Having had my fair share of first-hand experience as a child/adolescent with various communes of different stripes, I’m aware of the “back to the land” movement that many hippies went through - and then of course, nearly all of them abandoned. There are very few of those left in America. For good reason.
Farming is fucking hard work. When I see preppers idly talking about “living off the land”, I just chuckle. I’ve heard that shit since college, but I’ve seen it as a kid, and…well, these arm-chair asshats are not going to be able to cut that lifestyle any better than a lot of rich-kid hippies were back in the 60s and 70s…
Like you said - someone cannot just do that kind of thing as a hobbyist or via spending a bit of money here and there. Having a cache of things for an emergency and/or bug-out bags for fleeing wild fires is one thing, doing subsistence farming for a lifestyle - very different things. People trying to make a real go at homesteading - hey, more power to them if that’s what moves them.
Also, I grew up among Amish/Mennonites. Mennonite practices vary wildly, but most don’t forgo modern conveniences. But even in the case of the Amish…there is a fair amount of “cheating”, shall we say… 😉 They might do better than a lot of people under a system collapse, but I still think even for them it might be an adjustment. No more “borrowing” an English neighbor’s tractor under cover of night, or buying a refrigerator or freezer as a “gift” for an English neighbor.
Having had my fair share of first-hand experience as a child/adolescent with various communes of different stripes, I’m aware of the “back to the land” movement that many hippies went through - and then of course, nearly all of them abandoned. There are very few of those left in America. For good reason.
Farming is fucking hard work. When I see preppers idly talking about “living off the land”, I just chuckle. I’ve heard that shit since college, but I’ve seen it as a kid, and…well, these arm-chair asshats are not going to be able to cut that lifestyle any better than a lot of rich-kid hippies were back in the 60s and 70s…
Like you said - someone cannot just do that kind of thing as a hobbyist or via spending a bit of money here and there. Having a cache of things for an emergency and/or bug-out bags for fleeing wild fires is one thing, doing subsistence farming for a lifestyle - very different things. People trying to make a real go at homesteading - hey, more power to them if that’s what moves them.
Also, I grew up among Amish/Mennonites. Mennonite practices vary wildly, but most don’t forgo modern conveniences. But even in the case of the Amish…there is a fair amount of “cheating”, shall we say… 😉 They might do better than a lot of people under a system collapse, but I still think even for them it might be an adjustment. No more “borrowing” an English neighbor’s tractor under cover of night, or buying a refrigerator or freezer as a “gift” for an English neighbor.