Sharon Astyk, on what to do with the time we now have before it all starts to fall apart. Excerpt:
Maybe you don't know what your role is. Maybe you do have a little time or energy that could be used to build community, fix things, help others, but you are shy, and you don't know what to do. And I can't tell you exactly what you should do - you know your talents and skills best. Maybe you are a natural organizer and leader, and you should get started with your community's victory garden movement, building the community health center or getting neighbors to pool their resources to get a shared transport network up. Maybe you are more comfortable following, in some already existing role - and it is time to get out to the local food pantry and start figuring out where they are going to get enough food to help all the hungry. Maybe you care most about kids, or elders or women or the hispanic or black or asian community, and that's where you should concentrate your energies. Maybe you want to work with members of your faith, your family or your friends. Great - do it. But do it now.We're all going to need reliable sources of food. We're all going to need some transportation. We're going to need health care, and emergency services. We're all going to need good work - even if it is only for food. We're going to need ways to keep people housed, to connect folks who need homes with those who can't keep them unless they rent some space. A lot of people are going to need warm clothes and blankets. A lot of people are going to need a meal, a helping hand, help with disabled family members and elders. And folks, when the formal economy falls away, when we cannot trust our government to act in our interests, all of us have to get acting to compensate, to keep the wolf from the door. The truth is that the bailout, on one level, was the final reminder of what Hurricane Katrina taught us, that no one is coming with a helicopter to rescue us. Fortunately, some of us have boats, and the rest of us can build life rafts, and there's a lot we can do to rescue ourselves.
The food thing -- well, we need to worry about that, Sharon says, based on what happened during the Depression. People went hungry not for a lack of food, but because folks didn't have the money to pay for it, and there was no money to be made harvesting it and shipping it to market. Sharon writes:
One of my greatest fears is that the story is about to be repeated. Right now, farmers are struggling to get credit just like all small business owners. The wheat crop is being planted right now - and next year's food depends on this year's credit. High energy and fertilizer prices have already eaten up much of farmer's profit for this year - the point at which it is no longer feasible for farmers to grow our food is not so very far away, nor is it really so alien to imagine that again we might see the failure of the linkage between city and country, the poor digging in the garbage, the farmer unable to plant, unable to keep their land, or throwing food out to rot.What's the answer? Food has to enter the center of our discourse in a meaningful way - we cannot allow wall street to starve main street. More of us need to grow food, but more importantly, we will need to create direct ties between country and city, so that farmers and urban dwellers can skip middlemen who add costs and lower payments, and get what they really need.
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The thing I'm not sure is grasped is that is unremitting physical toil in subsistence farming (which also has to provide clothing and fuel). You work and work and work and work. You have to be superb physical condition, and there's no allowance for vacation or getting sick. And, folks, if you live anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon line, especially in Louisiana and Texas, it's hot, sweaty, sticky, dirty, buggy work. Rod's Sunday afternoon exercise chronicled a couple of days ago is how it would go 12 hours a day, every day. So in addition to all the other concerns listed above, physical fitness is a must. I know. I grew up on a subsistence farm.
Ditto MJS. My grandpa was also an Okie farmer with 5 kids. He found a job as school janitor, and got through the Depression solidly if not comfortably. In deflationary times, slow and steady wins the race.
It's hyperinflation that scares me.
You are correct on the first point, my wife and I have no children.
As for the second point, I'll have to take your word for it, but there are families who have lived in my adopted small town for generations, so I have to assume that it is possible to raise children here.
Of course. It's just that I'm doubting that families with five children are living in the back of a bookstore and taking showers in cold water while we save up for a new water heater. Not voluntarily, anyway. Seven people in 800 square feet of house would be rather...crowded. Also, children, including their books, clothing, food and sundries, are quite expensive, even if you hold down firmly on spending.
Then again, that cute, relatively cheap baby becomes a teenager sooner than we all would like. Several of those around the house can be a real liability. I speak from experience here.
I'm also wondering about medical expenses. I'm assuming that you and your wife are relatively young and healthy. The more people you fold into a given situation, the higher the chances are that one or more of them will have or develop an expensive health problem. Perhaps your forklift-owning employer supplies health insurance?
If your point is that two young, healthy, resourceful adults with good educations and some capital, who have no children and who are not adverse to some minor privations, can live very cheaply in some places, then I think we'd all agree. How much this helps those of us who are trying to raise families, not to mention people who may grow old or get sick, might be another question.
I'm also wondering about medical expenses. I'm assuming that you and your wife are relatively young and healthy.
Relatively young, I guess. We are both in our early 40's. My wife had a heart attack at 35 which was one of our motivators for getting out of the big city with its stresses. She's been doing great since then, especially since the town is small enough that she walks from home to her store, the post office, and the local grocery.
Another benefit of that is that we became a one car family. Saved a nice bit of money there.
Perhaps your forklift-owning employer supplies health insurance?
Yes, thankfully.
If your point is that two young, healthy, resourceful adults with good educations and some capital, who have no children and who are not adverse to some minor privations, can live very cheaply in some places, then I think we'd all agree. How much this helps those of us who are trying to raise families, not to mention people who may grow old or get sick, might be another question.
Posted by: Leo | October 7, 2008 6:43 PM
Well, my point was that going from a life in the city working at a professional level job with a corresponding salary to a life in a rural area working at whatever you can find and/or starting your own business will change your lifestyle - probably resulting, initially at least, in a lower standard of living.
I'm not entirely sure why you think that raising a family is a show-stopper as far as moving out to the country goes. People raise families out here. Some of them raise them in very close quarters. As far as people growing old and getting sick goes - my wife and I are going to grow old out here. We will probably die out here. If we stayed in the city, we would have grown old there.
Leo, I don't rcall seeing any previous posts from you about living a rural life. Is it something you really want to do? If it is, well then as sigaliris pointed out above, there isn't anyone stopping you (or Rod) from doing so.
But, gee whiz, you've got kids, so you don't think you can live in the sort of housing arrangements I have, or Rod thinks he has to be associated with a major newspaper to make a living, so he can't find work the same sort of ways I have.
Well you guys obviously know your own family situations and what what you all are capable of doing or not doing better than I do. Fair enough.
But - and this next isn't directed at you, Leo, this is for Rod - if you aren't willing to make the sacrificial changes in your lifestyle that would be required to exercise the Benedict Option then for crying out loud, get clear with yourself that this is nothing more for you than an idealized daydream and that you are a city boy at heart.
I did not go for the rural option myself, so maybe I don't have a lot to contribute. I did live a very er, shall we say frugal, not to mention penurious, lifestyle when my kids were little, though. My attention was caught by the comment about 7 people in an 800-square-foot house. Okay, we didn't do that. We did have 5 people in such a house, though. Me and Mr. Sig and three kids. It was crowded, but it was fun. If we'd finished the attic, we could have put a couple more people in there. A house doesn't get really crowded until there are teenagers! But if you start with an 800-sq.ft. house, by the time the kids get big, you might be able to add on.
We had previously lived, for a time, with our first baby plus three single women and two men in the top floor of an old house in the student area. One bathroom with a rusty shower stall, no tub. One bedroom for us, where we kept the baby in the closet because there was not room elsewhere. A room for the women and one for the men, divided by some plywood, and a room with the kitchen appliances at one end of it, which did double duty as living area/dining room. I cooked dinner for all each night, then we moved the table out from the wall and put it back again when we were through eating. The pots and pans lived in boxes under the table because there wasn't room for them anywhere else. Now THAT was crowded.
Children are amazingly cheap until they hit school age and need proper clothes and schoolbooks and such. Up till about kindergarten, you can get all their clothes at a used clothing place. After that, kids tend to wear out the knees of their jeans, etc. so there's not as much good stuff to be bought used. Try to live in a town with lots of rich people--they have the best old clothes! Ditto for books and toys--buy at library sales and garage sales.
Medical care for children IS expensive. If you're lucky and yours are healthy and never have accidents, that's great, but I wouldn't count on it. Frankly, I think I was very irresponsible in living the way I did, but hey . . . I thought I was doing it all for Jesus. I don't want to live that way now, but it is a learning experience, and if you're convinced it's God's will--or if you just want to try it--it certainly can be done.
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