AlterNet: A Yuppie Heads 'Back to the Land'

[marmar]

A Yuppie Heads 'Back to the Land'

By Anneli Rufus, AlterNet. Posted April 5, 2008.

Author Doug Fine traded his metropolitan lifestyle for an eco-lifestyle on a New Mexico farm. If only the rest of us could afford to do the same.




When Doug Fine decided to move cross-country from his native New York to an arid rural outpost 20-plus miles from the nearest town, he brought along "four big goals" for the coming year, which were:


1. Use a lot less oil.

2. Power my life by renewable energy.

3. Eat as locally as possible.

4. Don't starve, electrocute myself, get eaten by the local mountain lions, get shot by my U.N.-fearing neighbors or otherwise die in a way that would cause embarrassment.

That's one behemoth of an ambitious plan for a man who admits right up front: "I like my Netflix, wireless email and booming subwoofers" and who can't imagine living without toast, ice cream or toilet paper. How, then, on earth to achieve it?

On the first page of his book about that year, Farewell My Subaru (Villard, 2008), Fine -- a journalist who has written for Wired, Salon and other venues -- recounts a scene in which his inexpertly parked Subaru Legacy slid backward down a grade and barely missed crashing into an outbuilding. This incident occurred "a few days after I moved into the sprawling, crumbling, 41-acre New Mexico spread" where Fine had come to live. "Moved into" is a coy way of putting it. Presently, he mentions that he owns the place, that he bought this vast tract of land to go green on.

And while it's exciting in a fairytale way, this notion of legally owning your surroundings as far as the eye can see and transforming them into a solarized organic Xanadu, it lends the undertaking a certain "well ... but" dimension. Well, we all aspire to sustainability, but how many of us could actually afford to buy 41 acres? Well, property in rural New Mexico is less expensive than in much of the United States, but how many of us could afford taking a year or more off work just to see whether we could hack it? Well, getting off the grid is great, but who among us has the bodily stamina to manage, while living solo, animal husbandry and organic gardening and the aerobic, acrophobic, bloodletting workouts (think: windmills, wrenches, tanks, pipes, panels and pumps) required to transition a ranch from electrical to solar power? .......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/environment/81278/

[SteinbachMB]

1. If he achieves #4

he'll at least meet his first objective.

[MADem]

2. If you read the piece all the way to the end....

they give you the "spoiler."

[ixion]

3. I'm on the road trying to do the same thing, but with only 6 acres

and I'm at the very beginning. I have the land, and am now putting together the necessities. It's nice to hear a success story. :)

[XemaSab]

4. Don't let NNadir read this article!

The man'll have a stroke! :scared:

[wordpix]

5. bwahahahaha, he will want to connect to the closest nuke

:rofl:

[kestrel91316]

6. I want to do something similar eventually, but more likely in the

Upper Midwest, closer to family.

I found an old one-room schoolhouse for sale on 2 or 3 acres in IA a few years ago, for next to nothing. It had a well. Good enough for me, as long as the well has a hand pump, lol. Should have chucked it all and bought it to fix up. I don't need much, and I know the difference between a necessity and a luxury, and yes, indoor plumbing is a luxury.

The truth will probably be an old 1900-1915 Craftsman-style fixer-upper on a double lot in some tiny town where they don't care if you keep chickens.......but I'm flexible.