Hi folks, Kevin here.  I’m starting a new category of posts that will address our next great chapter in life.  The next destination on our wander, both literally and figuratively.  I’ll still try to add a few posts about Thailand, but I’m currently inspired and hope to add a number of posts about our idea to…drum roll…start a permaculture homestead.

Many, probably most of you, have no idea what I’m talking about.  I’m going to try to explain the path that brought me here and the dream I’m envisioning.  Although I’ll be writing these blog posts in first-person narrative, rest assured that Jennifer is on board and shares (most) of my grand vision.  Luckily, we have more than a year to research our grand plan before we execute it.  Also, it occurs to me that I won’t have pictures to share until we start our homestead for real, but I’ll try to grab some examples from the internet.

First off: what is homesteading?  This part, at least, is a fairly simple concept.  It means self-reliance: providing most or all of your needs from the land that you live on.  You grow your own vegetables, raise your own animals, and generally provide for yourself.  Of course there’s various degrees.  Off-grid homesteaders even provide all their own water and electricity – we might even give that a shot.   But of course it’s hard to create everything, even when you live simply.  You might go to town to get spices, olive oil, clothes, etc.  Or, you can grow all your own herbs and use your animals’ lard.  Clothes, admittedly, would be hard to produce.  However, you can be as strict or flexible as your ideals and budget allow.

Next, what is permaculture?  It’s something I’m just now learning about for the first time.  The concept is generally attributed to the ideas and writings of Bill Mollison and David Holmgren from Tasmania.  (Side note, Tasmania is beautiful and I encourage you to visit one day.  I’ll have to make a blog about that trip one day.)

In my own words, the concept of permaculture is to modify the land to set up sustainable systems of production.  By sustainable, I mean that the energy (in all forms) needed create and use the system is less than the energy provided by the system.  In simple terms, that means you set up the land so that it will produce agriculture for years into the future with little or no effort from you to maintain the system after the initial setup.  Although that’s a relatively simple explanation, there are a ton of ideas and systems involved.  As this is just the introduction, I’ll get more into those systems later.

So, why choose this path?  Jennifer and I have been doing the corporate thing for a good chunk of our lives, and we can’t help feeling that there’s a better way to live life.  I read that 70% of Americans don’t like their jobs, and I believe it.  Jennifer and I have both had good jobs and bad jobs, but in general we agree that we’d rather not do them for 10 hours a day 5 (or more) days a week.  It just seems like too much work doing stuff we don’t really like.  And why do we work this much?  To pay for stuff.  Things.  Things that we really don’t need and that don’t actually make us happier.

Let’s look at the basics of what we need.  Food, water, clothes, shelter, warmth, and some social interaction.  Those are all simple items that can be obtained from your own land, perhaps with a little help from your community.   Now I’m not implying it’s easy to raise all your own food or build a sustainable shelter, it takes hard work, especially to get started.  What I mean by simple is the opposite of complex.

I’ve already determined that our past jobs haven’t made us happy.  Why is that?  I believe it’s the complex nature of modern society paired with the total lack of simplicity.  We spend lots of time working on esoteric things like accounting, marketing, etc. and at the end of the day we have nothing tangible to show for it.  When you raise your own food, there is an almost irrational satisfaction in it.  I believe it is the simple fact that your own hard work produced a biological necessity that you can see, taste, and enjoy.  It’s the satisfaction of personally fulfilling your own human needs on your own terms.

Many of us would agree that we would rather spend our days outside in nature rather than in an office building.  I’m sure all of us would agree that working outside your front door is preferable to commuting to work.  So why do we work so much?  Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not arguing that we can get by without money.  The question is how much do you need and what do you need it for?  I think we can get by on much less than we need now and be much happier at the same time.

We hope to sell some of our excess production from our homestead.  We hope to have bees for honey, a goat for milk and cheese, chickens for meat and eggs, and lots of varied fruits and vegetables.  We should be able to eat very well with all that bounty, and we hope that selling the excess will be enough to pay for our gas and building materials, and other items we can’t create.

In order to make that work we must necessarily be frugal.  These days, frugality is viewed by many as a bad or shameful thing.  Why?  The opposite of frugal is wasteful.  Is that better?  Is the world better off the more we waste energy and treat everything as disposable?  Clearly not.  Yet it takes effort and reflection to avoid feeling compelled to buy bigger houses and fancier cars every chance we get.

I don’t intend to sound preachy, because that would be hypocritical.   I too have run the rat race and wasted much in my life.  My point is that it didn’t make me happy, and with a finite time on Earth I’m determined to find a lifestyle that I find fulfilling.  The reality of homesteading is completely foreign to me, just like you, but from everything I read I think it really has a good chance of being the answer to my desire for contentment.

I hope you follow us on this journey and learn with us through our successes and failures.  Trust me, there will be failures along the way, but I’m hoping it will all be worth it once we get fully operational.  I’m also eager to hear your comments and advice as we go along.  It will be a long road, but it won’t be boring!