Look at the filth they are living in with no water or enough water for 12 people a day and no way to stay warm or keep insects/poison spiders and other vermin away from them. There is only fabric for a roof. I would take them out of there to save their lives and I don’t care which agency or who took them out.
For this case, I don’t care if CPS gets more money if they take these kids out - get the kids out and complain about CPS another day.
I grew up with an outhouse as our potty. We had four rooms in the house but it was a solid house with a regular roof and we had clean running water and hot water. The house was clean and I had proper medical care from my parents. We did not live in filth on a dirt floor in the woods.
You don't know what you are talking about. I know plenty of people who haul water, and have for years... They have a pond right there to supply water for washing, so all they really need to haul in is drinking/cooking water, and that likely can be reduced with rain catchment...
and no way to stay warm [...]
There is a (wood?) stove for heat. You can plainly see the chimney sticking out of the shed.
[...] or keep insects/poison spiders and other vermin away from them.
I have lived in a wikiup with a dirt floor for months at a time. Your fears are greatly exaggerated. Almost hyperventilating. Calm down. How did all those poor indian children make it through a hundred generations without a way to keep the 'insects and other vermin away from them'? Have you ever been camping in your life?
There is only fabric for a roof.
That is not true. There is a shed for sleeping in. The tented area is an open commons because the shed is too small - Probably by design, as it is small enough to keep warm for sleeping.
I would take them out of there to save their lives and I don’t care which agency or who took them out.
Those kids are as healthy and happy as I have ever seen. It's folks like you who make the nanny state possible.
Totally agree. Romanticize the old-timey ways when life expectancy was much shorter and riskier if you wish but don’t involve innocent kids. There is a reason non-rural people today for the most part don’t die of dysentery and many other completely preventable parasitic diseases (heartworm, roundworm, etc) that basic medicine, sanitation and food safety keeps us safe from.
And these folks are NOT self sufficient by the way unless that includes all over the internet begging others for money, entering others property to steal “resources” and accepting “donations” of items from others.
I will not be judgmental where others are concerned as long as their children are eating well, not ill all the time, etc-many things are a matter of individual taste and perception, and what each of us considers comfortable or right. I’d run into the road screaming if I had to live-and eat-like some of my neighbors and others out here, but they are just fine with it. A lot of them turn up their noses at my all-fresh paleo type diet, but I do well with it. It isn’t frigid here often-I’d be cold at a temperature someone from Kentucky is perfectly well used to-I’d love to go live off grid in Alaska, but I’d have a hard first year with the cold...
If nobody is running a meth lab, abusing each other, or starving, I’d fine that guy for the theft of water, take him and a couple of 200 gallon containers to be filled, make sure he pays in cash, ask if I can help with anything else, leave my cell phone number and be on my way.
During a rebellious phase, for a few months I lived in the herding shack on the family ranch-I was 17, pregnant at the time, hiding from the husband I married on a bet. Dirt floor, woodstove for heating and cooking, leaking tin roof and rotting walls with gaps and holes. There was an outhouse, and water had to be hauled from the main house, and heated on the woodstove for bathing and cooking. Sounds miserable, but I was happy-I proved my point-that the guy I ran off with was too citified-not tough enough for me-a bad match.
I’ve had to live hard since then a time or two-I’m doing it now, until everything comes together-but I do have a well and septic on the property...
While I don’t think I’d care for the idea, tents-and their lately-fashionable cousins, yurts-are very popular among back-to-nature off grid folks-they can be kept warm with the proper equipment-the yurts in particular are popular in outback Alaska as shelter while a cabin is built.
In rural SW Texas, scorpions, spiders, are to be found indoors no matter what you do-you will be stung/bitten at some time, no matter the care you take. And poisonous snakes and vermin are under every woodpile and rock.
I did not see that the kids in the article did not have medical care, or that they were ill-they certainly don’t look like it. Most off grid types here don’t use medical services unless there is an immediate need-I think it is a practice for maybe when it is real.
The point of this ramble is just that I’m not willing to impose my version of what is right, clean, etc on someone who is doing no harm-I associate that stuff with liberals.