For those of you who are too hip to leave the cities, the malls, and your Democrat friends and infrastructure, adios, we barely knew ye (and will miss ye less):
Zoning violations, unsanitary conditions, livestock in the city, and a tavern for every grocery. Amazing America survived.
The number of people now actually capable of living off the land in the USA could probably be numbered on the fingers of one hand.
Sometimes it's possible to be TOO civilized.
Isn't it amazing how our dirt poor parents, grandparents, great grandparents lived better than most well off kids today?
...sounds like a better life than I’m living right now....
My ancestors were Prussian and Hessian immigrants who homesteaded throughout Shawano County. My dad grew up in Shawano and my mother on farms around the city under my grandparents later moved to town.
I grew up with children of the depression and WWII vets in Shawano. Toughest folks you’ll ever know. I can tell you stories of my grandmother in her 80’s and now 90 finishing up physical labor after falling and breaking bones because the work had to be done.
No bailouts with that generation. No complaints about serving in the war. My great uncle was the warmest most positive “community” minded man I’ve ever known. He fought through the Rhineland and was part of the liberating force that opened up some of the Aushwitz camps. Artillery corps. Was proud to have served and left it all at that.
No politics, just service and duty and simple joy.
It was reported today on CNBC the biggest selling items in the US this month were home safes and guns. Does that tell you something.
Leave it to the Bush GOP to push back the standard of living 75 years.
As a result of my upbringing, I know how to plant a garden, put up the canning, hunt+fish. I still prefer my mother's homemade mittens, hats and scarfs to anything storebought....Mrs WBill really likes the homemade socks Mom knits her for XMas.
However if you ask me, in general, if I'll readily subsititute my current middle-class lifestyle, for working my butt off at a low-paying, 60-hour-a-week job...then come home and bust my butt in the garden, and cook+freeze a winter's worth of food, and hand-knit a bunch of socks.....I'd say "Forget it". I expect my parents - who did exactly that, would echo my sentiments.
I'd much prefer to pick and choose. BIG difference between raising a couple of tomato plants to have fresh tomatoes for a few weeks.....and putting up 100 quarts of tomatoes, so that you'll have them to eat all winter.
It's nice to have all the knowledge I need. It's nicer not to need it.
Back then, you could accost trespassers. Now, you’d be sent to sensitivity training.
Back then, you could hire a hobo to do chores. Now the EEOC would make sure you paid all kinds of taxes and had all kinds of safety regulations.
We'll just put up with what we've got so long as we've got love and a couple chicken bones. That's what's important in life, you know.
Just be happy with what life "gives" you. Because, after all, the average "working family" is too powerless and, to tell the truth, too stupid to know better than Nancy Pelosi and President Obama. Why, if you're all good citizens devoting at least two hours a week to community service, we're gonna give you those analog TV converters for free!
That'll create jobs for working families. Jobs, I tells ya'.
I wonder what the property tax rates for the 1930’s vs. now is?
Living off the land is fine but all the survival plans better plan on paying the property taxes as well in bad times or else the government will take the property.
I live almost the same conditions and felt the same as you.
We were not poor because all who lived in the area lived the same.
Was reading an article a couple of years ago that ask people to purchase at least a couple of food items per week, extra.
Warning, if there were a run on food mks there would only be enough food for three days.
I'm very fortunate to live in an area that would sustain life from the land for a good period of time. I have an electrical well for my water but, if necessary I could attach a hand pump. I have a root cellar with many canned goods my wife and I have stored for winter consumption. Plenty of fire wood for heat.
There are some winter crops I keep in a small garden, Turnips will keep in the ground up until Feb., Cabbage buried that always last until April. Caresse greens we eat on all winter, the freeze doesn't hurt them. A large pond full of large Cat Fish, 10 lb. size.
So if push comes to shove I think I could survive for a while.