Off-Grid Living for Agrarians, Part 13: Local Culture

In abandoning his Agrarian roots, man has abandoned his connection to the land, and with it has cast out his peculiar local heritage and culture. In it's place he has adopted a rootless, amorphous, and temporary international culture - defined alone by man's insatiable and fruitless hunger for more - more personal peace, more affluence, and more comfort. Biblical cultures were defined by those peculiar practices endemic to a particular people, and those practices were derived by their necessity due to the close and personal interaction between the people and the land. Relationships, celebrations, and even diet were defined and restricted by land and growing practices, and all of life was governed by what (and when) the land would produce. By definition, then, the culture was a representation brought forth from the divine gardener of a piece of land, the good ground, from which the progenitor of all men had been derived. Each culture was the product of not just the morality and laws the people had accepted for themselves, but of the types and quantities of crops that would grow readily in the local soil, and the animals indigenous to the place which could be used for food, or which could be sustained easily by what could be grown.

I have mentioned quite a few times in this series that our ideas of what the ideal life will be should change with our knowledge of what a perfect God wills for His people, and what He has originally declared is good for us; and our expectations should reflect our experience in what will work well where we are. As you will already know from reading this series, I put a high value on a good philosophy and right thinking in engaging in an off-grid Agrarianism plan. As we grow and learn, some practices, means, and methods will develop (or re-develop) which are highly successful, and others will be abandoned as failures. What will develop, then, if the Lord wills and tarries, will be the development of a particular Christian Agrarian culture where we are. Traditions, practices, feasts, etc. will become more local (because hopefully we will have already cast off the international pagan/apostate ones), and we will once again begin to be defined by our peculiar Christian culture. The Christian man and the Christian family will once again be connected to the land. He will have legends and the stories of building and working the land, and He will have a sense of history that is more in line with reality and less the result of socialist, industrialist, and secular propaganda.

Once upon a time, when the South was still Agrarian and predominantly Christian, even within the south there were many, many, diverse and discernible cultures. While the South was generally one in their values, morals, and overall respect for the land and the family - within the south, in fact even from town to town, you would have found a grand diversity in how these values were practiced. Every small town had different festivals and celebrations. One town might have "The Watermelon Festival", while another town celebrated "Okra Days". Around here, the two big days for us right now are The Fiesta De La Paloma (the Feast of the Doves) in Coleman, Texas, and Santa Anna Funtier Days in Santa Anna. As our Christian community here (if the Lord wills it) grows and expands, we will develop our own special days and festivals, and these ought to develop organically, and they should reflect God's love for His people, and His overall plan for man. We already look forward to "First Wednesday" which is our monthly community work day, and we all look forward to the two Ranchfests we have every year. But the point is that our desire in our Off-Grid Agrarian lives is to live our lives more locally, and to do so it all has to start with us.

I mentioned in the 11th part that we ought to start looking to focus on growing more perennial fruits, nuts, and crops. The harvest of these crops will likely be a regular yearly event, and can be a time of great fun and fellowship. We ought to also be looking into what types of food and crops are indigenous to our area. Those that have developed here and succeed here are great, and if they can fit our criteria, then we ought to pursue them; but if we can reclaim those foods and crops that really thrive in our soil, then we would be foolish not to focus on them. It has been a shocking (perhaps it should not have been) thing for me to realize that the crops that I have grown over the past 8 years that have done the absolute best, are these:

Okra
Black-eyed Peas
Green Beans
Squash

...and now I have learned that Sweet Potatoes and Greens (Mustard, Collard, Spinach, etc.) grow great here.

Now let me see... that looks like a Southern Menu if I ever saw one! Why should I be shocked that these foods grow well here in the South? There is a reason that these foods are identified with the South - and sometimes we are too slow to figure these simple things out - I know that I am.

I intend to really focus on these locally successful crops, and our diets will change to represent what grows well here.

Our minds and hearts need to be more local. Live wherever you want to live, but if you plan on being a Christian Agrarian - then really LIVE there. Make it your home, and you and your Christian fellows will see a Christian culture thrive there. Rather than spend your time in the world, partaking in the world's culture and society, put those things behind you and live your life as a Christian among Christian friends and family. This series is about Off-Grid Living, but more specifically it is about successful Off-Grid Living. Our mindset is critical in our success, and a right philosophy of life and living will immeasurably assist in that success. The Apostate "christian" world has adopted the mantra "Grow where you are planted" as a rational for professing "christians" living worldly lives among other worldlings. I would add the following asterisk:

* IF you are planted in good ground, and IF you are sure you are not a tare, and IF you are willing to work and grow in the soil, and IF you are intent on being obedient towards the production of good fruit, THEN you should 'grow where you are planted'.

Your servant in Christ Jesus,

Michael Bunker

Off-Grid Living for Agrarians, Part 12: Building

Worldliness is the constant, daily, selling of one's soul in exchange for carnal comfort. Godliness is a constant selling of one's carnal comfort in exchange for the good of one's soul. The grand plans of many aspiring Agrarian homesteaders crash and burn because of some mental threshold of minimal comfort that the mind both expects and demands. I would say that almost 100% of the objections raised against Agrarian Separatism and Off-Grid Homesteading have to do with COMFORT, no matter how the questions are disguised or how the objection is framed. Even when the protester denies that comfort is behind his or her objection, it is always there - lingering as the final and unmistakable truth behind why people won't leave the world behind. When someone protests that they are staying in the world for the sake of their children or grandchildren, or because they believe their "sacrifice" will allow future generations to live like God has commanded - if you just replace their entire protest with CARNAL COMFORT and you will be a whole lot closer to the truth.

Now, I have no problem with being comfortable, I like a nice bed and a good meal as much as anyone. That kind of comfort is not what we're talking about here, and the point I am making is that if we make carnal comfort the rule and we never look at what we should be doing and how we should be living - merely because the right thing seems uncomfortable - then we will never be obedient in those things we ought to do.

I have mentioned this verse before:

Prepare thy work without, and make it fit for thyself in the field; and afterwards build thine house. (Pro 24:27)

God's wisdom declares that we ought to live uncomfortably for awhile while we are preparing our life and living for the future. We ought to make our lands, fields, gardens, and animal facilities workable, managing all of it for our future good and for the sustenance of our families - and we ought to do these things first. THEN, when God has blessed our endeavors and our obedience to His Word, we should build our house. John Gill said this:

"and afterwards build thine house; when, though the blessing of God upon thy diligence and industry, thou art become rich, or however hast such a competent substance as to be able to build a good house, and furnish it in a handsome manner, then do it; but first take care of the main point, that you have a sufficiency to finish it; see the advice of Christ, Luk_14:28"

Now, of course, many people are going to say that there is no Biblical command for people to live Agrarian lives, despite what these verses (and many others say). They will say that these verses only applied to some other culture, long ago, that would have to prepare their fields because they didn't have a Wal-Mart. Some people really believe that modern urban industrialism is just as good and pleasing to God as Agrarianism... and I suppose if they are willing to discount or disbelieve about half of the Bible, they might have a point. So God says that we ought to live in such a way that we produce food from our own fields, and my point is that we ought to expect and even foster some discomfort at the beginning of our journey. If our countrymen had followed this advice, we would not have a mortgage crisis today. The average worldling today is unable to feed themselves or provide for themselves. They do not grow food or husband animals for their food and care. Yet they live deliciously in mortgaged castles, eating dainties that have been poisonously grown and marketed, cared for by a paternalistic beast that juggles the means of survival just well enough to make all seem right for a time.

But what should YOU do?

When choosing to move off-grid, you should remember the rules:

Separation
Simplicity
Sustainability

Start separately and simply, even if it means you might be uncomfortable for awhile. Mine is a family of 6 living in a cabin of less than 500 square feet, with a small 1976 camper as an addition. My bedroom is the size of many people's walk-in-closet. I am typing this manifesto while sitting on a bed because I do not have a desk on which to work. If you will make sure your initial setup fits these three critical rules, you should do well.

Gill points out that we ought to expect God to reward our diligence in doing our duty. I am convinced that if the Lord wills that we prosper here, I will be able to build a house some day when my fields and animals are made to bring forth abundantly; and I believe that the house I will build (if the Lord wills it) will be much nicer, more sustainable, much more permanent, much more well built and solid, and even much more comfortable, than any I might have built in haste, with little money, before it was in God's timing. So my advice to you is to engage and embrace discomfort in the beginning - even invite it. Make yourself live with less, and prove what is good and right. By that I mean, try to live without all the stuff, and when you realize that you can do so, then you have proved that you don't need it. More than 75% of the stuff we did not sell before we came here, but put in storage, we found out we didn't need. My advice for many folks today is to sell everything except the few items you are absolutely sure, without a doubt, that you will need. Sell it all and then buy what you KNOW you need. I am convinced that most people already have the resources to begin their off-grid journey, but the money is locked up in junk they don't need and shouldn't own.

Building an off-grid life will most likely start with the soil and not much else. I have made many mistakes in my off-grid adventure, and I am willing to admit those mistakes and pass the wisdom on to you all. If I had it all to do over again, I would start with the dirt and a shovel. I would dig a hole for my root cellar as my first building project. Whatever your first project is, remember the three rules and keep it simple. Always remember that food and water are primary, and ought to occupy your time and mind for a long while before you ever begin to think about long-term comfort. So long as our mind considers the world to be a safety-net and a crutch, we will not have a right view or mindset. We ought to think that food and water production and storage are critical to our survival, because they are. If you were cast onto your land with nothing but some basic tools, how would you prioritize things? Would you spend your time on temporary comforts? or would you spend it tilling and planting?

Now, this part of the series is about building, and I suppose I ought to get to that, but I wanted to make sure our minds were right about the subject first.

So... what to build?

Remember that this is the part of the process that will take the most time, will require the most of us, and will last the longest with us. Where and how you choose to build - these are going to be decisions that stay with you for a very long time. If you choose to build in a modern style, and then a few years later you think you might want to use your farm for agro or eco-tourism, then you are going to regret your modern new buildings. If you choose to build in a place or direction that isn't well thought out, and then you learn later that you didn't have all the information, you are going to regret many of your decisions. This is why I believe that God would have us live on our land for some time, working the soil and producing food, etc., before we build our permanent home. That way we can see the way the wind blows, how the water pools and drains, and myriad of other important realities that will one day effect how we live our daily lives. In these parts, back in the old days, the folks would dig a root cellar as their temporary living quarters while they prepared their fields, pens, sheds, and barns. The house would come to be much later. That idea, as we have shown, is a very good one. If you live in a land where heat isn't as much of a problem, then you might want to build a small temporary cabin, or you could purchase a small camper or tent to live in while you prepare your fields and out-buildings. In any case, get to know your land for a few a year or two before you build permanently. You will make better decisions in the long run.

Our first "structure" was a chicken coop built from a castaway deer blind we found on the back of the property. I put a new floor in it, built it up on "stilts" and used some old fencing to fence in the coop. Next I built a second coop that would also serve as a grain and feed storage. We put in our garden and a corral as we were building our small cabin. Our cabin was designed as a temporary dwelling (5-7 years) and has grown a bit to help us do the things we need to do. We started our root cellar in the first full summer after we arrived here and we had it ready to use at the beginning of last spring. Today we literally have thousands of pounds of storage and preserved foods stored in our root cellar.

I have received dozens of questions about the building of a remote/off-grid cabin. While I do have many ideas about the subject, and I have learned a lot about what to do and what not to do, you need to remember that this series is not about "how to do" stuff. It is about maintaining a sane and intelligent philosophy and process in doing it. My advice in building a cabin? Small is fine, especially if it is temporary. You really want to go for cheap, but not dangerously cheap. Try to use resources that are free or very inexpensive. We have found folks willing to let us tear down houses and other buildings if we will just remove the materials. From these materials we have built all sorts of things, including a farrowing shed for pigs that I built completely from these re-used materials. The basic philosophy, though, is to spend some time anticipating your needs. You should always plan for thing like catchwater, storage, etc. Think about where you are going to put the stuff you need, and how to get rid of the stuff you do not need. Think about the weather, seasonal changes, sun track, where you want to sit when it is hot in the morning, and where you will sit when it is hot in the evening. How do you want to direct the breeze through your building? How much light will you need? I am convinced that I can build a good sized (but maybe partially unfinished) cabin, with a sizeable catchwater and rainwater storage, for less than $10,000, and that is using mainly new materials. If one were able to procure a large amount of free, cheap, or salvaged materials, the cost would be significantly less. I am fairly positive that we don't have anywhere near 10 grand in this cabin, and we built it in increments, as money, supplies, and labor were available.

What if I had to do it all over again (as it relates to housing). Once again, I would build below ground first. My first structure would be a root cellar, and I would live in it while I build a second, larger root cellar (larger than this current cabin). Then, if I need to put a small one-room shack over my large underground cabin, I would do so. This plan would do the following for me:

1. It would be much easier to manage the temperature swings, and to stay cool in the summers. Our expense for cooling "stuff" for the first two years probably added up to well over $200 a month for most of the year (I would estimate close to $2000 per year). This cost would be almost eliminated if we had built underground, and that money could have gone to building cost instead of waste. Even now, on this 17th day of March, it is 83 degrees and I have two ceiling fans going at full blast to cool the cabin. No such need in a root cellar or basement cabin.

2. The root cellars would be handy and easy to use from a permanent house I plan on building in the future. As it is now, this cabin will either become a guest house, or a dry storage, or a combination of both, but it will not be as easily usable once I build a house. The house I build, if the Lord wills, will incorporate a large underground or partially underground living area for the coolness factor.

3. There would be no need for us to leave the cabin and slog through the mud to the root cellar when severe weather threatens. We could put the children to bed and not worry about having to get up and traverse the hazards to get into the root cellar if a tornado is coming.

When I do build a house, if the Lord wills, I will incorporate all the things I have learned through practical experience, and I will know tons more about my land and about how to do things correctly. I will know more about wind currents, temperature changes, sunrise and sunset at different times of year, rain runoff, etc., and I pray the Lord will continue to give me wisdom and ideas up to and including when I do finally start to build my house.

Returning to our point, if we do not look at off-grid living as a complete system, with a philosophy that guides our decision making, then we will fly to and fro without any real purpose, and quite often we will be working at cross-purposes with ourselves and with our future plans. Take the time and use your mind and your creativity to envision how you want to live, and how to go about it. All the rest of your building plans, then, will fall into place, and will only require the materials, the know-how, and the motivation to get them done. Now, don't you feel better?

Your servant in Christ Jesus,

Michael Bunker

Off-Grid Living for Agrarians, Part 11: Permaculture

Although there are mentions of rotational kind of "seasonal" or annual crop farming in the scriptures (crops such as wheat, corn, and barley - used to make bread and other staples), by far, when speaking of food products, or God's providence, or blessed wealth, the Bible talks about perennial crops or perennial food items. A blessed land is said to run with "milk and honey". We read about olive trees, almond trees, pistachio trees, milk, honey, dates, sycamore figs, apples, grapes, and pomegranates, as well as many root crops including garlic, onion, and leeks which in many cases could be left or stored in the ground for a good part of the year. I think we can all agree that the original garden planted by God for man was made up of fruit and nut orchards and perennial crops. I don't think that annual crops were instituted until after the fall, but of course that is mainly speculation. But I do believe that many crops which are considered annual seed crops now were actually perennial plants in the original garden. For example, Tomatoes which are an annual plant in most of the world, are actually perennials in the Tropics and all the modern species of tomato are derived from perennial fruit.

As we mentioned in some previous parts to this series, quite a bit of food was stored "on the hoof", which is actually one of the Biblical means of storing wealth and being prepared for hard times. Biblical herdsman concentrated their efforts on animals that were fairly easy to keep, reproduced well or copiously, could be pastured on free or relatively free lands, and that did not require expensive care or feeds. In short, it seems that a man's wealth was determined by that which was renewable, sustainable, and somewhat perennial. A wealthy man would have had a land running with milk and honey; he would have had orchards, and vineyards, and cattle, and root crops that come up and produce all year or every year. Those who depended inordinately on annual crops were subject to drought, disease, and famine. We ought to think about that when we get started in our own homesteads. Our family has made a practice of planting trees every year, and the majority of those trees are chosen for some type of food production. I think setting a goal to plant 5-15 fruit or nut producing trees a year... EVERY YEAR... ought to be in every homesteading plan, no matter how much land is available. If a small acreage gets too crowded with trees (is that even possible?), then the oldest trees can be harvested for the wood. Pecan, Cherry, Walnut, and Apple wood is great wood for woodworking, building, and for firewood. We also plan on planting fruiting bushes and vines every year as well. You also ought not worry about producing too much fruit or nuts. Remember that you will always be buying food for your animals until you can produce enough on your own to stop buying feed. Feed a portion of your crop to your animals, because fruits and nuts are a great addition to a balanced animal diet, and rotted fruit is great for a compost pile. Fruit and nuts can be dried, powdered, canned, etc. pretty easily. It is a truism that in this current environment our diets are greatly lacking in fruit and nuts, so changing our diet to represent those items which are more permanent and perennial is just a good idea.

Permaculture

One of the topics I talk a lot about around here, and one that you will hear me speak quite a bit about in the future, is permaculture. The word "Permaculture" is a combination of the terms Permanent and Agriculture. Permaculture is a philosophy and design theory that revolves around the idea of inter-dependent planting and design. The overall idea is one of sustainability, but it goes beyond that. A permaculture plan is one that incorporates all the sustainable ideas in a way where each area benefits and serves another area - in a type of symbiosis that is hard to explain, but easy to understand once it is grasped. For example, a permaculture idea of raising chickens might be a chicken coop and pen system where fruit and nut trees and bushes are planted so that they drop their fruit or nuts into the chicken pens. The coop might be designed so that the chickens (which produce heat, fertilizer, and carbon dioxide - all of which is necessary for plants) have a portion of their "run" in a greenhouse. By going about their normal duties, they produce a large portion of the heat and CO2 that is necessary for the plants to survive. The plants produce oxygen and food for the animals, and the fertilizer can be used to boost the productivity of the plants. This is mainly just an idea to get you started on the overall philosophy, but modern pastured poultry and pasture rotation/animal rotation schemes are all based on some permaculture philosophies.

Proper, sustainable, permaculture design of the homestead can greatly reduce the overall workload, and can reduce or eliminate many of the costs related to running the homestead. A few hours of planning and design can eliminate untold amounts of cost, work on the homestead. Some permaculture ideas, though they will not eliminate labor completely, will certainly eliminate costs. Using chickens in insect and pest control; using properly planned and designed orchards to produce food for our animals, and using animals to work and improve the fields and gardens, are all a part of permaculture design.

In coming to a right mindset on these issues, it is necessary that everything we think be put on the table and debated. Our diets ought to change to better represent our location and our geographical reality. We ought to eat those things that grow well locally, and as much as possible it should reflect those things that can be grown perennially or that increases the sustainability of our homestead. From the species of trees we plant, to the types of crops we grow, we need to keep in mind how that choice is going to effect us and continue to effect us in the long run. If we get into the mindset that we are always going to be able to put in a nice annual garden, or some annual seed crops, and that somehow that that idea is sustainable, then we are likely to fail if things do not forever continue as they are now. From the day we start our homestead we ought to be thinking of some type of perennial or continuous food production. It is hard in this world of immediate gratification and a "get it now" mentality, to plan for a crop that will not mature for many years, but we ought to always remember that this is exactly the way that God works, and our patience will be rewarded in due time. One of my greatest anticipations is to see the trees we planted in our first year here on the ranch, produce fruit. Not only is this a great example of God's mighty works in and through us, but it is a profound picture of His providence and grace towards us, that He provides sweet and free fruit from the ground abundantly to all of His children who will reach out and take it.

Your servant in Christ Jesus,

Michael Bunker

Welcome to the Center for Agrarian Homesteading Education

Howdy! We needed to build a repository for all the articles on Agrarianism, Homesteading, and Off-Grid Living - so we have decided to put them on this blog so that they can be easily referenced. We hope they are a blessing to you.

Michael Bunker

Off-Grid Living for Agrarians, Part 10: Preserving the Crop 2

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

Off-Grid Living for Agrarians, Part 9: Preserving the Crop 1

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: Food Production 2

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

Off-Grid Living for Agrarians, Part 7: Food Production 1

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: Philosophy 2

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

Off-Grid Living for Agrarians, Part 5: Water

Every movement is diverse and can consist of widely different philosophies. Some philosophies of Agrarianism are really good, and some are really horrible. It is not politically correct today to call someone else's ideas "horrible", but I am far from politically correct. Agrarian movements in the past have been founded on a vast array of philosophies, some which are completely antithetical - much like our concept of Biblical Agrarianism is antithetical to the Communist and Marxist "agrarian" reform ideas of Pol Pot and other dictators. Pol Pot's communist and collectivist agrarian reforms in Cambodia left about 1 million dead. Even among those who call themselves "Biblical" or "Christian" agrarians, there are a plethora of philosophies and ideas - some which, frankly, aren't truly agrarian at all. It is a mistake to say that you cannot define terms, even if the proper definition of terms excludes some folks who want to identify themselves as Biblical agrarians. I will talk more about this topic in a future chapter in this series, but for now I just want to point out that just because someone lives on a farm, engages in some gardening or agrarian activities, and declares himself a "Christian" does not mean that the philosophy that he lives by is Christian or Biblical Agrarianism. There are some really good materials and blogs out there by Christian agrarians, and I have often plugged them:

The Deliberate Agrarian
Tabletop Homestead

...and many others - these are just a few I try to check out regularly. But there are some really, really bad ones out there too. I read one the other day that literally defined EVERYONE as an Agrarian. Basically the thesis was that if you eat food, then you are an agrarian. Well, frankly that is just ridiculous. Eating food doesn't make you an agrarian any more than drinking water makes you a fish. I suppose the fact that there are electrical synapses that fire in my brain makes me a power plant or a junction box. If, as the Bible says, everyone who claims to be a Christian is not one (Mat 12:50 - For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother), then it should be evident that everyone who claims to be an agrarian is not one. Always remember that there are tares in every field of wheat, and it takes wisdom and understanding to discern them.

Ok, in the next couple of parts we will be talking about water and food. Water is more important than food, so we will talk about water first. The other day we met a man who was very serious about the dangers out in the world today. He had imbibed some of the myths and lies of the government (about boogeymen and terrorists), but he had determined that the world is not as safe and dependable as it pretends to be, and he spoke as if he had realized that the "grid" system of life was in a tenuous condition and that it is destined to collapse. One of the things he told us was that "the terrorists" (Fasist-speak for "anyone who rightfully distrusts and dislikes Amerikan imperialism) are going to attack our systems of electricity and water. Ok. So we looked around and saw that he was on city power and water. He might have a generator or two socked away, but, like I mentioned in part 2, generators are just an intermediate step and not a permanent solution - not to mention that, according to his philosophy, "the terrorists" control the worlds oil supply; and with all the roof lines this man had on his property, not one had a gutter or any semblance of a catchwater system. Do you see the disconnect between what people say they believe, and what they show that they believe by their actions? I never believe what a man says to me... not ever. I believe what he shows me by his actions.

There is no doubt that there very likely will be an attack on our already dwindling fresh water supplies in Amerika. Where that attack comes from and who is ultimately responsible for it, I cannot tell you - but there are two things you ought to know about the current water supply:

1. It is already poisoned. If you are living on unfiltered and un-purified city water, then you are already being poisoned. If you didn't already know that, then you need to do some research, because this work on Off-Grid living is not going to be big or long enough for me to catch you up on the dangers of city water supplies. Here is a hint: Heavy metals, dangerous and caustic chemicals, toxic build-up in pipes, fecal matter, etc. Think about it.

2. It is highly susceptible to attack, and it is tenuous at best even if there is no attack.

One of the most glaring realities that urbanites and suburbanites face every day is that they may wake up in the morning with insufficient water, undrinkable water, or no access to water at all. Just this past year, Coleman, Texas, which is only 12 miles from here, had a serious water situation. During a "random" test, a water test expert detected dangerous levels of toxins in the water supply. The word went out for everyone to boil their water. Stores and restaurants were informed that they could not provide water or ice for drinks. The problem is that if you do not listen to the radio, then you would never have known there was a problem. This happens in cities around the country every day. Not to mention the state of the power supply system that is required to pump water to city dwellers. I could go on and on, but the point is that you cannot trust water that is provided by government. Ever.

Now, I am speaking to people who are already rural, or who will be rural very soon (we hope), so - how do we separate Agrarians think and plan for our water needs?

There are several ways to procure water for an off-grid life, and I will discuss each method and then give you some positives and negatives about which you ought to think:

1. A water well (either deep or shallow)
2. Surface water (lakes, streams, ponds, tanks, etc.)
3. Catchwater
4. Water from the air (Air-wells, dehumidifying systems, etc.)

You should note that you will need water for your own family use, for drinking and every other use of water; and you will need water (huge amounts) for keeping animals, watering gardens and trees, etc. Your long-term water plan needs to provide for sufficient water for every conceivable need. Modern urbanites use about 100 gallons on average per person per day! Smart, efficient, off-grid agrarians may use anywhere from 5-15 gallons per day - usually closer to 5. I figure our absolute minimal needs for personal use (not including gardens or animals) at 6 gallons per day per person, which for my family of 6 adds up to almost 14,000 gallons per year.

Our first thought is always to have a water well. I would say that 95% of the people who ask me about our off-grid life here ask me if I have a water well. I do not. A water well is a great thing, if it works, and if the land you buy has a working water well - then great. I would warn you that a deep water well isn't always as dependable as people think. Wells often have problems. They can cave in; the water can dry up or go bad; the pumping system or mechanism can break or stop operating, etc. Having a well is great, but always be careful not to depend too much on it. Most of the people who homesteaded out in the Great Plains a century ago failed because of the failure of water wells. A good water well in an area that has a pretty dependable aquifer at a reasonable depth can cost you between $3500 and $5,000 - and that is before you ever pump a drop. That does not include pumps and pump supplies, pipe, power, etc. If you plan on using a deep well hand pump you will still probably spend over $1000 for the pump and all the pipe and other supplies you will need. A hand pump is more dependable than an electric pump though. Some people choose to use both, and it is possible to have both an electric (12V or AC) pump and a hand pump in the same well hole. Again, the well is susceptible to cave-in if it is not properly and carefully cased, and there is always the probability that the well can run dry during a period of extended drought. Here in Central Texas, the digging of water wells is really iffy. There have been two wells dug in our community: One was successful, though it is a low-output well. The other was a dry well... a failure. The failure cost $2500 even though it was a dry well. A water well could be a great solution if used in conjunction with other water solutions.

Surface water. If you happen to procure a property with a very large lake that has good, clean, water - then you are way ahead of the game. One of our neighbors has a 4 acre pond with a pump that serves his house. The pond always, even in the drought, holds enough water to provide for his needs. In this case you would only need to work out a pumping and purifying system (pumping for the whole system and purifying for any personal use and drinking water) and you should be alright. You could also make a large tank, pond, or lake on your property if there is enough water running through the property when it rains. This can be an expensive process if you have to do it all from scratch. Here in Central Texas it can cost upwards of $15,000 to hire a crew to come in and build a cattle tank (Here in Texas the word "tank" on a ranch usually means a small pond) that may be less than 1/4 acre in size. Here on our ranch, Elder David has been working to build a tank on his own by renting a backhoe and doing all the work himself. It still will likely cost several thousand dollars in backhoe rental costs before it is all done. Always remember, though, that these costs are generally one-time costs, and if your water plan can provide you with dependable water year-round, then it may be worth it to you to spend the money (if you have it). One of our two tanks here on my property went totally dry during the drought we had in 2006, so always remember that surface water can also be tenuous during drought conditions.

Catchwater. This, to me, is the ideal solution for most situations. When we were in Western Australia we noticed that virtually every roof line, no matter how small, fed water into gutters that ran into a personal cistern - even in the cities. Every drop of water that fell from the sky was caught and stored. This is the way we ought to live. It is a great philosophy for several reasons:

1. Rainwater in most rural areas is pure and clean. It only must be filtered because of the material that gets in the water from the catchwater surface (such as roofs and gutters), but as it falls it is pure and perfect.

2. Catching rainwater shows and displays our complete reliance and dependence on God, and not on the systems of men. We rely on our Father God to provide us with the rain necessary to maintain us. When we rely on rainwater, we show this dependence, and we are more likely to remember to pray and give thanks to God for His provision. City people do not think of God when it comes to turning on or off a faucet. People who rely on rain directly for daily use water are more likely to pray for it, and to thank God for it.

Although we live in Central Texas, there is plenty of water (many, many, many times more than all of the families here in the community could ever use) that passes through our property. The concept of Catchwater is to utilize as much of this water as possible, not only by catching it from roofs into cisterns and tanks, but by catching runoff water in tanks or ponds. For the same amount of money that you would spend on digging a water well and procuring pumps, etc., a structure can be built and a tank bought that will supply you with a good percentage of your water needs. I have less than $1500 in my catchwater system on my cabin, since it catches water from the roof lines on the cabin and is not a structure built specifically to catch water. My cabin is 610 square feet, but it has 710 square feet of roof line. This means I catch somewhere near 350 gallons for every 1 inch of rainfall. That is not a lot, but it adds up to close to 10,000 gallons of water a year. Not enough for a family of my size, but it is a lot of good water, and it helps. Two of the families here on the land have roof lines that are capable of catching between 1200 and 1800 gallons per inch of rain fall. This capacity would provide an average of 31,000 to 46,000 gallons of water a year in an average rainfall year. For a small agrarian family, this ought to provide most of the necessary daily use water. This would have to be augmented for watering large gardens or for watering animals, but if used in combination with other surface or subsurface water projects, this method is very successful. I plan (if the Lord blesses and wills) to catch the water off of every roof line we build. If the Lord wills for my office to be completed this coming year, that will add an additional 350 gallons of water per inch of rain, or another 9100 gallons of water per year on average. Some of our younger families are subsisting on the water caught from the roofs of goat sheds, farrowing sheds, outhouses, campers, etc. It is doable. But catching water ought to be on our mind as we engage in any building project. We also will be (if the Lord wills) expanding our surface water projects, including expanding our ponds and tanks, and building new ones when we are able. In my opinion, the new agrarian homesteader ought to focus his/her resources and time on catchwater resources FIRST.

Water from the air. It is possible, and in some cases doable, to produce water from the air. This would fall under the category of "intermediate" or "ancillary" steps in providing water. Let me give a few examples. Many of you know that air-conditioners, freezers, refrigerators, etc. will produce water from the air in high humidity situations. This is why you will see water dripping from your A/C unit in the summer when the humidity is high. This is called "condensing" and the water is "condensation" which builds up because of the drastic temperature transfer and differential between the freezing cold in the tubing and the warm, wet, air surrounding it. Using this theory, some companies have developed low energy "air wells", which are units with condensers that condense water from the air and then catch it and purify it for consumption. This is something to look into for anyone who lives in a high humidity environment, and who produces their own electricity via solar power. Several of these units could be powered by solar power to provide water - although it would be very expensive and it would still be subject to failures and problems. I have considered purchasing one or more of these units (or manufacturing one ourselves) and putting it in a special root cellar or "dry room" where we want it to stay less humid than in a regular root cellar, which might have humidity levels of 70-95%. For example, a couple of automobile compressors could be powered by solar power in an underground room with high natural humidity. The water running off of the compressors could be caught. I reckon that up to 10 gallons a day could be caught in this manner. Water can also be gathered, in small amounts, from anywhere (either natural or man-made) were condensation appears regularly.

Water storage is more important to your survival and success than food storage. Storing water in ponds, tanks, lakes, etc. is ideal; water can also be stored in man built tanks and cisterns. We have a 1500 gallon above ground storage tank for our cabin catchwater that cost us somewhere around $800. A good and talented construction guy could build one with much more capacity out of wood and/or concrete. We are also considering a 20,000 gallon above ground pool for water storage. The homesteads in this area 100 years ago used below ground rock-lined cisterns for water storage. The old home that used to be on our neighbors property had water provided from a small pond which was pumped up to the house where it was stored in a rock-lined cistern.

I am still studying ways to further enhance our catchwater system here on the ranch. Off-grid water is an important issue, and I imagine we will be studying and adapting our system as long as the Lord tarries and he continues to bless us with peace and quiet here on our off-grid ranch.

Your servant in Christ Jesus,

Michael Bunker

Off-Grid Living for Agrarians, Part 4: Land

Land. Like Mark Twain said, buy it because they aren't making any more of it. Wars are fought over it. Land is power - always has been. There are as many philosophies about land as there are philosophies, and the problem with philosophies is that they often get codified into law without any reason behind them, and as such they become unreasonable maxims. Unreasonable maxims become walls in our thinking, guiding us to conclusions that may be just as unreasonable as the philosophy that brought us there. This is why we say that the mind of modern man is "colonized", which means he has accepted things as truths that are not truths at all, but are just learned behaviors - patterns and trails of thinking that have become ruts out of which we cannot free ourselves. Most people believe certain things merely because their whole lives everyone around them has believed those things. People accept things "the way they are" mainly because they have never experienced any other way. Unhappily, when I speak to people about land it is difficult to get them to think clearly on the subject, because their thinking is based on a lifetime of accepting as truth what was once just a philosophy or idea pushed by an eager zealot. The modern industrialized mind cannot even begin to consider that, for literally thousands of years, the idea of being caged into a poorly built crackerbox house on a 1/4 acre lot would have been laughable as a workable land philosophy. Most "amerikans" don't know of any other way of living, and even those who might have a bit more land are flummoxed when they learn that, only 150 years ago, owning outright "forty acres and a mule" was considered a bare step above poverty. The Homestead Act of 1862 gave 160 acres of land to each person or family, provided they stayed and worked the land for at least five years. Today, television commercials show gleaming and smiling couples, hugging one another in joyful bliss, ecstatic because they have entered into a mortgage contract to purchase a shoddily built but gilded and trimmed crackerbox on 1/4 acre of land. The voice over says, "You always dreamed of owning your own home...".

In order to properly think about land in our Agrarian journey to an off-grid life, we have to be willing to consider things we have never before considered. Land has to be central to our thinking and our philosophy, but land cannot become an idol, or we will surely fail in our Agrarian pursuit. Here are some things about which you should think:

1. Not every person in an Agrarian society will be a landowner and farmer. Although it is a high ideal, it is impossible and has never been a workable solution - in all of history - for every man to own and farm land. Even in the most successful eras of Agrarian bliss, there have been landed folk and unlanded folk. There will always be employers and the employed. Even in the Bible the shepherds were shepherds, meaning that they tended the sheep of others. In an Agrarian village in Europe 200 years ago, the average farm would have employed dozens and dozens of workers - shepherds, swineherds, thatchers, millers, coopers, smithies, brewers, etc. How do you think most people came upon their last names? Now, in many cases, these workers worked on the main farm, but also had a small spread for themselves and their family which they worked on the side to provide more for themselves and their loved ones. Others started up their trade in small villages, working for themselves and helping the Agrarian society by working in a specific area that is needed by the society. But there will always be those who acquire and hold more land than others, and who are willing to employ others. The farmer back then, was a wealthy man, held in high esteem by the society and by other men. Some, due to certain situations, circumstances, etc. who will have to work for others. There is no scandal or anything ignoble in working for another man in a healthy and proper pursuit.

2. Land should never be an idol, but is a means through which we can obey God, provide for our own, evangelize our families (first, and then others), obey the commandments of God, and glorify Him in the work He has given us to do. Land, like any other means, needs to be put in its proper place in our thinking. We cannot take it with us, and it would be a pitiable thing to gain the world and lose your soul. Too many people contact me and tell me of their Agrarian dream to buy them a plot of land in the boondocks and start farming, etc. I will ask them about fellowship and service and brethren and doctrine and these important things, and it turns out they have no plans to have any of those things. Or worse, they will plan on finding some local "bible believing" church to go to... which means that they will sell out doctrine and true Christianity for a proxy "church" filled with industrialized and anesthetized minds. It is just as dangerous to disobey God and stay in the city of destruction in order to maintain fellowship with family and worldlings as it is to flee the city of destruction with no intention of living in some type of communion and fellowship with God's elect children.

3. Land is highly valued by Christian and Secularist alike, and will be tough to acquire in quantities enough to serve us as homesteads. If it were not tough, it would not be valued highly enough by us. Acquiring land, if that is your goal, will take some creative thinking - unless you are just rich enough to plunk down a sizable wad of cash on the perfect homestead.

4. "The perfect homestead". Too often we idealize the Agrarian life until it becomes a wall we cannot scale or a picture postcard we will never realize. I have heard people wistfully describing the land they are looking for with dreamy eyes cast back into their empty heads. After their breathless description of rural bliss, I will say, "I have seen just the land you are describing... it is in a picture hanging on the wall in a restaurant in town". Life is not a picture. If you are expecting to find the perfect little homestead with a year-round brook flowing through it and a pond with geese and a perfectly green pasture with the perfect red barn... etc.... etc... then you will inevitably fail, because the homestead you look for will either a) cost you a million bucks, or b) never live up to the dream you have concocted in your mind. You will most likely start with empty or overgrown land and you will most likely have to build your utopia there. Agrarianism is coming to love the land God gives us, and to till it and work it according to our needs and the directions given by God. We build homesteads, we cannot afford to buy them.

5. Last point before I move on, and it will be the jumping off point for our discussion today. In order to procure land in the world today, we must be willing to pray hard, work hard, and think hard. If the solution is just "plunk down the money and buy the land", you may never have money enough to pull the trigger. You need to be creative, and to think in ways you are not accustomed to thinking. There was a reason that millions of men and women became indentured servants only a few short centuries ago. They were willing to work as near slaves for 5-10 years in order to become landholders someday, if the Lord did will it. Today, few people are even willing to consider such a thing, and so they stay slaves to a debilitating commercialized system, having their souls sucked out at work each day, just because they cannot think outside of what they already know.

Ok, so, like I said, that is the jumping off point for our discussion on land. We have to be willing to try new things, and to think extraordinary thoughts. Our ticket to land ownership may be out there right now - we just haven't thought of it yet. My father bought some land in the mountains of New Mexico. Next to his land was a small, empty parcel that no one ever worked or built upon. He asked around, did some research, and found out that the adjacent land was owned by a huge world "church" (I will not mention which Antichrist it was) who didn't even know that they owned the land. Someone likely had died and "donated" the land in order to get to heaven. The local diocese didn't even know they owned the land. Dad made a ridiculously small offer (probably 1/5 of what the land was worth) and the cash whores sold it gladly and immediately. In a like (but opposite) scenario, when I lived in West Texas, some of our friends had their eyes on a parcel of land near ours. They did the research and found out who owned it. It too was owned by a religious cult who did not know that they owned it. This cult, however, was unwilling to sell the land at any price. You just never know. I have heard more stories than you can imagine, but the stories have convinced me that there are thousands of acres of land out there that can be bought for a reasonable price, where the current land owner is willing to work with a buyer to make a good and doable deal. I know that this next story is about a worldling in a city, but the story still has a good principle. An old friend and business partner of mine bought a house in a rundown part of town by merely knocking on doors until he found out who owned an old (but well built) house that was soon to be nothing but a crack house. He found the owner, made an offer to buy the house with monthly payments (but with no interest!) and said he would keep the riff-raff out of the area and keep the owner out of court. He made up a contract where he would own the house outright in about 5 years. He then spent a couple of thousand fixing up the house, brought in 5 individual college students as renters, and paid the house off in a year or so. In just a few years he owned almost all the houses on the block, and several others in the area. I have seen this same principle work in rural land deals, but it takes work. We have been shocked to find how willing most of the rural folks are to work with us on any number of projects and plans that we have. We are getting things offered to us for free almost every week by people who know who we are and what we are doing. This goes to the next principle... work hard and talk to people who might be able to help you.

It will be impossible for me to set up a hypothetical for every possible scenario, but I'll throw up a hypothetical that fits the situations I hear about the most often. Ok, so here is a scenario I receive in email questions all the time...

"Michael, I am single and unattached. I want to live the Agrarian life, but I have no money to speak of, some debt, and very few skills."

Here is what I would do. I would sell virtually everything I own (except a working vehicle) and try to scrounge up some cash. Even a thousand dollars would be a good start. Next comes the homework. I would identify where I want to live. This part applies to everyone. Write down everything that is important to you, and important in a living location, and start to prioritize your thinking. Here is my list:

a.) I want to live near like-minded brethren, in Christian community with those who understand these philosophies and who are seeking obedience to God every day.

b.) I want to live as freely as possible, with as little government restriction of my rights as possible. I want to be able to own guns, defend myself, hunt, fish, drive, travel, build, farm, etc. with as few governmental restrictions as possible.

c.) I will need a land that is farmable, with enough annual rainfall to be caught and stored, or enough readily available water to work a farm.

d.) I want a climate that is good for farming as many months out of a year as possible.

You may want to add more things, all the way up to Z if necessary. These first 4 were critical in my thinking, and I prioritized them in a way that I believe put first things first.

Next you need to consider how many acres you will need, and how much is a reasonable price per acre. Now, most people do not need near as much land as they think. With some of the advances in intensive and "square foot" farming, a very small homestead can produce more food, if worked properly, than a good sized family can eat. I have no doubt that a 4-5 acre homestead is sufficient for most people. Some will want more, some might even be able to do with less. I know of people farming 2 acres in a way that is very, very successful. Next you have to start pinpointing an area where all of your priorities overlap. Is there a place near true Christian brethren (and I mean like-minded brethren with good doctrine) where the other priorities are all met and land is fairly affordable per acre? Put a pin mark in the map. That is what I did. Next, in this scenario, I would travel to that area and start nosing about. Seek out the small towns, far from the big cities and go into the diners and cafes and have coffee. Talk to people. Once I have found the area where I want to live, if I must and I have no other options (such as to work for these Christian brethren and live on their land while I make the money to buy my own land) I would rent the cheapest room available in the smallest town nearby. Then I would talk to EVERYONE I could talk to. I would start in the cafes and diners and talk to everyone, letting them know that I am willing to work day-labor for cash. You would be shocked at how fast folks in this area were willing to put us to work. There are always farmers and ranchers who are looking for day workers, or ranch hands. Price your labor fairly, taking into account that you no longer live in a big city with big city needs and expenses. Work hard, and continue to let others know you are willing to work. Take the jobs that pay good, and work hard at them, treating your employer as the Bible commands us to treat masters. Put away money. In your off-time, begin to search for land. You will not generally find cheap and affordable land in the real estate papers, though it is not impossible that you might. You might see a few real estate agents and tell them exactly what you are looking for. They might not be able to help you, but then again - they might. Don't get forced into a real estate buying pattern. Be willing to make outlandish offers, but not insulting ones. Talk to land owners and tell them what you are trying to do. You might be pleasantly surprised and find a good deal where an owner is willing to work with you on purchasing the land. Much of the land today is owned by absentee land owners, who lease the land for cattle, or hold on to it for tax reasons. You never know when one of these folks might be willing to part with 5 acres if you are willing to watch their land for them, or do some fence work, etc. Try anything.

Work hard, and be willing to take work that will teach you skills you will need to know to work the land. We here in our community are learning new things every day about building and construction by working for others when the need arises. This way you get paid twice... in cash, and in skills. By the way, this is also a valuable thought when it comes to learning things you may need to know. Do you want to learn construction, welding, farm techniques, etc.? Why not find someone who does those thing and offer to help them for a modest wage? If they cannot afford you, it may be worth your time to work with them for awhile for free if you must - because the skills may be very valuable someday.

I certainly do not have all the answers in procuring land, but I have learned enough to know that almost nobody can afford land the old-fashioned way. Going off-grid in our Agrarian pursuit is a joy, but it is also a challenge. It is necessary that we learn to think in new and creative ways. I have found that if I keep first things first (my duty to God and His commandments), that ways seem to be opened to me to do those things I need to do. Too many people are satisfied with disobedience and with worldliness, while they convince themselves that their circumstances bar them from doing what they know in their conscience they should do. Too many people, like Henry in Henry and the Great Society, promise themselves that they will do the right thing someday. Of course they never do, and they increasingly refuse to condemn themselves as their conscience once did - as they are hardened against the need to obey at all. And they will convince themselves that they are alright, and that obedience is really just in the heart anyway. Ever heard that before? I have. Hundreds of times, and, as an excuse, it transfers from obedience to God's commandments and ordinances, to any other obedience required of us.

When we preached separatism, which the Bible preaches from cover to cover, some folks told us "We merely need to be separate in the heart", as if the heart can separate from what it loves. If you love the world, you will not separate from it; you will make excuses for it, and for your marriage to it. Separatism is a fundamental principle of Christian Agrarianism. Obedience is a fundamental principle of Christianity. Neither is taught or required today, which is a shame. Christian Agrarianism is not a garden in the heart, nor is it growing wheat in an suburban backyard (though it could start with those things). Christian Agrarianism is principally the obedient movement of God's children out of the City of Destruction, and out of the maw of the beast on consuming them. The command of Christ to flee the earthly city when we see it encompassed with enemies, is no less vital today than it was 2000 years ago. It is ever the wilderness where God hath prepared a place for His true Church (Rev. 12:6, 12:14-17).

That's all for this rant... more next time... if the Lord wills it.

Your servant in Christ Jesus,

Michael Bunker

Off-Grid Living for Agrarians, Part 3: Philosophy

It is time to discuss a very important point. In the previous part, I mentioned (and approved of) using "intermediate steps" in our process of going off-grid or separating from the wicked world system. An intermediate step could be anything from, say, selling your house and furniture and moving into an inexpensive apartment or camper, to getting a part time job that allows you more time to work on developing your homestead. Intermediate steps can be a propane freezer on your way to an icehouse, a refrigerator on your way to a root cellar, or a propane heater on your way to a woodburner. It is often both inevitable and necessary that we make use of intermediate means towards our ultimate goal. This is why this blog is entitled The PROCESS Driven Life, since we confess that obedience to God and our work here on earth is a process. We, as Christians, are to be PROCESS driven and not PURPOSE driven. Ultimate purposes and results belong to God, but obedience is ours. In our move of obedience, often we will make use of intermediate means - which I described in the previous part. Ok, so for example, I mentioned that moving from grid electricity to intermediate means (like propane, kerosene lamps, generators, solar power, etc.) is not only acceptable, but pretty necessary. So long as we recognize the inherent weaknesses in dependence on these things, and so long as we take steps to mitigate the dependence and the ultimate damage when (and if) our ability to use these things is lost, then we may use them to help us separate from the world system. Another example... there is nothing inherently wrong with my using a battery operated drill - so long as I recognize the inherent weaknesses in the dependence on battery power; so long as I recognize that this battery powered drill may not always be available to me; so long as I make plans for being able to continue my work if battery powered drills become useless to me, etc., then I am in a good position. Then I am not operating from a position of weakness. This same philosophy, then, should be applied to everything we do.

So now to the "very important point" I mentioned. Pay close attention. There is no greater danger to our well-being and our eventual freedom from the grid system than to rely inordinately on, or to trust in, intermediate means. Let me explain...

A truism you must face - PEOPLE ARE LIARS. Even you. And if you do not recognize that, then you are lying to yourself and doing terrible damage to yourself. Most of the dead bodies on the wayside of the pilgrimage out of the world grid system were killed by a lie they told themselves, and the cause of death was "reliance on intermediate means". Does this mean you are going to fail because you rely on battery powered drills? NO. Probably not, anyway; but, like I said, the philosophy applies to every area of your life. Remember that you are a liar, and most of the things you tell yourself about yourself are not true. As a professing Christian you have enemies (The World, The Flesh, and The Devil), and those enemies never cease to make war against you - and their most valuable weapon is YOU. Here is how this thing works. Many people deify the devil and blame him for everything bad that happens to them. Well, I can assure you that the devil need not have anything to do with most professing Christians... they are doing fine damaging or even damning themselves. The World (over which the devil reigns as the Prince of this World) and its deceptions, dainties, comforts, business, concerns, etc., is plenty enough to damn the souls of almost every man who will ever live. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. The carnal man automatically loves the world, and defends it, and will not let go of it - and almost no one sees it for what it is. So the love of this world is the reason that most people who tell themselves they want to separate from the world will not succeed. They cannot leave what they say they hate, because they really love what they say they hate. They will merely redefine what they mean when they say "world". The modern religousite has redefined the word "world" to mean - anything that has a sticker on it with a satanic symbol, or that blatantly is involved in the worship of Satan. But to them, the world economic system, the world political system, the world social system, the world education system, the world religious system - none of these things are part of the "world". Why? Because they love those things... or at least enough of those things that their use of them makes them inseparable or indiscernible from the world. This is not a rant, this is a fact. I am trying to tell you what the Bible means when it says "the world, the flesh, and the devil". The devil uses the world to appeal to your flesh. You, then, as fallen man, do what is natural to you - which is to love yourself and satiate your flesh. This does not mean that you have binges and orgies. This means that you always seek the comfortable and easy way, the way that is more pampering to your flesh. Since you are in love with the world, when you do become convinced in your mind that something is evil, if you are deceived by the devil, you will find some middle-ground that allows you to stay in the world but still say you are not "of it". You will find a way to take a half-step away from the world, but still stay in it as a part of it. This, then, is the danger of intermediate means. If you are not careful, you will park out (or camp) in "intermediate means" and you will make them your home and you will never separate from the world. You will convince yourself that since you are more separated then just about anyone else, that you are alright or acceptable - even if you are not. I've seen this more times than I can relate, and it is very, very dangerous.

It may be hard to get your mind around what I am saying, because I am NOT condemning intermediate means. I am not even saying that you MUST move past them to some perfect, idyllic, pre-industrial/agrarian life, and that the use of any of them after that is heresy. Some of us will likely always be using some intermediate means. I am saying that you must be able to see things rightly, and to recognize your natural proclivity to not do things all the way, and to rely inordinately on intermediate means. If you do this, then you are in just the same precarious position as the world, you are just one step removed from it. So, say you procure yourself 5 acres of land, build a cabin that is powered on solar power or generators, put up a store of food and batteries, and then rest as if you have it made. If a collapse happens, you are just one step away from being in the same situation as the world. Your lights won't go out as fast, but they will go out eventually, and if you have not made plans to operate without the assistance of the industrial world, then you will go down with it.

REASON

The basic point is that we must employ our REASON during the process of going off-grid. Let's don't get too focused on not paying an electric bill, then forget the real reasons we want to be independent from the system.

Time for some examples. All of these are real world examples of folks who suffer from the lies they tell themselves...

The man that I mentioned before goes out and gets him some land out in the country. He builds himself a cabin (or moves in a camper) and begins to sock away food and supplies. He may even get himself a few animals. He never gets around to planting a garden (or even planning to plant one) and he soon finds out that living off-grid, if it is not done properly, is just as expensive as living on the grid. He doesn't have an electric bill to be paid to the electric company - he pays it to the gas station instead in the form of gas for his generator. He still has a food bill, still has a phone bill, still has a clothing bill because he still does all of his shopping in town. What has changed? Well, he has to drive farther to get to all the stuff he still loves.

Another man decides to move off grid and does many of the same things. He decides, though, that rather than move to his off-grid life before he is ready, he will work his way out of the system. He minimizes his life and moves into a camper or a small rent room. He spends all of his money on getting prepared to go off-grid... The problem? He never does. He never pulls the trigger. His incremental nature causes him to slide unknowingly right back into everything he was doing before. He slowly begins to reacquire all of his "stuff" and the expenses related to that stuff. Pretty soon he is just as far away from going off-grid as he ever was, only now he doesn't have a nice house to do it all in, because he got rid of that.

There will always be a reason to NOT do what you know you should do. There will never be enough money, no matter how much you save, to go off-grid if your heart is still on-grid. However much you con yourself into thinking that you will one day miraculously have enough money to splash it all down on a pre-fab farm with everything off-grid and ready to go, that will never happen.

Prepare thy work without, and make it fit for thyself in the field; and afterwards build thine house. (Proverbs 24:27)

The problem is that people have things out of order. They want to build their house first (and by this I mean that they want to keep the fleshly man comfortable and protected above all things). They want all the comforts of the old worldly/industrial life before they are willing to pull the trigger on separating from that old industrial world. They want to bring Egypt with them. The Bible says that we should prepare for our future provision (food and water) BEFORE we worry about the comfort of our flesh (shelter). Don't go taking this too literally. I am not condemning anyone who throws up a quick shelter, so long as they are preparing for their future provisions too. I am pushing the more spiritual aspect of the verse - that we should think about what it will take to not be reliant on the world for our food and raiment, and then we should be concerned with creature comforts. For those just now planning to go off-grid, this means that if you sit there and plan out all of the alternative ways to keep your current standard of living (but do it off-grid) the sheer cost of that plan will keep you from ever implementing it. It will be overwhelming, and you never will have separated from the world, which was the whole point in the first place.

Going off-grid is often a slow and arduous project, and often it is incremental, and often the process relies completely on intermediate means. Those are facts. The problem is that, if we are truly serious about going off-grid, there must be progress. We must be constantly moving, and we will need to be constantly checking ourselves and our heart to make sure we aren't just whistling in the dark. We need to be on the pilgrim's path and not hanging around in Vanity Fair.

Are you moving out?

Your servant in Christ Jesus,

Michael Bunker

Off-Grid Living for Agrarians, part 2: Lighting

I apologize that this series is not better organized. It is more "train of thought" since I am typing stuff as it comes to me. Maybe it will work out anyway.

Many people truly believe (either consciously or subconsciously) that it is enough to know the truth, even if you never act on it or obey it. The Bible teaches that to know the truth and not to act on it and obey it is a curse and is the sign of the damned. In every movement of God where he brings His people into greater holiness and separation, there will always be those who try to ride the fence or tread the middle ground. Jesus rebuked this notion that you could follow Him out of the camp while still remaining in it.

Ok, in our first part we discussed the grid system, its purpose (both spiritual and physical) and the results of being enslaved to the world system. We recognized the need to get out of it, and discussed some ways to begin training ourselves to leave that system for good. It is necessary that we know that not only CAN we make it off the grid, but that most of humanity for 6000 year has lived without any electric grid at all. My grandparents lived a good portion of their lives with no electrical power. Electrical dependency is a new phenomena and it is only the historical ignorance, covetousness, and slavish colonized mind of the worldling that convinces him that it will be difficult or impossible to leave the system.

George Clooney's character in the movie Oh, Brother Where art Thou? said this about the soon to come electrical grid:

"Everything's gonna be put on electricity and run on a paying basis. Out with the old spiritual mumbo jumbo, the superstitions, and the backward ways (editors note: this means Christianity and Agrarianism). We're gonna see a brave new world where they run everybody a wire and hook us all up to a grid. Yes, sir, a veritable age of reason. Like the one they had in France. Not a moment too soon."

Of course we know what the age of reason in France eventually produced... a little thing called The Reign of Terror, which claimed 40,000 victims (almost half by guillotine) in about a year. You see, it was a slippery slide... Prior to the Age of Reason, it was believed that all knowledge could only be gained via the Pope and the "church" alone. Next came the Age of Reason which held that all knowledge could be gained via reason alone. Next came the Age of Enlightenment, which held that all knowledge could be gained by the use of reason AND the five senses. Next came the Age of Revolution, that held that reason and the senses were useless unless they existed at the right end of a gun. Next came the Age of Industry, which said that reason and knowledge were only useful in the pursuit of gain... the gain of money, property, riches, "leisure time", etc. Next came the Age of Information, which holds that all of the benefits of all the brilliant and successful previous ages can be had at 1/2 price if everyone will just log on, sign in, and submit; shop at the same stores, wear the same clothers, watch the same shows, bow to the same false "gods". Coming next, of course, is the Age of Judgment, where all of these ideas and all those who succumbed to them will stand before a righteous God.

I digress again...

Ok, so we want to get off-grid, but how? We have to know what we do want, how we want to live, and that it is certainly possible for us to live that way. We have to look past the giants in the land and trust in God and His promises. Sell everything, eradicate debt, try to use every dollar eliminating the future need of more dollars. Study alternate methods of doing everyday tasks. Realize that you are on a journey, and that "off-grid" is not a destination, but a continuous battle. Your battle can start like ours did. We decided to turn off the lights and use them as little as possible. We bought oil lanterns and began to use them when the sun goes down. Since I am recommending oil lamps, there is a point I need to make here... and it will be helpful to consider in your progress and plans. Hopefully this is a helpful digression:

Any solution that requires that you continue indefinitely to buy something that you cannot make or produce on your own, is only a temporary or stop-gap solution. Ask yourself what would happen if some type of "eschaton" or world changing event happened. How long would you be able to keep doing something you are now doing if the world was never again going to revert back to normal? I was talking about lighting, so let me illustrate...

It is not a permanent or final solution to replace grid electricity with kerosene lanterns - unless you can make, or have an endless supply of, kerosene. Unless you can produce kerosene or some other type of burnable, safe, oil... like Olive Oil maybe, then lanterns may not be your solution. Sure you can store kerosene, but you can't store enough and eventually you will run out. This is doubly important to realize when you know what is going on with our petroleum supplies in this world. You cannot count on having ANY petroleum product in the future. Period. So kerosene lanterns are not a permanent solution. Next, ask yourself what your forefathers did.

First, we should point out how our ancestors handled the lighting issue. When it got dark, most of our forefathers went to bed. Although there were folks in previous generations who wrote, sung, laughed, loved, and lived by candlelight - most folks just went to bed. Candles are an option, if you can make them and you can continue to produce the "stuff" from which they are made. We raise pigs, so we can make tallow and fat candles, but they will be precious and we will not want to burn them all up every night. When it is dark, go to bed.

Second, like I said, candles will work, and are a good permanent solution if you can make them. Solar is a good solution, but not a permanent one. In order for solar power to be good for powering lights at night you must have battery storage, and batteries will not last forever. They will have to be replaced. If you have solar power, think of it as a 1-5 year headstart on making yourself candle rich.

Every aspect of your life has to be looked at from this point of view. It is good to be off-grid and able to live separate from the system - with, say, propane, diesel, kerosene, solar power, etc. That is good and it is miles and miles better than being tied to the world system. But it is the difference between "tied" and "loosely tied". In the long run we can become enslaved to those things just as easily, and if our lifestyle doesn't change, if we don't become more obedient and different from the world, then we will have merely delayed the inevitable. Start thinking about water, food, heat, light, cooling, food production, preservation, and storage. Think of all of these things and come up with a system (a road map) that will get you there. Ask for help. Ask questions. Listen. Learn. Realize that most of the questions we ask ourselves are based and informed by false presuppositions. I had a lady once who asked me how she would curl her hair if she didn't have grid power or if the power ever went out for good. I couldn't even begin to address all of the false presuppositions behind the question. So I didn't answer it. We have to realize that it is not some of the things that we think that are wrong. Virtually everything that we think is wrong.

Ok, back to power and lighting. I use a lot of rechargeable batteries, and I use a lot of solar products to recharge the batteries. This allows me to do most of my work without having to go back and forth to town. In a crisis, most of the things I use batteries for are NOT critical, so I will not be at a loss to live without them. So batteries are a good intermediate solution, and they help us do a lot of things we need to do right now as we move out of the system. I have several very low power LED lamps, reading lights, and flashlights. I try to buy everything to take AA batteries, but some of them take AAA. I buy NiMH (Nickel Metal-Hydride) rechargeable batteries in bulk, and I recharge them several ways. I have several solar rechargers that recharge the batteries directly from the sun. I also have some regular AC plug in rechargers that I can plug into my power system that is run and maintained by solar power. This way I always have batteries that are ready to go. We use AA batteries to power our radios and communication devices too. There are literally dozens of new lighting ideas and sources out there that use low wattage to power them. Check things out and begin to store up and use these things. Remember, especially in the fall, winter, and spring - kerosene lighting is a good intermediate solution as well. As long as this type of energy source is available and affordable we can use them as we come out of the industrial system.

Many years ago we bought some battery-powered 18V power tools when we were building our barn back in Smyer. I had a choice between buying some really nice and expensive ones, or some really cheap ones. I decided to buy the cheap ones (Ryobi) and figured if they got me through that one project, they would have been worth the price. 4 years later we are still using them. The original set came with a drill, flashlight, a hand vacuum, and a circular saw. We bought a second set of batteries a year and a half ago. A year ago while doing the root cellar project I was irritated that the batteries weren't lasting very well and we had so many things going on that I needed to have a set on hand charging so I went to town to buy another set of batteries and a second charger. It was going to cost $59.99 for the batteries and charger, or I could get a whole second set of tools with batteries and charger for $99.00. So I bought the second set. This allowed us to have a second set of tools so we could have more people working at once. This gave us a second flashlight too. I tell you all of this to say that the flashlights in these sets are awesome and work very well. Later I bought a car charger so I can charge the batteries in my truck whenever I go to town. Now they have created dozens of other tools and accessories that will run off of these 18V batteries. We use our Ryobi flashlights every night and every morning since we are up before the sun. We milk the cow by these lights as well.

You also want to buy several (many) of these flashlights they have which don't take batteries. We call them "shake lights" since you have to shake them to charge them up. They are an irritant if you need immediate (and/or silent) light, but they work great after about 30-60 seconds of shaking them. We had some of these for the children, but they inevitably lose them or break them so they end up borrowing the Ryobi lights and I just as inevitably end up using a shake light to go to the outhouse. You can also buy wind up flashlights which are good to keep in store. By the way, in the outhouse we have a light that is powered by rechargeable AA batteries. Harbor Freight and Home Depot sell solar powered night lights that charge during the day and stay on all night. We use these in the root cellar, you could use these just about anywhere you need some light at night.

Lehman's sells parts for olive oil lamps. These are "do it yourself" lamps and candles you can make that run off of olive oil. Basically they are pieces of twisted wire and wicks that you can drop down into any jar or large mouth bottle. We use canning jars and some other glass jars we buy for real cheap at garage sales. Anyway, they burn olive oil or any other type of bulk cooking oil. Olive oil works great, but you may not have an endless supply of it. You can also use these for making fat lamps and using cooking grease or other type of oil. Be careful and don't start a fire. Olive oil will not start a fire and usually other oils and greases will not because the temperature does not get hot enough. It would be good to have a very large supply of these inexpensive parts (wicks and wick holders) for emergencies. Check out Lehman's for a bunch of other lighting ideas from yesteryear.

Also, look into "fat lamps". Fat lamps were what was used before coal oil and other fuel lamps. The old "genie" lamps that people rubbed to get a genie to come out were fat lamps. They run off of rendered tallow from pigs. Perfect for us pig raisers.

I may have mentioned it, but I have a couple of reading lights I bought at a Harbor Freight store in Abilene. I have one mounted over my bed for night reading and one mounted on the front porch over a chair so I can read at night and early in the mornings after milking. Harbor Freight sells dozens of different low/no power lighting items including handcrank spotlights, solar powered lights, floodlights, flashlights, lanterns, etc., LED lights, etc.

We try not to use kerosene lanterns too much except when it is cold outside because they provide a lot of heat, which is great when it is cold, but not so great when it is not. 1 or 2 kerosene lanterns burning all night will keep the edge off in a small cabin or camper. Always, always, always make sure your sleeping quarters are vented if you have any type of flame burning overnight. You will die if you do not.

Well, that is it for lighting. I probably forgot something, so feel free to ask questions on this post if you have any.

Your servant in Christ Jesus,

Michael Bunker

Off-Grid Living for Agrarians, Part 1: The Grid

I've had some questions about Agrarianism and off-grid power, so I thought I'd address them in a special edition of the blog. Basically this will just be a discussion of the whole concept of alternative power, and how it fits into the Agrarian "off-grid" ideal. It will likely be a many part series, and we will conglomerate all the parts into a single tract sometime later. So consider this OFF-GRID LIVING, PART 1.

First, the concept. Why is living "off-grid" so central to the idea of Biblical Agrarianism?

It is our opinion that industrialism and the inter-connected/inter-dependent world it requires to support it, is responsible for most of what is wrong with the world. Ok, sin is what is wrong with the world, but industrialism is the coalescence of all that sin does and can do in the world. It is distilled sin, in that it perpetuates and allows all that man imagines, and therefore, in industrialism nothing is restrained from man that he might imagine to do:

And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. (Gen 11:6)

Now this, then, makes industrialism the modern tower of Babel. It is the one language of the world, and it is the result of the carnal man saying "Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven". Of course the city is urbanism and the tower is industrialism.

Ok, so if you disagree with that, then you have no reason to read further or to investigate Agrarianism. Your system (urban industrialism) is already here and is already out there on the plain of Shinar and you may go get your fill of it. If, however, you agree with what I have said, then Agrarianism is God's alternative. And, we should note, disconnecting from the current system is necessary for our spiritual safety, our physical well-being, and for our good. The "connection" that ties people into this system is the system we call "the grid". That grid consists of physical and spiritual connections and services that intertwine us with the world, and cause us to rely on the world system instead of on God. There is a huge difference between utilizing some aspect of the world system, as necessary, for the purpose of further separating from it (much as you would, if you were in a small boat, push off from a dock in order to gain speed to separate from it), and loving the world by being tied to it - so do not let naysayers and illogical barkers convince you that if you believe in separation, that this separation must be complete, total, and immediate - or else you are a hypocrite. Let dogs bark. You just go on about the business of being obedient. Dogs defend what they love - never forget that. A barking dog is just defending its first love.

Ok, so this world "grid" system is most perfectly represented by the electrical grid. In the electrical grid, everyone is tied together and reliant on some mega-corporate (or fascist state/corporate conglomerate) system to provide them with power. Now, the trick is to provide sooooo much power, and at such a seemingly low cost, that people will go out into the corporate industrial stores and buy tons of "stuff" that can be plugged eternally into wall sockets. Each one of these things in and of itself uses only a nominal amount of power, but each is designed to accomplish several things:

1. To cumulatively provide huge amounts of money to the power company.
2. To make us daily MORE dependent on the power company for the maintenance of a certain "standard of living".
3. To make us daily LESS viable as creatures dependent on God alone for our provision, safety, happiness, and well-being. In other words, each generation is less and less able to survive without the comforts and conveniences provided by grid power.
4. To enslave us to our baser lusts. The system itself is designed to provide proxies for all that God would have for His children. The grid-system provides a perpetual 72 degree womb where every carnal need is met instantly by the world system.

So, after fallen man discovered the ability to create electrical power and to channel it down long power lines to each individual dwelling, the marketing arm of Satan clicked into business. Daily, more and more power gulping systems and gadgets are provided which take mankind farther and farther away from the way that God has ordained that His people live. The Bible says this was the job of man before the fall:

And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. (Gen 2:15)

And this was the job of man after the fall:

Therefore the LORD God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. (Gen 3:23)

We are to work with our hands (1 Thess. 4:11), in the ground/soil (Gen. 3:23), and to be content with food and raiment (1 Tim. 6:8). The lie of the industrial grid system is that if you will enslave yourself to your baser lusts (for comfort, leisure, entertainment, sin) then you will not have to labor in the soil. That is basically the gist of it. That is why your parents always told you to go to a worldly college to get a degree... so you won't have to dig ditches. The world hates the idea of working in the soil, because that is what God has decreed for man. Anyway, I digress...

So this grid system is a tool of the world for the enslavement of the minds and hearts of the people. Once again, if you do not agree, you may go your way... your system is out there and you may go have your fill of it. If, however, you still agree - we can move on to the next step.

GETTING OUT

Getting "off-grid" looks like a monstrous and overwhelming task. It is the giant in the land that keeps us from going in and taking the good land that God has promised us. The grid system is easy and relatively cheap (when you consider that you are already in it, and enslaved to it) in that it will cost you more to get out than to stay in. To be honest, our flesh LOVES air conditioning and microwaves and hair dryers and such things. All the junk we plug in to outlets is designed to please our flesh. That is why they are so hard to get rid of. The first task in getting off-grid is to fall out of love with these things. To realize that they enslave us and they are poisonous to our souls and to our hope of eternal life. Not that going off-grid will save us - but be assured of this one thing, living for our flesh will certainly damn us. Think of going off-grid as going into a lifeboat from a sinking ship. You may not be saved if you go off the ship, but you will surely die if you stay on it. Anyway, we have to fall out of love with these things that pamper and cater to the flesh. We have to look at them with a true and pure eye and convince ourselves that these things are poisonous to our well-being. Then we can more easily toss them. Those things that are conducive to off-grid living, or that can be used to our benefit, or that can be used to help us on our pilgrimage OUT of the system - we can retain. The next step is to train ourselves to go without these things, and train ourselves on older and better ways of doing things:

Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein (Jer. 6:16).

Don't be one of those people who says "we will not walk therein. God has said that the old paths are better than the new ones. That is a fact declared from heaven. Learn it and love it.

The next step is to practice and begin to live the things we say we believe. This is the first real step on the pilgrim's progress. Step out and start to practice and live it. I mentioned in the last email that you can start by cutting your power off at the box. First for a few hours maybe. Then for a day. Then for a couple of days. Then for a week. Then for a month. Do this and learn how to get along fine without it. It doesn't count if you do it while you are on vacation, or when the weather is 72 degrees outside for a week. Do it and practice living off-grid. Encourage yourself to keep pushing it farther until you learn the skills you need to have to get along without grid power. Sell all of the junk you don't need and begin to procure those things that will help you to live off-grid... which means you need to sell almost everything you own. Best get used to it, since you won't take any of that stuff to wherever you go after you die. Get rid of it and start to make it without it.

That's all for today. More in the next episode.

Michael Bunker