During the late 1960s the "Back to the Land" movement began. There is now a resurgence of this movement especially in Russia through the "Anastasia" book series that is spreading worldwide once again. The movement is based upon self sufficiency and the fact that it is possible to feed oneself (theoretically) on a basis of one acre per person per year. By becoming self sufficient during these financially difficult times worldwide if someone has land and water rights and can afford both (time and financially) to till their own land (or the land that is given or sharecropped to them) they can theoretically at least feed one person per acre of land per year (if the soil is tillable to that extent).
Though I wasn't at that time trying to live off land I owned but only trying to live in the Mt. Shasta area and buy land which I did in 1980, I supported the "back to the land movement" because I believed that it was better than living in a big city and being enslaved by the corporate systems. I still believe this today.
At least when you own your own land you can more easily be your own boss, create your own schedule, create your own life and not feel psychologically permanently enslaved within some corporate system where your life is never your own to do with as you will.
Of course there are many other problems that one encounters doing this as being self sufficient in its own way is just as dangerous on many fronts as being enslaved within a corporate system. However, back then we were all young and naive about this second set of realities.
Today, once again people want to get back to the land because (Just like in the recessions of the late 70s and early 80s) there are no jobs.
So, when unemployment reached almost 10% or more around 1980 my wife and I bought land in Siskiyou County and started building a place to live with our kids. My father who had been an electrician and Electrical Contractor all of his adult life came and helped me with some of the structural ideas for surviving winters where we then might get 7 feet of snow at one time during the winter and spring months. We were at 4000+ feet in elevation and had our own spring for water. We decided not to drink it unless we boiled it just to make sure as there was no one locally that we knew of to test it then for long term drinking of it.
We finally built a small A-Frame house with one of the straight up sides facing Mt. Shasta for a wonderful view of it on both the first and second (loft) floors. We went to the local dump and found 9 cut off of the top pyramids that each weighed about 400 pounds made of cement. We got four men to take a side to pick each one of these up to put it in a pick-up truck. The nine cut-off pyramids had come from a lumber mill recently torn down that was built sometime in the late 1800s or early 1900s. They were perfect for the base of my pier block constructed A-Frame. Before that I had found at another dump burned metal corrugated roofing that had come from an airplane hanger that had burned down. The corrugated roofing I used as the exterior and roof of a temporary tool and wood shed that I built with a loft. I used dead trees on my land as the basis of the temporary tool and wood shed. When we first camped on the land (since it was 10 miles from the nearest small town) we stayed in our then 1971 VW Camper van then in 1980 as well as the loft I built into the temporary tool shed until the A-Frame was built several months later. Since there already was an installed septic tank and toilet outbuilding small shed on the land this all worked out quite well.
Because of the times we lived in and the fact that there were no jobs just like now, we spent our savings on the land and eventually sold the VW Camper Van to buy lumber to build our new house. Lumber, especially plywood for sheeting was much less expensive than today so this was feasible. We also bought a wood cook stove (an antique that we baked with) and my father welded up a wood stove that he made out of a water pressure tank from his land in Yucca Valley for heating the house especially during the winter when temperatures might go below zero some nights. He had also built with my help his retirement home there in Yucca Valley from 1968 to 1980 on weekends. So, the tradition of building each of us our own home was in my family then.
I had a Fro for splitting cedar shakes that my Dad made for me by welding a piece of sharpened metal onto a pick but the weight of the cedar I split was too much for the roof and we realized that thick cedar shakes wouldn't shed snow quick enough not to endanger the roof collapsing during winters there. So we switched to green felt roofing. I then put a pole through the roofing rolls and we put two home made ladders up against the A-Frame roof. Then we tied a rope to each end of the poles. Then we put the roll on one side next to two ladders then climbed the ladders and each person evenly pulled up on the ropes, then each grabbed the end of each pole and lifted it over the top or crown of the roof and let it unroll down the other side using the ropes. After seating each pass over the roof this way the way we wanted it, we tacked it in place. We did this 8 or 10 times to complete the green felt roof. Previously, we had put tar paper in place the same way.
When we started and dug our foundation, we bought clear plastic hose from a hardware store so we could see the level by putting water inside the clear plastic hose. Once we had level all 9 pier blocks at exactly the same level by using this method and squared them up in position we then began to build the house up from these 9 pier blocks of cement.
We lived on this land and in this house as much of the year as we could. We would stay there until the road became impassible because of snow. Since the road was dirt the last 3 miles into our land it was not plowed by the county. Although there was a neighbor that kept plowing all winter long we felt it was a waste of money and wear and tear on our truck so we decided not to plow our roads. So we would drive our 4 wheel drive International Harvester Scout II 1974 as far as we could get and then cross country ski to our home pulling our groceries and other stuff we needed on sleds. We would do this up to 1 1/2 miles to 2 miles. But if we couldn't get that close we would stay somewhere else during that period. Usually this kind of thing would happen sometime between January and the end of March. Most of the rest of the year we could always get to our house and land by road.
This worked out quite well for us as since everything was paid for we paid no rent, no utilities except for taxes on the land. This not having to pay rent helped us a lot survive from 1980 to 1985 which was the time we lived there until we moved back to the coast and bought one business at a time and put our kids back in public school when the oldest was 12. Also, this time was the worst and most comparable to now with unemployment at or near 10% nationwide. So, because we had enough savings to pull this off it saved us during these bad economic times in the U.S. which are similar to now.
We home schooled our children for about 4 or 5 years using Oak Meadow School Independent Study programs 1st grade to 6th grade. When we first moved there the youngest had just completed kindergarten and the oldest the 4th grade. By 1985 we had moved back to the Coast and bought the first of several businesses that we ran. The oldest is now Fire Captain on the northern Coast of California, one is a lawyer in Oregon, and one will be a RN BS in December. All three benefited from their time in the wilderness learning to cross country ski, survive in the wilderness, commune with nature, identify flying squirrels, deer, bear etc. and many many birds and ground squirrels. That time for us all was irreplaceable and priceless.
At that time, rent for a house for the 5 of us would have been around 500 to 1000 dollars a month in the small towns in that area. However, for about 8000 for land and (at that time) about another 7000 dollars in material that came from selling our camper Van and savings we built our house and outfitted it with sink, tub, and two wood stoves (one for cooking and one for heating. So if you multiply even the minimum for rent at 500 a month at that time times 60 months (five years) equals 30,000 dollars. Or if you go with 1000 a month it would be 60,000 dollars in five years rent. But if you add the 8000 for 2 1/2 acres of land to the approximately 7000 dollars in building materials you just saved either
15,000 (not including land taxes) or 45,000 dollars during those 5 years. Yes, it is true that there wasn't electricity, phone, running water or Cable TV (or TV of any kind), actually I preferred that life raising our kids at that time and so did my wife. We both remember those times very fondly of raising our kids in a completely natural and pristine area and of being together watching the snow fall and cross country skiing from our doorstep and of riding my dualsport motorcycle throughout the wilderness dirt roads and visiting amazing places on Mt. Shasta and throughout the area. Most people only dream about the life we actually lived by just using some of our savings and a little gumption during hard economic times. When things got better economically we returned to the coast and bought a business and moved forward. We made the very best of hard economic times that remind me of right now once again.
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