Why?
Because it is easier to be uneducated in the country than it is in the city and survive. However, even though I don't have a degree past High school I have about 8 years of college total majoring at various times in Computer Science and Programming computers, Cultural Anthropology, psychology, philosophy and Social Science sort of in that order from the time I was 18 to 40 years of age. I have lived 10 miles from the nearest gas station on a dirt road without electricity and chose to do this for around 5 years because I wanted to home school my children in the mountains away from any big cities from 1980 to 1985. So, I understand both how wonderful it can be and how terrible it can be to be living remote.
For example, one winters day when it was somewhere between 15 and 20 degrees with 30 mph winds my fan belt broke in our 1976 VW Rabbit with myself and my wife and my children who were then likely 5 to 9 years of age or around then and luckily a man in a truck originally from Alaska showed up and I asked him when he stopped to help us if he might have a fan belt that would fit on my car. He reached in back of his front seat in his pickup truck and pulled out an older fan belt he had put there and quickly installed it in my car. I said "How much do I owe you?" and he said, "I'm from Alaska where if we didn't help each other we would all die up there." He said, "Just help the next person who needs help that you find. That way everyone survives now and in the future." And I did. At the time my car broke down I was miles from our home and warm wood stove and miles from the nearest gas station or mechanic and this likely was around 1980 to 1983 so no cell phones existed yet and not even a phone at our house because we didn't have electricity unless I brought a gas powered generator to give us electricity at our home then.
The problems in the country are much different than in Suburbia or in the city. You might shop instead of regular stores you might shop at garage sales. At one point when we decided to rent 1 acre of land covered with fruit trees of all kinds right in Mt. Shasta it was an old house built in 1925 and we didn't have much money then in 1990 and so we had this old rental carpet that was so old and orange and one day I got so frustrated with it I just threw the whole living room carpet out in the snow and let the snow fall on it. My wife then just went to a garage sale and got the most beautiful Wool white carpet for only $25 dollars and we were ecstatically happy with this new and wonderful and warm carpet. The winds were blowing through the slats in the 1925 house because there was NO insulation in the walls at all and the winds blew through the walls. So, I wrapped the side walls of the whole house in 4 to 8 ml. plastic to keep the winds from blowing through the walls. But, the heat was still escaping through the roof. So, I went up in the attic and saw all that was up there was sawdust which was a terrible fire hazard and I could see where sometime between 1990 and 1925 there had been a fire in the attic because the main roofing timbers were charred but still strong enough to hold the roof up.
So, I asked the landlord if I and my then 15 year old son could insulate the roof in lieu of rent that month and I would pay the money I normally would pay the rent with to buy insulation which I did. They agreed and so I put 8 inch fiberglass insulation throughout the attic of the whole house. We were finally warm that winter which got down to about zero degrees more than once that winter. So, as you can see people often live differently in the country than they might live in the city or suburbia. And if you want to stay there you likely are going to be doing things that you wouldn't even think about doing in order to stay in the country where you love to be away from all the madness of the big cities.
And likely you aren't going to find some big fancy job in the country either so you are going to do whatever you need to financially get by while living out in the country somewhere too. Some people who live remotely for example, drive Trucks nationwide to support their families because there aren't any local jobs around to get that remote.
Other jobs you might find are handyman, Carpenter, Landscaper, Electrician if you are handy building things with tools. My father and grandfather and Uncle were all Electrical Contractors so I did know how to be an electrician because I had been trained in this from age 12 to 17 working in my father's business so I knew this trade and parts of many others. It's good to have more than one trade if you want to successfully live remote out in the country where big fancy specialized jobs mostly don't exist except maybe in small country hospitals.
No comments:
Post a Comment