The Self-sufficient Homestead
(Page 3 of 4)
The money-free mindset was my ideal for years, until I realized something vital: For me, sane living didn’t require completely shunning money. What I needed was to find an opportunity to earn a living while cultivating a close connection with nature and with my land. To my surprise, the Internet has played a major role in making that happen for us, a development I never would have predicted years ago, when I regarded anything related to computers with suspicion.
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Today we earn a little income from a “you-pick” raspberry operation and from renting some of our land to a neighbor who grazes cattle, but it’s the financial opportunities offered by the Internet that keep us afloat. The Internet takes geography out of the equation, allowing people with even a small entrepreneurial streak to plug into markets anywhere. I have to admit that this has proven much more fun than I could have imagined. As an added benefit, Mary has been able to stay home full time since 1998.
For me, financial opportunities have come from creating and exporting stories and images about woodworking and home building to magazines and newspapers across North America via the Internet. But the Internet has much greater potential for rural businesses. Even though my homeplace is as out of the way as you can get, I still catch glimpses of many more small-scale business opportunities than I could ever pursue myself: Any product you can create at home you can find a place for online, from handcrafted wooden furniture to homemade jams and jellies. You can keep in touch with an employer hundreds of miles away, or with customers who are looking for the specialty items you produce.
Does this high-tech, information-based approach sound like a breach of the back-to-the-land ideal? I used to think so, but I now see that small rural markets often have all the goods and services they need. They’re saturated, and that’s why wages are typically low. To create financial opportunities for yourself out here on the land, you have to look beyond the markets you can see, and understand that the Internet is the universal connection to those unseen opportunities. I’m convinced that this approach has an important place in the small-scale sustainable-homesteading model of the 21st century.
The Homesteading Dream
Mary and I started out here with no hands-on knowledge of homesteading, but we quickly learned by reading, watching others, asking questions and making mistakes. I firmly believe that anyone can learn just about any skill if they want to learn badly enough. It’s motivation that’s often in short supply.
