainly when you first start) it can seem like too much. So in writing this series, I am trying to balance some good philosophy in order to help people start out and avoid some really bad ideas out there, and I am also trying to be an encouragement that this is really something that you can and ought to do. Basically this series is about a right and good philosophy, though it is sprinkled with some very general ideas and suggestions.
I am going to review a little here. Remember that there are several different (and many very wrong) ideas about how to move into a life of off-grid agrarian living. Usually the first concept that is visualized when someone hears "off-grid" is that of alternative energy. In other words the idea here is to live basically in the same manner (with some lifestyle changes) and with the same "conveniences", but without being connected to the grid. So in this view, you would move into some alternative energy like solar, wind, or a combination of the two - and with that you would provide electricity for lights, freezers, refrigerators, and maybe even TV's and game consoles. Ok, so this is NOT what I am talking about in this series. It is so difficult for the average person to conceive of a life without these things, that this type of thinking is usually prominent at the beginning. Add the overwhelming cost of doing this type of thing to the idea of buying land, building a house, gardens, fields, tractors, etc. and you can see why most people convince themselves that this is either not doable, or at the least it will take several generations to get it done. Basically, without trying to offend anyone, this philosophy is the idea of moving to the Promised Land while taking Egypt with me. The first questions we normally get from folks run along these lines:
How will I power my power tools?
How do you keep food frozen?
How do you run lights and fans?
What about air-conditioning?
What about keeping milk, eggs, and drinks cold?
If you will remember back to the first part of this series, I mentioned that not one of these things would have even been a question in the minds of our great-grandparents. Prior to the ready availability of cheap and easy grid power, none of these things were a problem or a concern. People lived generation after generation without even considering that it might be a good idea to freeze meat for years on end, or that you might want to drop the temperature 30 degrees during the day, or that somehow ketchup and mustard need to be kept a degree or two above freezing. Add this to the fact that the average modernized suburbanite is weighted down with hundreds upon hundreds of modern time and space saving devices, each neatly fitted with a cord that plugs into a tiny receptacle in the wall - which connects all such labor and time saving devices into an enormous world-wide electrical beast - which soothes and eases each man and woman throughout their day so that they are never disquieted, unnerved, or uncomfortable, and so that they slide peacefully, easily and nonchalantly into the pit.
That is all to say that our philosophy ought always to be to simplify, downsize, and eliminate. We want to learn the old ways, not just because they are old, or because they are historical, but because they work and because they are sustainable. I do not mean "sustainable" in quite the way the modern eco-friendly folks do, though there is something to that as well; I mean "sustainable" in its literal meaning - we learn these ways because we will be able to continue in them even if the grid beast collapses and dies. We can continue in these ways without undue intercourse with a corrupt and dying world, and without being stained or harmed by too much dependence on worldly necessities. There really is no reason that you cannot grind your own coffee and wheat. There really is no reason why you need your pickle relish to be maintained at 35 degrees. There really is no valid reason to keep food frozen to 0 degrees for long periods of time. Your great-grandma didn't need a 48 inch fan or TV screen, and neither do you. Your great-granddaddy didn't need a perpetual 72 degrees in every room he entered and every minute of his life, and neither do you. The point is that we ought to get past that thinking, and when you do so, you will find that MOST of the costs and energy of moving off-grid is eliminated along with the myths and bulwarks in the mind of the colonized. If you realize that you can do the things you want to do with hard work and your own labor without paying $24,000 for an off-grid solar power system, then you just saved $24,000 and all you have to do now is learn to replace STUFF with SKILL and KNOW-HOW.
Ok, when it comes to the biggest bulwarks in the mind - I would say that freezers and refrigerators are way up there, and since we have been talking here in the last few parts about food production, the question arises - how do you store the food you produce? Well first, I'll tell you how the old-timers did it - the folks who first settled this land...
Root crops (some of the first planted and harvested) were kept in a root cellar. The root cellar was usually the first project started and completed on the land, and for good reason. When folks first came into this area of Texas they were facing a sometimes harsh climate (during the heat of summer), and though there were oaks and other trees for building, the days could get downright HOT during the 104 degree sweltering summer days while the house was being built. So the first construction was a hand-dug root cellar. There is one, probably originally built in the 30's or 40's, still existent up at the front of our property. The first excavations were basically trenches, and the width depended on how it was to be used. If a young couple or young family planned on living in it while they were building a house, the trench may be as big as 4-5 feet wide. Sometimes the original hole was dug only 5 or 6 feet deep. So you can see it didn't take long to build. The earliest "dug-outs" were really just rock-lined trenches that were covered with heavy branches and beams, then some of them would have been covered with 6-12 inches of dirt or sod. That was it. The family would live in there for awhile while the homestead was being started. Usually the next thing to go in would be the gardens and animal pens, then, when food production was up and running, the barn would be built, and finally, after that, the house building would begin. The "dug-out" would get a door and would become the first cool storage or root cellar. When the barns and the house were built, sometimes they would have a small root cellar dug up underneath them, and here is where your quick foods and condiments would be stored. Remember, ketchup and things like that were not foods that were originally designed to make french fries taste better. Ketchup (or really Catsup) was a way of storing tomatoes from the harvest. It is already designed to maintain food quality at moderate temperatures, so the idea that you need to store condiments in a refrigerator is really a very new myth. While it is true that you don't want to let Mayonnaise get really hot, it is a myth that it must stay refrigerated at 35 degrees in order to stay good. Mayonnaise was a product made from eggs and oil in order to store the egg crop. Mayonnaise is perfectly fine at root cellar temperatures. If you took everything out of the average refrigerator that doesn't need to be kept in there, you would be left with this strange and bizarre ephiphany... most Amerikans keep and feed a money sucking refrigerator for a single primary purpose - in order to have cold drinks and in order not to have to walk a few feet (or lift up a hatch door) to a root cellar to get condiments. I saw a $2100 refrigerator the other day in a store, and I bet it costs every bit of $300 a year to power that monster. Which means that in its lifetime, if interest (nobody has $2100 cash to plop down on a refrigerator, these things are usually built into a house or bought on credit) is included and all other things are taken into the equation, the owner of that refrigerator will likely pay close to $10,000 for cold drinks and cool mayonnaise. And they might even write me and tell me that separation and moving off-grid "takes time and money", etc., and "maybe we'll do it next year". My whole cabin AND root cellar cost less than $10,000. The point is that the cost of doing things the way you are already doing them is WAY more than you can afford, and it is all because of some mythology in thinking and because of colonization in the mind. So a root cellar, even a very simple one, is a much better idea. Some of the folks here in our community started with a small hole in the ground, maybe 3' x 2'; condiments and things would be put into coolers and dropped into the hole in the ground then covered with a board and some hay bales, etc. If ice is bought in bags from town, these coolers would keep milk cold for a week or more. One young couple here on the land used this method to keep milk cold for a baby and a toddler, and as far as I know they are still doing it. It works great. I read a story about a family that dug a small root cellar (maybe 5' x 5') right under their kitchen. They put a trap door on it and they put some thin shelves on the wall and a ladder down into it. They were able to keep all their condiments and almost everything else they used to keep in their refrigerator in there and it worked fine. So, in short, you do not need a refrigerator. Now, there is no problem with having one as an intermediate step, or so long as you know that when you move off-grid you will have to power it somehow; and so long as you know that if the world "system" is interrupted, your refrigerator will likely be one of the first casualties. If you are not dependent on it, and it doesn't stop you or slow you down, then there is no problem with having one. But you do not need it.
What about freezers?
This is a question I got when I was at Homestead Heritage. Agrarians like to store and preserve food, and freezing food is an easy way to preserve it, so how do you run or replace a freezer as an off-grid agrarian? Well, I confess, freezers are nice. If you read the top agrarian or homesteading writers in the magazines, you would think that freezers were actually absolutely necessary and a fact of life. I like to use the freezers mainly for meat storage, since I do not yet have a cold-smoker or an ice-house. But a freezer is really just an intermediate step, and ought not to be relied upon for anything long-term. Really, when you talk about bulwarks or road-blocks in the mind, here is where I have to face facts just like everyone else. I LIKE STEAK... and PORK CHOPS... I don't eat them very often, but I really, really like them. I really can't imagine giving up medium-rare steaks every once in awhile, especially when I have a bunch of cattle on the hoof, and a nice ribeye only costs me less than $2.00 a lb. Ok, back to work here, my mouth was starting to water. So what about freezers? Are they necessary? Well... no, they are not. Like I said, as an intermediate step, they are nice. We have three freezers of different sizes, and right now two of them are not plugged in at all. One is basically a dry storage and we use it to store gallon jugs of purified water. The other is only used when we butcher an animal or when we buy a boatload of some type of meat on sale at the store. We stick stuff in the freezer while we are processing it and canning it. Now, in the old days butchering was done in the winter for this very reason, so planning our butchering can eliminate our need for a freezer. Most butchering ought to be done between November and February (probably December and January here in Central Texas).
Canned meat can be stored in the root cellar, and when a cold-smokehouse is built, meat can be smoked and cured for long-term storage. Meat can also be "potted" - where it is cooked and stacked in a large crock. Each layer is then covered with its own grease or lard until the whole crock is full. Meat preserved this way, and kept fairly cool, could last for months and months. Meat can also be dried and then re-hydrated. Some of the old folks would cut beef or venison into strips and dry-smoke it, then hang it until it was bone dry. It could then be dry stored until it was needed. The night before it was to be used, it would be soaked in water until it had totally re-hydrated, then it could be cooked and used like normal fresh meat.
I want to stop here and make a comment about canned meat. I will engage in a longer conversation about the sustainability of canning in the next part, but for right now I want to deal with the issue of canned meat. I have heard many ignorant persons (people who have never tried it) make sarcastic and negative comments about canned meat. I can tell you from my own experience (and as a meat lover) as someone who eats canned meat several times a weak, that canned meat is very, very good. If you like beef stews with big huge chunks of steak in it, then canned meat is for you. If you like beef stroganof, or pork and rice, etc., then you will really like canned meat. The first canned meat I ever had that didn't come from a store was when I stayed with some friends and they made some venison stew. It tasted EXACTLY like beef stew. It was tender and delicious. Last night for supper Danielle made beef stew from beef we canned a year ago when we bought some roasts on sale. The meat was cubed in about 1 1/2 inch squares and canned. Danielle made stew from our homegrown canned green beans, some veggies left over from earlier in the week, some rice, canned tomatoes, etc. It was really very good. My favorite regular meal right now is pork and rice from our canned pork, and it is a good thing because if there are two things we have a lot of, it is pork and rice. So there is no problem at all with canning meat. It is easy and it preserves very well. As time goes by, more and more of the bulk of our butchered animal is being canned - even hamburger and ground sausage, sausage patties, and bacon. Most mornings we have fried bacon from bacon that we canned, with fresh eggs, fried potatoes, and tortillas or biscuits.
We intend to move towards more curing, cold-smoking, drying, and potting - but for now we are canning most of our meat.
Another long-term solution will be for us to build a springhouse and an icehouse. An icehouse is a very well insulated building, built either below ground, above ground, or in some combination of the two, and designed to store ice for long periods of time. A springhouse is, ideally, a rock or concrete building where cold water from a natural spring or creek is diverted for the purpose of keeping food cold. In the average springhouse, a trough of stone or wood was built into the sides of the walls and the cold moving water would fill the trough. The jars of food, milk, butter, etc. could be placed in the water to stay cold. In our area, a springhouse could be built in conjunction with an icehouse so that the melt runoff from the icehouse could be diverted into the springhouse troughs to keep food and beverages cold.
So, for your notes - smokehouse, springhouse, icehouse. All these were very widely included in many homesteads only a century ago.
Ok, more on food preservation in the next part.
God Bless,
Michael Bunker
Off-Grid Living for Agrarians, Part 8
Continuing in our discussion on food production in Off-Grid Agrarianism. We have previously discussed meat production for the off-grid homestead. Today we will discuss other non-meat food production. Currently (or I guess in the past year we are raising or producing about 20% or less of our yearly non-meat needs. We have not yet raised any grain or dried bean supplies at all. We put up a year supply of green beans last year, and have only consumed about 10% of that because we have a pretty extensive food storage program and we have been rotating out our stored store-bought veggies first. We put up quite a few tomatoes for soups, stews, etc. We have not yet ever produced a potato or root crop, though we intend to do root crops this year. We have produced quite a bit of our herbs in the past, though we will hope to do much better on that this year and in the years to come. Vegetable, Herb/Spice, and grain/bean production ought to be combined with a very intensive home preparedness/food storage program. As you can see, my family has a need to increase our production of these staples.
One of the solutions to our situation is to really work on and emphasize a year-round growing program. In addition to our plans to add a greenhouse and cold-frames, we intend to do some other year-round growing of plants and vegetables that can be grown in our area throughout the fall and winter. We are currently installing double-dug garden beds and raised beds, and we also will be (if the Lord wills) building some 1 acre pens for free-range animal and crop rotation. So you can get a picture of the entire program, we intend (if the Lord allows) to produce some large scale dry bean and seed (oats/wheat/etc.) crops in rotating fields, as well as to move into intensive gardening of vegetables and other staples in order to move towards 100% production of our own supplies. This includes growing enough hay or other crops to feed our animals (those who are not actively participating in free-range or rotation schemes.
One of the first things the potential off-grid family can do is to get an idea of what you use, and how much of it. Sometimes for the gardener, it develops that you just kind of grow what you feel like growing and in an amount that seems right in order to just "have a garden". This is not a good idea. A garden and all growing programs, even for your small homestead, should be planned. Some old favorites or things you just like to have around may have to be sacrificed if they are not solid additions to an overall food supply plan. Vegetable or crops that take up a lot of space, but only produce a small amount of food and only for a short time are usually the first to go. In addition, some other crops that you may never have tried, or that may not currently be a part of your diet, may need to be adopted by you and your family. At present, all of the families here in the communities are getting into the idea of growing large amounts of sweet potatoes. The sweet potato is a great and healthy food source, it can be stored for quite a long time (through the winter), it is a combination of excellent people food, and excellent animal feed. Even though I am a southerner and I have eaten sweet potatoes most of my life, it has never been a "regular" food for me and my family, and we have never grown it. But we are convinced it will provide a basic staple for the family that grows very well in our climate.
My philosophy has always been to pick out 1 (or 2 or 3) major product per year and heavily focus on growing a bunch of that one thing. That product ought to be a) a major food source for your family - something you will eat a lot, b) something that stores or preserves well, and c) something that you can produce WAY more of than you can consume in one year. Last year that product for us was green beans. This year it will be something else, probably onions and 1 or 2 other things I haven't determined yet. Several years ago my big thing was dried beans. We grew several great crops of black and white beans and were able to store a good supply, much of which we subsequently used for seed in the years that followed. Dried beans are a great source of nutrition, and they store exceptionally well. I know that it is cheap and easy to buy and store commercially grown Pinto Beans and other dried beans. I myself have literally tons of them stored, and we eat them for several meals every week. Our main Sabbath meal every week is Pinto Beans. But you really ought to grow most of your beans yourself, because we really have no idea what kind of planting quality the beans we have in storage are. We have planted store bought pinto beans and gotten a crop before, but I certainly would not count on it, and I wouldn't be comfortable relying on being able to continue such a thing using (most likely) hybrid beans. The real answer in our area is going to be black beans and white beans, which grow well, are harvested easily, store easily, and taste great too. We regularly mix up our bean usage between stored Pintos and white beans. I want to emphasize too that if you get a good heritage seed or a good traditional non-hybrid seed for these beans, you can be pretty assured of being able to use all of your storage beans for seed if the need arrives. Your crop can also be nicely stored in 5 gallon buckets in a root cellar or other cool area. A 5 gallon bucket of beans will last a normal sized family for a good while.
As far as garden growing, there are as many opinions as there are growers, and I am still in the learning phase. The main point I want to make though is that I know some excellent gardeners who would make poor subsistence farmers. It is one thing to grow some great veggies or awesome marigolds. It is quite another to purposely work to provide a majority of the food for your family so that you do not have to buy food at stores - which is the goal and ideal of Off-Grid Agrarianism.
Much less space is necessary for a small subsistence farm than most people think. I am convinced that a pretty large family can live and survive, providing near 100% of their own foodstuffs, on only a few acres OR LESS. While I own over 37 acres, my garden is less than 1/8th of an acre. I plan on making more and more land available for tillage every year, but I believe I can provide more than enough food for my family just from this one small garden, using intensive gardening techniques. Eventually, my plan (if the Lord wills it) is to build a garden that is nearly 1/4 acre, keep my current garden as an herb and tomato garden, and utilize the 1 acre rotation fields for growing some larger crops each year. So one year I might grow an acre of wheat, an acre of dry beans, and an acre of some feed crop; and the next I might grow an acre of oats, an acre of snap beans, etc. Any excess that cannot be eaten, stored, used for animal feed, or bartered - will be sold at the farmers market, or to some local stores who buy these things for resale. My gardens will consist mainly of double-dug beds used in rotation, and used year-round.
As I mentioned before, any good subsistence farming/gardening plan needs to be combined with ample food storage. Root cellars are a necessity, especially here in the hot south. We will also be needing dry storage, some barns and outbuildings for drying and curing foods, a smokehouse, a springhouse, and an icehouse - each which will be needed for different and necessary purposes. I will discuss those things in a later part to this series. Anyway, if you cannot store it, preserve it, etc., you probably should not produce it. Very few things, with the exception of Lettuces and other garden and salad greens and veggies, are going to be grown for immediate consumption - until we get a good sized greenhouse. It is an great thing to be able to go directly to the garden for a meal, and I relish such times, but I have to keep in mind that food production is for the whole year, and for our survival and for our safety and security. God provides these things for us because He cares about us and loves us, and our labor is bestowed for His glory alone, and we must always keep that in mind. God's provision in allowing us to work for Him in providing nearly 100% of our necessities constantly puts us in remembrance of Him and His goodness and kindness towards us. We pray to Him to wean us from the "store", and to provide for us completely and sovereignly RIGHT HERE where He has planted us. We, like plants, need our rain and food in due season, and we rely on Him for it. A good food subsistence program coupled with a sound storage and preservation plan is our way of being dutiful and diligent in God's commandments. It is HE that has commanded us to till the soil, and to work the land (Gen. 2:15, 3:23), and we all ought to do that diligently as unto a glorious and loving master.
Now, many people get into animal husbandry and they make some really big mistakes. Some go out and buy 100% of the most expensive feed you can buy, and they keep feeding those animals from the feed store, and they never can figure out that they are losing money and time on the deal. Not that we are in this for the money, but if I have to keep working a day job in order to feed my animals, then I have fallen from suburbanism (where I work all day to buy stuff from other people to feed myself), to sub-suburbanism (where I work all day to buy stuff from other people to feed animals). Not a good trade-off. Our plan must include a program to provide much of the food and supplies for our animals from our own labor and from the ground. Back in the old south, where sweet potatoes, turnips and turnip greens, carrots, etc. were major staple crops, MOST of the crop went to feed the animals! When you read some of the old farmer's almanacs you will find that most small farms in the south fed their animals sweet potatoes, rutabagas, turnips and turnip greens, and other root crops. Corn was a yankee animal crop. So many people automatically run to corn as a staple crop for feed animals, but historically, at least in this area, corn was not used for that purpose. In fact, in England potatoes (regular potatoes) were considered animal food and not people food. The English (perennially derisive of the Irish) considered it quite hilarious that Irishmen ate potatoes. There was an old English joke that potatoes were food only for horses and Irishmen. The Irish responded that that is why the Irish man is as strong as a horse. Anyway, I love potatoes and all these other root crops, but consider using the bulk of any crop for animal feed. They grow better with less problems and risk of a total crop failure than corn and above ground seed crops do. The point is we have to grow or gather what we feed our animals.
Here in Central Texas, we harvested acorns from the hundreds of oak trees on our land to feed to our pigs. We were able to feed them and fatten them for several months off of acorns from the land. If we were more diligent at it, or if we had already put in a good free-range program (we did free-range them for several months) we would have had to buy less and less feed for them. This year we will try to put a better effort into it. We still buy hay for our cattle, but we have a plan to free-range them on our land later this year. I intend to grow some root crops this year to feed our milk cow and any other cattle that won't be running with the herd.
There will always be some products we will likely not be able to produce. We cannot produce salt, though we do get salt from a lot of the foods we produce. We do not have a salt mine, so we buy and store large amounts of salt. We will never be able to produce quite a few other necessities, but that number is far smaller than I first thought. We ought to be able to produce honey, soaps, pepper, candles, even rope, string, furniture, tools, etc. God created us with the ability to solve many problems, and we have to divorce ourselves from the corporate mentality and industrial mindset that has crippled our individual creativity. Most people are like people deprived for their whole lives of the use of their eyes, ears, other senses, and their legs, arms and hands. These things atrophy from lack of use, as does all of our other creative senses and abilities. The industrial system paralyzes us and makes us completely dependent on the system, while simultaneously convincing men that they are better off than their forefathers, and "more advanced". Hardly.
Ok, that's it for this part. More coming up, if the Lord wills it.
Your servant in Christ Jesus,
Michael Bunker
Update, but more Off-Grid Living comin'....
2/25/08 - 2nd Day - After Breakfast. We had our cattle drive yesterday, whereby we drove our herd (17 cattle I think) to the west pastures. I am sure you will see plenty of pictures because almost everyone in the community was there taking pictures/video, and now (thankfully) many of them are blogging. You can find the bloggers in our community mixed among my links on the right side of the page. If you check those blogs this week, I'm pretty sure someone will post some pictures of the cattle drive. I think the Ante's said they might be posting a video of the end of the drive. Anyway, we closed down the county road in front of the community and drove the cows from our easternmost pasture to the westernmost pasture. It was quite exciting, and it was our biggest cattle drive yet (I know 17 cattle doesn't sound like a lot, but it is a great deal for us). If all goes well and the Lord wills, we will have between 24 and 26 cattle after our cows calve this summer. Later this summer we will begin free-ranging the cattle on the entire 132 acres (minus the fenced off homesteads). We feel like we can get to somewhere in the mid-30's to maybe 40 cattle before we have to start looking to lease land elsewhere, or sell off some of the cattle for profit. We should hit that number (if the Lord wills it and all goes well) sometime in the late summer of 2009, unless we sell some or butcher some before then. I plan on butchering a steer this fall, and another one in the fall of '09. I will also have some mixed-breed part longhorns to sell or butcher by then, so that will help keep the numbers down a bit. I plan on keeping Pita (our 1/4 Watusi that we are training to ride and pull), but don't know what I will do with her mother (Maria) or her sister (Mariana). I should also have my Holstein milk cow by then.
I plan on putting up another part to the Off-Grid Living series, so stay tuned later today for that. I hate to make you all check back, but please do. The weather has been very warm for February. Today is supposed to be in the upper 80's but it is supposed to be very windy. It is supposed to cool off tomorrow (down in the low 60's) and it might dip down in the high 20's tomorrow night.
Danielle and I still haven't been able to plan on our yearly anniversary trip to San Antonio, and she is supposed to go back to Smyer to take care of my mother on the first of March, so we hope to plan the trip sometime in March. We may make a day trip to Fredericksburg (a beautiful German town 2 hours south of here) on Tuesday, but we'll see how things work out.
Ok, I have to get to work.
Michael Bunker
Off-Grid Living for Agrarians, Part 7
This topic (food production) will take two parts, so make sure to read both of them.
When I was in the woodworking class at Homestead Heritage, I had some discussions with the folks that live there and there were some interesting differences (other than doctrinal issues) in our concept of Agrarianism, homestead living, etc. In their 14 minute video presentation the announcer says that the people there don't want to live in a "museum" or to live in the past. They want to embrace and encourage those skills and doings of the past that enhance family and communal living, while embracing those modern things where they also assist in the overall goal of peaceful, simple living and brotherhood. Well, these things are admirable, but an outsiders view might be valuable here. Most of the folks who visit Homestead Heritage are basically what we here call "worldlings". They live in the city or the suburbs and they actually do visit Homestead Heritage because it is like a museum. They see it as a Living History Farm and they want to see horses pull hay trailers and they want to see crafts made by hand the "old fashioned way". Once again, this is all admirable, but we here in our community didn't visit in order to see a museum. We want to learn what we can in order to inculcate the things we learn into our lives. I visited Homestead Heritage while I am already living an off-grid Agrarian life. So I was a bit of a curiosity to them. They are used to worldlings asking them how they make molasses or how they build barns, but while I was there they were asking me how I live without grid electricity and how I store food without a freezer. You see, they have embraced enough of the world's system that they live much like the world does. Sure they farm the communal pastures with horses, and they grow (corporately) a lot of their own food, and they have maintained (again corporately) many of the skills of yesteryear, but the average family living there lives on less than an acre and has grid power and grid water. They live in the suburbs of a pretty large city. They live 2-3 miles from the city of Waco, Texas. They basically are suburban folks who have pitched in together to work some communal fields and raise communal crops. This is way better than the average suburbanite, but I think it still falls short of the Agrarianism that we are talking about in this series. All of this is to say that we desire to separate ourselves even further from the "grid" system, not because to do so will be to live in the past or to "live in some museum", but because we think the grid system is:
1. Unreliable, and requires Christians to, very dangerously, rely on some pretty corrupt and evil systems in order to maintain survivability. Naturally the world system is in constant danger of disruption, and so, by default, anyone hooked to it or who relies on it is in a perilous state of reliance on that which is unreliable. It is one thing to say "oh, we rely on God", when in fact you are relying on a system which is completely contrary and antithetical to God and His ways.
Which brings us to the second point...
2. The system is evil. It naturally deprives man of the ability to survive and thrive outside of it. It is so overwhelming in its tendencies to corrupt men and cause them to become helpless dependents, that most people do not realize how really helpless and dependent they have become.
I explained this to the folks at Homestead Heritage and it seemed as if they agreed. I think they might have some long-term plans to lessen their dependence on grid power and water, but I don't know what they are.
Secondly, and this is the main point of this part, their system of food production, while interesting and admirable, does not seem to emphasize the necessity for each individual family to raise and grow most (if not all) of the food consumed by the family. Each family lives on a small tract, and may have a garden and some chickens, etc., but most of the bulk of the food production is communal or corporate and therefore must be purchased by the individual families from the company store. This requires most of the men (at least) to work off of their own property in order to make enough money to supply the family. This, to me, is the opposite of the concept towards which we ought to work.
Food Production
Our process ought to be working us towards self-sufficiency in our food supplies. This means that each family ought to focus on producing as much of their food as possible, and in increasing it each year by learning better techniques, by learning new skills, by working harder, and by diversifying. Start by trying to figure out how much of your food you produce. Maybe if you are new it is 0%, which means that you are currently dependent on the world system for 100% of your food supplies. These worldly food supplies grow worse and worse each year. Worse in total nutrition, worse in toxins and poisons in the food, worse in every possible way OTHER THAN in the way they look. Modern commercial farmers will tell you that they have learned to make food LOOK better, by making it worse for you and by reducing its overall actual quality. I was reading the Growing Great Garlic book by Ron Engeland, and in it he admits that smaller garlic that is a little less appetizing to look upon is actually more flavorful and probably better for you - but the commercial buyers and restaurants want the bigger and more robust looking garlics. This means that their overall ACTUAL quality is diminished in order to make them more salable. And this is an organic gourmet garlic grower telling it like it is. If organic gourmet growers are telling you this, what do you think is happening to the non-organic corporate grown industrial crops? The point is that you should be lowering this percentage of dependency immediately, and increasingly working to drop that percentage each year.
Ok, so I am going to go through the major food areas and discuss them individually:
Meat. Currently (as of late winter 2008) my family is producing about 80% of our own meat. Eggs are considered meat in our economy, so I will discuss them first. The first structure we built (actually acquired) here on the ranch was a chicken coop. I built the first coop out of a dilapidated hunting blind we found on the back of the property. I put a new floor in it and built it into a small coop and moved our 50 or so chickens into it. We quickly built a fenced pen around the coop with some old hurricane fencing that had been donated years earlier. We are still using this coop as our main coop today. We had egg production immediately (since our chickens were already producing), which means that we had protein growing from the land from day one. You may have to start your chickens from chicks, but you still should be producing eggs usually within 5-6 months of getting started. I would put in a chicken coop and get chickens before even beginning to think about where you are going to sleep and what you are going to live in. How many chickens to get is really based on the size of your family and how many eggs you eat. By the way... EAT MORE EGGS! My family will eat up to a dozen eggs on the days we eat eggs. So we usually keep between 30 and 60 hens. This winter, when the hens are usually not producing as well as normal, we were still getting 6 eggs a day, which allows us to have eggs at least every other day. As of yesterday our production was going up (due to the warmer weather) and we received a dozen eggs yesterday. Eggs are good and wholesome and provide a boatload of necessary nutrition. They can also be stored. They can be dried and powdered, stored in waterglass, larded, etc.
The great thing about homestead meat production is that the safest and best way to store meat is on the hoof. So begin by thinking of what type of land/pasture, etc. you have available and begin to determine how you will provide protein for yourself. If you are on a small homestead (less than 5 acres), you will want to focus on small, fast reproducing animals. Consider pigs, rabbits, pygmy goats, chickens, turkeys, quail, etc. You may want to have a milk cow or some midget cows, but it would probably be better to milk a goat and use goats or sheep for meat as well. If you did have the pasture and feed production enough to keep a small milk cow, you would get a calf every year that you could grow and butcher for meat. If you keep goats for milk, then you will want to maintain a small herd so you can always butcher some goats for meat. If your homestead is larger, you definitely want to consider having a few cows - for milk and for meat. I recommend the pure Texas Longhorn for many reasons, click on the article and read all about it. As I said, for the smaller homestead, you should definitely consider rabbits and fowl. At our old homestead we produced quite a bit of our meat from turkeys, geese, and chickens. Make a decision on your meat production based on the availability of space and feed. If you will pen your animals then you need to allot enough farm space to produce most of their feed. If you will free-range your animals (which I recommend), then you need to study on pasture management and rotation so you can do this without constantly having to buy feed and supplements.
Some folks have problems with eating pigs, and if you do, then just skip this paragraph - but for the rest of us the pig is the answer to a whole lot of problems. Pigs are easy to keep, they reproduce fast, they are cheap and clean if they are allowed to range and fend for themselves, and they produce an enormous amount of meat in a very short time. I currently have 6 pigs that were born here on the land - and three of them will be butchered in the next two months. Our problem is not "how will we have enough meat?", but "where do we put it all?". Pigs are also good in an animal/pasture rotation system. They plow up the ground, deposit very rich manure, and do great benefit to the soil.
We also keep Longhorn cattle, and thus far we have butchered one small bull. If the Lord wills I will butcher one steer this fall, and another one the next fall. After that, if the Lord allows, our cattle production will be up enough for us to butcher two cattle a year, which will be more than enough meat for our family, with enough left over to barter, trade, sell, etc.
We raise meat rabbits, and will be butchering our own product starting in the next 20 days. My oldest daughter Tracy is in charge of rabbit production, and she is doing well. She will still have to learn to butcher, but she has butchered chickens and other animals and does pretty well with it. We also will be increasing our chicken meat production, and we hope to add Turkeys this year sometime.
So you can see that meat production is critical, but it is entirely doable - and at a remarkably low cost. I will discuss food preservation at the end of the second part of this "food production" section, so in that section we will discuss what to do with all that meat we are producing.
Ok, that is it for meat. I'll move on to vegetables and other foodstuffs in the next part...
Michael
Off-Grid Living for Agrarians, Part 6
Looking into Agrarianism and Off-Grid living can be very, very overwhelming at first. There are a million things to learn, and a million choices to make, and it seems as if any bad decision or wrong move will leave us penniless and homeless, foraging roots on a stark landscape of despair. Well, it can seem that way. Too many people, as I have mentioned in previous parts, think that they are going to, someday, just leap into this idyllic "Little House on the Prairie" life, and if it can't be like that - then they aren't yet ready. So rather than make progress every day (It is a Process Driven Life, you know) - they make no progress at all. Always planning, they never act. Always intending, they never do. Sometimes the problem is not in the reality of "can we do this?", but it is an error in the mental view of what it is to live as an Off-Grid Agrarian. As I have mentioned, if you have a picture postcard idea of what this life will be like, then you will always fall short, and the mountain will always be too steep to climb.
Reading some Agrarian blogs, you will find people who seem to do it all (and it can seem overwhelming) - canning, butchering, growing, husbanding, cattle, rabbits, goats, pigs, sheep, geese, chickens, turkeys, quail, drying herbs, smoking meat, root-cellaring, making candles, making lard, building outbuildings, etc., etc., etc. I mean, who can learn all of that and do all of that? Well, eventually you can, but if you think that you will be required to step out of a suburban apartment or cracker-box house and be able to do all of these from the get-go... well, I can see why your current life might seem safer and easier, and why most people do not ever pull the trigger. I can't think of any Agrarians, off-grid or otherwise, who stepped into this life doing (or knowing how to do) all of that stuff. I know I didn't. I was working a corporate sales job when my father offered to sell us our first five acres in 1997, and to put a single-wide mobile home on it for us. It was many months after that when we got our first animal besides a dog. Some friends came out when I was at work and put up a small square goat pen and put a Billy-goat in it. I came home to find my wife staring at a Billy-goat in a bare pen with no housing and no food other than the grass in the pen. We had no idea what to do. Then the goat started breaking out of the pen... several times a day... every day. So, slowly, I learned fencing. I had never built a pen in my life, but once I had to fix a fence three times a day - chase a goat, and drag it back into the pen - I felt sure I could throw up a workable fence. Taking my newfound skill, I built a pen around what would be a large garden. Then I built a larger pen for a goat yard, and we got more goats. Then I built chicken pen, because the same friend who gave us the goat pen gave us 14 chickens and a set of chicken nests. Well, that's how we learned about chickens and goats. In May of 1998 my wife quit her job to homeschool and tend the homestead, and 5 months later I quit my job to preach and teach full-time. We didn't know how we were going to make it, or how we would live. Within a year or two we had a couple-hundred chickens, a dozen goats, geese, and turkeys, and a cow. We didn't know anything about any of it when we started, and there weren't a million Agrarian sites and blogs out there either. We had Carla Emery's Encyclopedia of Country Living, and we used it every day for every thing we could think of. I learned homestead carpentry the same way I learned homestead fencing... by making mistakes, and by necessity. I tell people - "if you want to be a successful off-grid agrarian homesteader, then make a mistake a day for 11 years and you'll be right where I am". The point is that you don't learn all of this stuff and become proficient at it while you are still living in the city. Sure you can practice a few things in your back yard, but you will not really know what you are doing until you JUST DO IT. And you will not just do it all at once. You add skills a few at a time, as God makes them necessary, or as He puts it on your heart to learn them. I see folks who are new at this, and they are usually in a couple of different categories. Some want to do it all, and they want to do it right NOW. They are akin to the guys I meet who want to learn survival techniques, and for their first survival trek they want to go into the wildest, coldest, most unforgiving situation imaginable, and they want to do it with only a pocket-knife and a stick of Big Red gum. Others are on the other extreme. They think that by raising some herbs in a pot on their patio, they are learning the skills they will need to survive as an off-grid Agrarian. Ten years later they will have an herb garden and a chihuahua and they will still be telling themselves that some day they will take the leap! The realistic situation is one that is somewhere in-between the two extremes. You do have to pull the trigger and choose when and how to get out and onto the farm. You have to do that regardless of all the consequences and all the "giants in the land" that conspire to keep you immobile and dependent on the world. But once you get out, and get your land, you have to move intelligently and you have to learn your skills as they are necessary. You cannot expect to do it all at once. This is why COMMUNITY is really so important to a proper Christian Agrarian existence. If we live in Community with like-minded believers, then we all don't have to be experts in everything. If you work together, you can all learn different skills, and teach and help one another.
It sounds hard to believe, but most of the Agrarian skills are really easy and intuitive. It is only because we have been so colonized into the world's way of doing things, using machines, etc. that we don't know how to do some really simple things. I mean, getting and raising chickens was one of the "giants" in my thinking. It seemed so complicated - and what if kill them all, or they all fly away? Well, in my experience keeping chickens is one of the easiest and most rewarding things you can do as an Agrarian. It really is a no-brainer. Sure you can make mistakes, and sometimes you might kill all your chickens (I did it once) on accident, but you know, I got more chickens and learned from my mistakes. It's not like they are children (they put you in jail for accidentally killing all your children!). Now, I can tell you that maintaining chicken and egg production is one of the easiest things we do around here. I think most of the people in our community will tell you that the hardest thing they have had to do is to pull the trigger on actually making a firm decision to move and live off-grid. Once the ball got rolling, and they were actually on the land, the rest has been pretty easy.
Now that we are all living an off-grid life, the trick is to not get into too many things at once, or into the wrong things. When we recently went to visit Homestead Heritage my girls talked about wanting to learn Pottery, and some of the guys mentioned wanting to learn Blacksmithing. Well, these are great skills, and it is good to want to learn them. But how practical is it? I told Tracy (my oldest daughter), "The problem is that knowing how to make pots would be great. But it takes a huge investment in time, money, and equipment, and how many pots can you use? Are you going to just keep making pots after you have all you need, or are you going to sell them? Do you have a market for pots?" I mean, maybe there is a market for them, but how many do you have to sell to pay back the thousands of dollars it would take to set up a kiln, etc. and all the other equipment it would take? I would love to be able to make pots and plates, etc. if we need them (and I think I know enough to do that in an emergency), but I don't think that we are going to be going into the pottery business. Blacksmithing is a similar thing. If one person really wanted to make the investment to get all the equipment, and a forge, and a supply of steel, and all the other stuff you need, then I can see where having a blacksmith in the community would be a great benefit. But is everyone going to do this? It wouldn't make sense for everyone to do it. I think Blacksmithing will be a specialty skill that maybe one or two people might want to get into. It will be very expensive to get into it, and the only way it will ever pay off is if the person doing it wants to market products and services to outsiders for profit. I'm all for learning these skills, but I don't think the average homesteader ought to make them a priority. My point is that it is good to want to learn something and to want to acquire a skill, but every thing we learn and do ought to have a payoff towards our success, survival, satisfaction, peace, etc. We ought to have a plan for everything we do.
My personal experience after several years of helping and watching many people (singles, couples, and families) get into this lifestyle is this... those who have the least to start with pull the trigger the fastest, and end up learning the necessary skills the fastest. They may have less land, and less of everything else, but they learn the things they need to learn the fastest. The slowest off-grid Agrarians are those who have money and means when they start out. They cling to the old ways the longest, they do things on a bigger scale, and they move a lot slower. The young couples who have had to do this with virtually no money and almost no income have been the quickest to learn the necessary Agrarian skills, quickest to get gardens and animals started and producing, and they have been more successful much earlier. This contradicts the idea that you aren't ready to pull the trigger and move into an off-grid life yet, because this counter-intuitive truth shows me that the longer you take to prepare and save up for your Off-Grid Agrarian adventure, the slower you will move into it, and the slower you will learn what you need to learn to succeed at it. Those who are probably the most able to move into this life (because of their current situation) are the ones who will most likely never, ever do it. Think about it, who has the most to "lose"? People who now own their home in a comfortable suburb, or who have equity in property, and who have "stuff" - these are the people who will most likely never do it, because they have the most to lose, and because they fear losing the comforts of their current life. They dream too grandly, and when they cannot see how to purchase the dream right off (instead of working to build it) they never do it at all. If I am corresponding with a homeless guy and a suburban accountant, I would put my money on the homeless guy being more successful in moving off-grid and in creating and living a successful off-grid Agrarian life.
Now you know why I don't listen to excuses when it comes to people saying they want to live this life.
So, the point of part 6? Don't let the giants in the land... or anything else, stop you from pulling the trigger on the life you know you should lead. Don't get yourself overwhelmed by thoughts of what you don't know, or in worrying about what you don't have. All that stuff will come in time, and you will do just fine IF you will just do it. You don't have to be Martha Stewart or Carla Emery or Davy Crockett to survive and thrive as an off-grid Agrarian. If you will just do it, and then, if you will keep doing it long enough - you and your family will probably far surpass those folks in just a single generation. And that is my encouraging thought for the day.
I am your servant in Christ Jesus,
Michael Bunker
Anniversary
2/22/08 - 6th Day - After Breakfast. Preparation of the Sabbath. Well, this post will be a short one, because I plan on posting "Off-Grid Living for Agrarians, Part 6" today", and that will take a while to prepare. This morning we are sitting at 32 degrees, even though the prognosticators called for 41 and even though it was in the 70's yesterday and will be in the 70's again today. The prognosticators have been missing it by 10 degrees on both the low and the high, which adds about 20 degrees to the "swing" of temperatures during the day. Welcome to February in Central Texas.
Today is our anniversary. Danielle and I got married 16 years ago today. Usually on this day we are in San Antonio, which is our anniversary tradition, but money was too tight so far this month and so we have delayed our trip for a bit. This is the first year since we've lived on the land that we haven't spent the 22nd in San Antonio on the Riverwalk. Anyway, everybody commiserate with and congratulate Danielle for staying with me for 16 years which is quite a feat. I don't know of any other woman in the world who could have done it - it is quite an accomplishment. She is a good woman and a good wife, and like everything else the Lord has given me, I don't deserve her.
Well, back at it in the garden today after I work on Part 6 of the Off-Grid series.
See y'all soon,
Michael Bunker
Garden Pics and Whatnot
2/21/08 - 5th Day - After Breakfast. I know it will sound laughable to those of you who live in really cold climates - who are stuck in the deep freeze for 4 or 5 months a year - but I don't know if I'll ever get used to the wild temperature swings in Central Texas. Don't get me wrong, I love sunny 82 degree days in February like we had yesterday, but when that is followed by 36 degrees and wet/cold this morning, it makes it pretty hard on a body. Our guide Butch over at Homestead Heritage commented on this when we visited over there on Tuesday. He said, "It's not that our temperatures are extreme in hot or cold that makes it hard on plants in Central Texas. It is the extreme fluctuations in temperatures that make it difficult on plants". This is the reason it is difficult to impossible to grow olives in this area, even though we are on the same latitude as Israel. When it is 81 one day, and 18 the next, the plants don't have time to adapt to the changing weather. It will be in the 60's today, which is not so big a swing as we had from yesterday to this morning. It is not uncommon to have 50 degree swings from daytime high to morning low, and we'll see some more of that this week.Ok, I do have some pictures from homestead heritage, but it will take a day or two to gather them all up. I hope to do a post on it in the next few days - by Monday I hope. I also plan on putting up Parts 3 and 4 of the Darkness and Light sermon series on BiblicalAgrarianism.com today, so be checking for that. Here are some pics I took this morning of the garden. In this first picture you can see the first two raised "double-dug" beds, both of which are partially planted in cool weather crops:
The next picture shows the beds from a different view, and you can see the four subsequent beds in different stages of being worked. The next two beds are already double-dug, and the first of those will also be a raised bed. The 2nd set of three beds will be double-dug, but will not be raised this year. The fifth bed is currently filled with water from the recent rains, and the 6th bed is only just now being dug:
The next picture is from the other direction. You can see the 6th bed just being dug, and the previous ones in various states of completion.
This next picture has nothing to do with the garden, but since I have not put up a picture of the cabin in quite some time, I thought I would do so. This is our home:
Ok, I said that my sister was sending me old pictures, and that I would share them with you. I was wondering if you can help me and tell me if I have changed much. This first picture is from a few months ago, and the second picture is me in 1981 with our dog Christy: 
I hope all is well with you all.Michael Bunker
Day Trip
2/19/08 - 3rd Day - After Breakfast. Most of us here in the community are taking a day trip today over to Elm Mott, Texas to visit and tour Homestead Heritage. We hope to take a tour of the gardens, barns, model homestead, etc. I think this will be a great opportunity for the folks to get to see our homesteading ideas at work. I hope to take pictures (since Larry lent me his camera) and I'll try to post some soon. The sermon last night (Darkness and Light, Part 4) went well, and I will do my best to get both part 3 and part 4 posted sometime this week. I am also working on Part 2 of the New Gnostics article.
If you haven't already checked it out, go to www.puritanlibrary.com. This is an excellent resource and some very beneficial reading at that site. Thanks to the folks at Monergism.com for putting it up.
Alright, we're about to head out. Hope y'all have a great day.
Michael
Scattershooting about the Antichrist and Sammy Ben Latino
2/18/08 - 2nd Day - After Breakfast. The ground is starting to dry around here after our welcome and pleasant rains over the weekend. We also had a welcome and pleasant sabbath and Lord's Day. This was our first Lord's Day since we have added Joseph and Larry in the fellowship, so we had 25 for fellowship yesterday. Ok, scattershooting...
The Pope is Still The Antichrist
Preterism is still a doctrine of Antichrist! Here is a great quote from Rand Winburn:
Preterism has its origins with the Jesuit Alcazar, circa A. D. 1609. Cardinal Bousset carried the Preterist torch into the 18th century, where the German school of apostate Higher Criticism embraced it as their own. Alleged Protestants who hold to their false theory are holding to Jesuitical lies.
Jesus promises that despite the unprecedented deception perpetrated by the false Christs [read: Antichrist officeholders] and false prophets, it is virtually impossible for the Elect to remain deceived, (Matt. 24:24). Ergo, those who remain deceived are not Elect.
To not recognize the Man of Sin, whose coming is after the working of Satan --- (notice the Man of Sin is differentiated from Satan. They are not one and the same persons) --- is to manifest a spirit of strong delusion sent by the Lord God Himself to the purpose that such unbelievers might be eternally damned.
Thus, the subject of the Man of Sin, aka the Antichrist, aka the Beast, is not a side or peripheral biblical issue. Indeed, it is so essential a doctrine that those who rise in the first resurrection are deemed holy and blessed for not obeying the Beast, aka the Antichrist. These martyrs knew his identity, they exposed him to the world, they were believed by the Elect, they were killed for their witness.
To summarily dismiss the teachings of the Reformers, as well as the united testimony of the martyrs is to show no love for the brethren, another sign of reprobation, (1 John 2:10.) To disbelieve the brethren in so key a point is to call them liars, or deluded or deceived. It also exhibits a spirit of pride --- your wisdom is greater than all who came before you --- is no fruit of the Spirit.
The Ballad of Sammy Ben Latino
The UN and US takeover of the formerly Christian Kosovo on behalf of "Ethnic Albanians" (read - MUSLIMS) is now complete, and will likely lead to another war. This time, the Russians are firmly on the side of the Serbians (and God bless them for it), and they are spoiling for a confrontation with the US. Let's not forget the first two world wars started over this region. For you ignorant "amerikans", here is what happened in language and geography you can understand:
Let's say there is a Nicaraguan terrorist named "Sammy Ben Latino" who was raised and trained by the great global superpower "Egypt" which was all the way on the other side of the world. Egypt wanted to use this Nicaraguan terrorist to harass and fight its great enemy and only other world superpower "Algeria". Sammy fought and defeated Algeria and then went around terrorizing other people with the money and weapons he gained from Egypt. Sammy went into Mexico to stir up trouble, and since he was a Muslim and hated the Christians in Southern Texas, he encouraged the "ethnic Mexicans" in northern Mexico to cross the border illegally into Texas and start trouble by killing and raping and stealing there. Then Sammy's old bosses in Egypt went around decrying all of the "atrocities" done by the police who were trying to stop the "ethnic Mexicans" from killing the indigenous Texans. Finally, the Governor of Texas had had enough, and he sent in the Texas guard to restore order and to push the now well armed Mexican militias back over the border. During the fighting, many on both side were killed. Egypt, incensed that they are not being able to take over Texas by their proxies, goes to the United Nations and gets the Governor of Texas declared a "brutal dictator" and the law enforcement attempts in Texas declared as "genocide" against "ethnic Mexicans". Some people begin to wonder what "ethnic Mexicans" are doing in Texas illegally, so the UN and the Egyptians create an imaginary zone in South Texas and call it "Kosoxico" and get the formerly "ethnic Mexicans" renamed as "Kosoxivars". Then they get the world media and CNN to endless run video of the bodies of the poor dead "Kosoxivars" who were killed defending their homeland. A great war starts in which the Egyptians (who portray themselves as saviors trying to save the poor muslim Kosoxivars) bomb Christian churches and kill thousands of innocent Christian men, women, and children. The governor of Texas is arrested and sent to Chile to be put on trial for genocide, and he mysteriously dies of poisoning while in custody. The Texans, weary of being lied about and in having to fight Egypt and the whole world over their own territory, finally cede a small portion of territory to the "Kosoxicars" providing that they behave themselves and don't try to declare independence. A few years later, they declare themselves as an independent Muslim state and celebrate their "victory" over Texas. What we didn't mention, is that while all of this is going on, the Egyptians blew up a few of their own buildings and blamed it on their own boy - "Sammy Ben Latino", and decide to go around the world blowing up folks and killing people in order to stop the spread of "militant islam", the kind they used to defeat Algeria and to install a puppet regime in South Texas which they now control. An Egyptian movie is made called "Behind Enemy Lines" about a heroic Egyptian pilot who is shot down over Texas and is chased and hunted by angry, genocidal, Christian Texans. A heroic Egyptian officer on an Egyptian aircraft carrier breaks about a dozen international laws in order to save the Egyptian pilot. Meanwhile, Egypt sends its young men to die fighting militant fundamentalist muslims who are now called "islamofascists" while simultaneously celebrating the independence of the militant fundamentalist muslim state of Kosoxivar that they created and financed and killed for. Meanwhile, Algeria, a bit pissed over Egypt's "Sammy Ben Latino" and all the havoc he has caused around the world, and miffed that Egypt's ham-fisted foreign policy has them smashing buildings and killing folks all over the world, has decided that they would like to kick Egypt's teeth in if they can get the opportunity. They declare that if Egypt gets involved in another war in Texas, they will be glad to pay Egypt back for all of her sins. Whose side are you on?
Michael Bunker
Sweet Rain
2/17/08 - The Lord's Day - After Breakfast. Well, we finally received some significant rain, and we praise the Lord for it and are very grateful. I think we received about an inch in total, which is always good this time of year. I will try to take some pictures of the garden, because the rain caused some interesting results there. The first raised bed (onions) looks to have held up pretty well. The second raised bed, in which I had planted lettuce, sunk about 4 inches over half of it, which means it will likely have to be built up more and replanted. No problem, since I had only just planted it on Thursday. I should have thought about "shrinkage", but I didn't. The one double-dug bed that was completely empty because I hadn't filled it back up with dirt from the neighboring bed, was the one bed that had a stream of water flowing into it. So it is totally full up to the top with water! Actually that is pretty nice, because that water will sink in and provide a bunch of subsoil moisture for that area of the garden. I was glad to see that no water ran into the new root cellar we are building (root cellar #2) which is a huge 9 foot deep hole in the ground right now. 
