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Are you planning to buy land? If so, how much do you expect to pay for it and a dwelling?
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How do you plan to live once you move to your new land? I mean this as it relates to money, so how will you buy/find food? Will you have a community, or live alone, or as a small or large family?
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Any tips on making money, saving money, being super frugal?
Are you planning to buy land? If so, how much do you expect to pay for it and a dwelling?
Yes, but not a dwelling. We’ll probably be able to get an acre or two adjacent to Allegheny National Forest for less than $20k. That’s just for dwelling; the ANF itself contains our range.
How do you plan to live once you move to your new land? I mean this as it relates to money, so how will you buy/find food? Will you have a community, or live alone, or as a small or large family?
Ideally, the Tribe of Anthropik will get to about 20 or so members by that point, and we’ll be able to hunt, gather and fish most (if not all) of our food. We’ll still need some money for taxes, licenses, etc., but not a lot, so we’ll make some money off of the website, writing, the Fifth World, etc.
Any tips on making money, saving money, being super frugal?
See Dave Pollard’s virtuous cycle.
I realized that I’m threadjacking a little bit here, but Jason’s reply got me curious:
Ideally, the Tribe of Anthropik will get to about 20 or so members by that point, and we'll be able to hunt, gather and fish most (if not all) of our food. We'll still need some money for taxes, licenses, etc., but not a lot, so we'll make some money off of the website, writing, the Fifth World, etc.
Where do you see your tribe members coming from? Do you have a social network already in place that you expect to turn into a community? Is there more to Anthropik right now than just the ones I see actively on your site (you, Giuli, Mike)? What are you doing (actively or passively) to build the membership?
Now back to Dandelion’s excellent questions:
1. Are you planning to buy land? If so, how much do you expect to pay for it and a dwelling?
I do plan to buy land. Not much. Like Anthropik, the bordering-a-national-forest plan exists as an option for us in the Ozarks, too. (Thanks for turning me on to that idea, Jason.) I would like to find one with a house or trailer or shack on it, as I would like to live there permanently before things start crashing. I’m hoping to find something for around $50k.
2. How do you plan to live once you move to your new land? I mean this as it relates to money, so how will you buy/find food? Will you have a community, or live alone, or as a small or large family?
- I hope to do permaculture on the land we buy–in order to promote flora food that we like as well as to possible sell/trade. But (again, inspired by Anthropik’s ideas) I hope to hunt, gather, trap, and fish in the Ozark National Forest. Hopefully our land will work as an example for our friends who want to live the same way so that we can start building a community and sharing the benefits of each other’s labors and knowledge. Ideally, I would love to have some off-grid options for energy including WVO/Biodiesel for transportation and possibly woodgas.
3. Any tips on making money, saving money, being super frugal?
No. I suck at all three of those. Well, I can do well at the third one sometimes. My main tip in being frugal involves thinking outside of the box. Look at everything that passes through your life as a possible resource to enhance, augment, or replace something you’re paying money for.
Where do you see your tribe members coming from? Do you have a social network already in place that you expect to turn into a community? Is there more to Anthropik right now than just the ones I see actively on your site (you, Giuli, Mike)? What are you doing (actively or passively) to build the membership?
Not much. I don’t expect there to be a lot of interest in actually joining the tribe until we’re able to support ourselves. After all, what would be the point? But we are hoping to eventually, one day, open up a rewilding “school,” though that word might imply something a lot more closed than what we have in mind. Think of it like the Sudbury Valley model of rewilding, if you like. That will likely introduce us to some people who might want to join us, and then we’ll let it grow organically from there. In the past, we’ve really fretted about getting more people. Now I realize, that’s not nearly so much something to worry so much over. Once you’re doing something interesting, people have a way of finding you.
I hope to do permaculture on the land we buy--in order to promote flora food that we like as well as to possible sell/trade. But (again, inspired by Anthropik's ideas) I hope to hunt, gather, trap, and fish in the Ozark National Forest.
Yeah, I forgot to mention, that’s part of our plan, too: permaculture on the land you buy. My family already owns one camp, and we’ve already begun some permaculture there; next, I plan to buy another camp on the other side of the forest, start permaculture there, and there we have two seasonal camps to migrate between.
We just grabbed a 10-acre ‘hill’ w/ a trailer for ~$35. More than I really wanted to pay, but…
Well, “the plan” has us out of debt no later than 2011 using the interim time to get a forest garden or food forest going. Between food grown on the hill and hunting/fishing/collecting from the nearby Muskingum River & Wayne National Forest (and some of the State Forests relatively nearby) we should be alright.
As is, it will be at least me, my wife & our daughter. For reasons various & sundry, it may eventually include: my mom, my brother-in-law, and one of my sister-in-laws. Of course, others will certainly be welcome, but those seem like the most likely candidates at the moment. I actually have a fair amount of family about an hour away (by car). (As a side note, sometimes I’m amazed at how quickly people used to travel around OH w/o cars, I really must get my sustained travel speed up.)
Since the location is close to a number of long-standing farming families, I don’t really expect a lot of permaculture ideas to really take root until agriculture is teetering even more on the edge…
Think I’m in the same boat as Rix on this one 
My family has a large acreage up in michigan already, belonging to my grandparents. My uncle apparently has recently started his own retreat, I’m not entirely sure what goes on in that branch of the family anymore. They travel too much to keep track off. If I have to leave the city I’m heading to those places. There is much that could be done.
However, I would prefer to get some land in my city and start an urban permaculture experiment. I’ll never fully go feral. I’m too far gone. My kids, my grandkids, who knows? Baby steps.
As far as money, I have a great tip for saving: Put yourself on an allowance. I have 2 bank accounts: My money from work goes into the first one, and it’s from this one that I pay rent and utilities. Then every paycheck a much smaller amount is depositied into a second account, which is the only one I can access on a day to day basis. Windfalls wind up in the first account. If I get a raise, I do not raise my allowance. The savings build up. Last year I was laid off, and was out of income for 3 months. I emptied all my savings during that period, and so started the new job with nothing. Using this method, I’ve replenished my emergency funds, saved up for a computer, AND paid off one of my college debts, within 6 months.
Thank you for your responses! Now, I will answer my own questions…
1. Are you planning to buy land? If so, how much do you expect to pay for it and a dwelling?
Yes, and I hope to pay less than $50,000 for both land and dwelling.
2. How do you plan to live once you move to your new land? I mean this as it relates to money, so how will you buy/find food? Will you have a community, or live alone, or as a small or large family?
I plan on gardening, fruit trees, permaculture, hunting, fishing, gathering, etc. But, I have a long way to go before that can become a reality - learning, learning, learning… I will most likely need to work as well for awhile. Hopefully family and friends-to-be will move with me and my mate.
3. Any tips on making money, saving money, being super frugal?
Reading “Your Money or Your Life” got me started on a journey of tracking every dime I spend and becoming more aware of how I waste my money, aka my TIME! on things that are not life-enhancing.
In the end, which is the beginning, I do not plan on needing any money. At the start while learning as I am now I need money to pay off debts and pay rent and food. But as I learn, and if I can save up some money now, I should need no money at all in the end.
money to pay off debts and pay rent and food
Yeah, the debt is what’s really sucking up my life right now. After having a kid, escaping a horrible work situation, moving and being unemployed periodically throughout all of that, I have a shit load of debt hanging over me. I actually just called a debt settlement company today. I’m hoping to avoid bankruptcy, as I want to be able to buy the aforementioned land in the not-so-distant future.
Ah yeah I hope your situation works out for you. Currently I have a small debt from school, which I hope to be able to pay off in a year, seeing how this biodiesel stuff goes hopefully quicker than that. Also must keep my wits about me for a few more years, I would like to have children, if the person for me to have children with exists =P, but only after I am out of civilization. I have no intention to raise a kid in it -_-
But I truly wish the best for you and hope it all works out. I’m hoping the same for me 
Are you planning to buy land? If so, how much do you expect to pay for it and a dwelling?
My partner and I would like to buy a few acres of land, probably in southwestern virginia. Our basic requirements are that it contain or be adjacent to a year-round water source, and be in close proximity to national forest. It should be relatively close to a small town (probably not less than 15 miles of not-too-steep terrain so we could bike into town) but off the main highways.
- How do you plan to live once you move to your new land? I mean this as it relates to money, so how will you buy/find food? Will you have a community, or live alone, or as a small or large family?
We want to keep the land primitive as far as housing, and plant permaculture influenced gardens, and hunt/fish/trap/scavenge for meat. If we end up with land in virginia it will probably not be part of a pre-established community unless friends decide to join us. Work would be in town unless we figure out a way to sustain ourselves by selling primitive-made products like art, tools, or hides.
We would not necessarily live there permanently, but use it as a place to work on skills, camp, and as a base of operations for rewilding and hunting.
- Any tips on making money, saving money, being super frugal?
Right now I am working at an “outdoor enthusiast” store in a sprawling city. If we buy land we would probably still live in the city and work on paying off the land. Eventually we would try to find work in the town near our property. I have no family money and very little in personal savings so this plan is going to take a long time if it happens at all.
As far as being frugal: Dumpster dive. Find a way to make money that doesnt suck too much, and save as much of your paycheck as possible. Steal if you can get away with it. Eat roadkill. If you can live with family or friends to avoid rent while you save up, do it. Get rid of your cellphone, drive as little as possible, cancel your internet, use the library instead of book stores, etc.
Oh, and sell anything you own that you don’t use/don’t need.
This is my true life experience, if something in here is helpful, good, if not then you can disregard it.
When my wife and I met she had two kids age 4 & 6 we had no vehicle and we could literally carry everything we owned on our backs. We lived in a communal group that had a couple of vehicles incuding a pick-up and a school bus that was fixed up to be a kitchen. We left that group mostly because there were too many folks who were looking for someone to be their parents
My wife and I and our two kids lived on $75 a month food stamps, plus what ever I made selling firewood for the first winter we were together in the Cascades between Klamath Falls and Ashland, Oregon. She was Canadian and so were her two kids, so I was the only one who qualified for the food stamps. We lived in a school bus near two other families. We were snowed in from Nov. - March. Our truck was parked 4 mi. away so we skiied to it when we needed to go to town and to cut wood for money.
We bought all our food in bulk. 25 - 50 lb bags of various beans, rice, 5 gals. of cooking oil, We ground our own flour from wheat that I traded labor for. We got a couple of deer and some ducks.
In the spring we moved up to Washington state with another family where we did farm work. We had gotten a tipi so we lived in that while I worked until fall. We continued to buy all our food in bulk because it’s the only way we could afford to feed ourselves a healthy diet. It was mostly a very simple diet with various beans and rice as the staple. We did get deer and a few rattlesnakes (yummy by the way). Farm work meant that we had access to huge volumes of all kinds of fresh fruit and veggies. My wife was pregnant with our third child now so she stayed in camp with the kids and canned and dried food while I was working for $.
In the fall we moved to N. Idaho with the other family. We moved up into the mountains where there was already an established neighborhood of like minded folks. We were allowed to set up our tipi in a meadow on another families place. We spent the winter there. Our daughter was born in October and the five of us lived there for the winter in our tipi. There were seven or eight families living nearby, pretty much doing similar things. Some had been at it for a bit longer.
In the Spring we packed up and went tree planting in Montana. We worked with a small co-op company that basically formed to bid on the contracts and dissolved when the season was over each year. At the end of the season we returned to our neighborhood in Idaho and put a down payment on a piece of land. We bought it straight from the owners for $8000. We payed $75 a month. It was cheap because it was so remote and there was no services at all. The most “live and let live” place in the lower 48 is probably N. Idaho.
We continued to live in the tipi while I built our house. I got a job tearing down an old sawmill and most of our house was made out of salvage building materials from that. Including all the nails. Every day I would pay my kids to straighten nails. And I got good at pounding recycled nails.
We left there after a number of years and moved to Canada. Our first year here we lived in a squatters cabin on forest service land. Then we moved into a place that had been used as an illegal dump for the previous five years. Basically because we were broke. We cleaned up all the garbage including four burned cars and fixed the house up to live in. there was actually power to the house but we had lived so long without it we didn’t turn it on for 12 years. We collected rain water off our roof for washing and carried drinking water from the creek that runs through the land. We were able to grow a garden because I hooked up gravity feed water from the creek to irrigate that.
I’ve always hunted and fished. We collect wild berries, roots, medicines, grow gardens and we get fruit and veggies in season and can and dry them.
When we had a baby we used cloth diapers. We washed our clothes in a wash tub. My sister in law was telling us how broke she was once and how she needed diapers and to go to the laundromat. My god, she had hot and cold running water and a bath tub. My wife gave her a wash board and suggested that she could get coth diapers and do her laundry in the tub. That was the last time we heard about that.
We ended up buying this place that had been the illegal dump. In recent years my wife has been working as a licensed practical nurse and I have been self employed tanning hides for the last ten years so our finances are more secure. During the time that our kids were growing up our family of five never made more than $15k and most years less than $10k. Yet we have owned two different pieces of land, totally paid for. We have done without many things and a lot of people thought we were nuts. But how many can say they have no debt and own their own home.
You can do without a lot and still be very healthy and comfortable. Most people in the rest of the world do it. You decide what you value, you decide what is really important. Ask yourself and give yourself an honest answer. Every time you have to make a decision, remember what you said is really important to you and always move in that direction. You are not a slave, you are not a puppet on a string. There are a lot of options besides what mainstream has to offer.
Or get rid of your car, if you can!
I don’t have a car. I walk to work. It saves me so much money. I never liked driving anyway, and walking everywhere gives me a more “rewilded” sense of physical space and terrain (even if it is concrete).
Oh, and sell anything you own that you don't use/don't need.
One (compound) word: Craigslist (for buying AND selling).
PS - Hey heyvictor, I really appreciate hearing about your experiences. I’ll take your advice any day.
Saw this thread, and had to answer. Well, first of all I have been living this
simple life for more like near 30 years now. I usually work winters here in
town, Jackson Hole Wyoming, then wander in the deserts and mountains
all spring to fall. I espicelly like the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and the
Southern Utah Greater Escalante Country. Also I just decided today to
start posting here after lurking here for awhile. Heard about you from
someone that was at the last Rabbitstick in September in Idaho. Also the
last few years having been in proverty when it comes to economic matters
but it is by choice. Life is Great!
The first Question is on does one think on buying land.
As for myself this is a strong and emphatic NO! Why should I buy land.
When one buys some land, in my own personal thinking, it just enmashes
you more into the system. Then one has to think of property taxes and then
this or that. What about all the wild - unroaded - wilderness land with
espicelly here in the west. There are still some huge vast tracks of really
wild and unroaded land where a person or a group of persons could
really disappear into if they wanted to. And with the budget cuts these
days in the government, from what I have seen, less backcountry rangers.
Many Indigenous groups never settled in one spot but lived and wandered
thru the seasons over vast tracks of country. This is what I think of - living
and wandering over vast areas where you go here for awhile then go over
the ridge then for awhile, then up the drainage, etc. Again as for me, No on
buying land but living simply and living and wandering the land. If certain
ones don’t like it then they would have to come find me.
Now on the second question … personally I have been doing this for years
where I work in town all winter. But come spring am outta here and back
into the wilds. I might occasionally thru the time come back into town to
get some supplies and what all. I think the last few years from spring to fall
have came out a couple of times back to town. Also have cached food
back in there secretly before so that I could go back to the cache rather
then coming back to town. Then there is the actual living off the land
utilizing the natural food sources. It is Great! I am usually by myself but
some friends have came in with me at times. Plus for company, there is sooo
much life around. The other life might have a different DNA code then you
but still life.
Now the third question … on living frugal. Like I said, the last some
years have lived in proverty. I have NO Real Estate Property, I have NO
Car, I have NO freaking Cellphone and I plan on keeping it this way.
Now when one is in the wilderness, one does NOT spend money. It is when
you are in town when you will spend money. Now so when you are in town
that you can curb youyr desires, live frugal, have NO BIlls, then whatever
money you make can go for your wilderness travels. As for myself, have
gone on a half of a year on $1500.00 and less. One does NOT spend money
in the wilderness. And more time in the wilds with less in town then less
money one needs. When one gets in the habit of living a frugal life, it
is Great Living! For my bills, one of the few things I have is a monthly rent
on a storage unit where I keep my stuff. It is 4 X 6 and only like a third ,
filled. And when working in town, I can always find somewhere lesser
expensive to rent and stay during that time.
Life is Great! And the biggest things in what I have found is in the mental
things what one faces and not actually in knowing the skills. Some of the
mental things like facing your fears and confronting loneliness.
Like is Great! Mitakuya Oyasin!
My brother and I bought 23 acres of land in the Olympic rainforest. Dropped $65,000 on it, should have paid less though. It’s on a creek that we are slowly pulling newly fallen cedar out of, along with clay and sand for our dwelling. Food, well, we want to gather and hunt it all, but of course there will be a transitional stage, we’ll see how that goes I guess. I wish my borther could share with you his tips on being frugal. He saved $22,000 in one year of working at Dick’s fucking Drive In. I didn’t, that’s for sure.