In 1980 I faced similar times when there was 10% unemployment nation wide. I was living in Mt. Shasta at the time with my new wife and her two kids from her first marriage and my son from my first marriage.
I thought of moving to San Francisco and leaving my wife and kids in Mt. Shasta while I worked some place else.
A friend of mine said, "No Fred. If you do that other men are going to come after your wife here in Mt. Shasta."
I realized he was right so what we did instead was to buy 2 1/2 acres of land at 4000 feet on Mt. Shasta and paid cash for the land from our savings. Then we got 9 400 pound cement foundational top cut off pyramids that had been used when building a sawmill 50 or 100 years before from the County Dump. It took 4 men (each carrying 100 pound of weight to lift these 400 pound cement cut off pyramids to form the foundation blocks of our A-Frame house we were building. Then we sold one of our vehicles which was a 1971 VW Westfalia Camper van that was my wife's when we first met in order to buy lumber to build our A-Frame.
My father was used to building things in more remote places all his life in Oregon and Washington and he and I had built his retirement home in Yucca Valley that he lived in then in 1980 having just retired.
So, he welded me up a wood stove made from a water pressure tank used to pressurize water from a water tank before he had piped in water to his house and 2 1/2 acres in Yucca Valley. By this time he had piped in water so he could cut and weld up a wood stove for me from the pressure tank he no longer needed because of piped in water then.
I bought windows for the ends of the A-Frame that were vertical so there was a lot of light whenever it was sunny both on the ground floor and in the loft where we slept as a family. Downstairs we had a huge clawfood Bathtub for the kids to bathe in and we bought an antique wood cook stove to make pies and cakes and cassaroles and this also heated up the house in addition to the Wood Stove to heat the whole house when there was 7 feet or more snow out at 4000 feet then in the winters this remote then.
This then saved us 5 years of rent for a family of 5 while we home schooled our children.
Looking back from now this was one of the best decisions I made in my life ever to buy this land and to build our A-Frame. Because all we had to pay for living somewhere was land taxes at this point because we had paid cash for the land from our savings.
This is one way to survive bad times. Also, if you have land with water or water rights you can build a well so you can water an organic garden. I still have friends that grow on their 2 1/2 acres of land 70% of what they eat in their organic garden. And the have a greenhouse for growing food in the winter too even with 2 to 4 feet of snow outside. They planted Apple and cherry trees too and have raspberries and strawberries growing there too. Most of these were planed in the 1970s so there is a lot of fruit and other foods grown now year around which like I said consists of 70% of their diet. They sank a well on their land in 1976 and so have unlimited water from their well coming directly underground from Mt. Shasta.
And Mt. Shasta even if it never rained for up to 5 years would still have water coming out of it coming down through the cracks in volcanic rocks underground in that area and is likely the best tasting water I have seen in my life there.
Imagine not paying rent for 5 years at all and what you could do with all that money you have saved?
Plus imagine owning land without any Mortgage and a house you built for yourselves there.
These were some of the best years of my life and one of the reasons I 'm still alive now 45 years later.
If you don't make it through the hard economic times you don't survive to see the better times of your life in the future.
Now my life is okay and I can travel when I want to. At 77 the biggest problem I face is my health which is true of most people over 50 years of age anyway.
But, some of my favorite memories are of those 5 years living remotely in the wilderness on 2 1/2 acres, memories of parking our IH Scout II a mile or two away from our land and putting on cross country skis and putting our food and goods into our toboggan and towing it on our skis to our land with our 3 kids all on cross country skis too.
Another memory is a Fairy Diddle that was scolding me near my land on a huge cedar tree 4 to 5 feet through. It stood upside down on the bark of that tree too far for me to reach and made a terrible racket for a long time while I just stood and laughed at the silliness of the moment of this little Fairy Diddle Flying squirrel scolding me for being in it's territory.
The only bad thing was the volcanic Dust in the summers which could be hot when cars or trucks drove by on the nearest dirt roads and once in a while deer hunters would shoot through the forest not realizing that their bullets went right over our heads far from where they were shooting a mile or more away at deer in deer hunting season. The sound is like the buzzing of bees and then later you hear the bang of the report of the gun far away. The bullet travels much faster than the bang sound does by the way.
I found living remotely very healing especially after growing up mostly in the Los Angeles Area. I was so grateful to get away from it all, all the noise and bustle and unhappiness of a big city anywhere.
It was heaven those 5 years away from it all for me and my wife and children then.
No comments:
Post a Comment