As If You Could
Everyone wants to do it. The sun comes out (although as we shall see, in the West of England, it doesn’t, yet) and the Facebook forums fill with the same question:
Can I buy an acre of land, put a caravan on there, and live in it?
No, Janet, you can’t. There are rules, and planning permission, and by and large, though we all hate to admit it, they are a good thing. If they didn’t exist, we all know who would get hold of that land and build on it, and it wouldn’t be you and me and our little cabins.
It’s my understanding that in the USA and possibly other countries with a lot of spare space, and fewer humans per square metre, there are zones where you can do absolutely anything you like on your own land. I’m a closet Alaska Homestead Rescue fan and I have, on far too many occasions, thought that good ol’ Marty would be out in Minnesota for several years, never mind a week, before he got all the paperwork through for doing that stuff, if it worked like it does here.
It’s simply not possible on our crowded island, and a short stay on any of the afore- mentioned forums will reassure you of the following paradox:
It’s an utter travesty. Anyone who can buy an acre of land should be allowed to build a small, sympathetic, harmless homestead on it and live in peace.
Landowners are the spawn of the devil and shouldn’t even be allowed to put a fence around their land. It should be open for the use of all people, as they see fit.
Anyone with the strength to scratch their chin can see how this doesn’t quite work out, but nevertheless it does seem that nearly everyone who dreams of living on the land can hold both these views simultaneously without significant medication or hospitalisation.
As If We Did
Our attempts to live peacefully on our land are very part time, because we know that neither planning permission nor the landowner would ever allow it to be anything else, but by this time in the year, we are usually looking forward to spending somewhat more time in my aged and ‘relaxed’ caravan, at least brewing the odd cup of tea, and pottering to and fro the garden, as the hard work of spring begins.
Not this year. Not yet. The rain, it would appear, is never ending.
I’m recovering somewhat slowly from surgery, and I had hoped that long days in spring sunshine, with the requisite breaks in the shade, and cups of tea in said caravan, would by now be building up my strength and resilience, enabling me to get more done each day. Instead, the rain keeps coming, the mud gets deeper, my concern for the safety and well being of all our animals gets greater, and simply doing the daily rounds reduces me to an exhausted heap.
As If You Might
I feel hugely for those who are treading where once we stepped and do desperately want to live off grid, and self sufficiently, and if I am still alive when I have got my act together enough, I should rather like to share some of what we know, with small groups of interested souls, gathered around a leaping campfire, in the sultry summer dusk (if it ever stops raining.)
If you could ever get hold of the land to play on, and with, what skills would you best bring? What shall we start to learn, even as the patient moderator on the Simple Smallholding Group answers the seventeenth acre/caravan question of the day, and resorts to a hefty slug of sloe gin (homemade of course.)
The most fulfilling thing about self sufficiency, simple living, call it what you will, is that it comprises a collection of genuine skills. None of the things you need to know how to do can be picked up in a day, and nor can they be quickly absorbed, dropped, and easily picked up again. They are true skills. This is craft, in its truest sense. So an optimistic way of looking at it, should you still be looking for somewhere to do this, is that you’re almost certainly not ready anyway.
Gardening
Gardening starts everyone’s list, I suppose because our first thoughts of self sufficiency necessarily revolve around food, and the growing of annual vegetables and salads is undoubtedly the most accessible way to provide sustenance.
Learning to grow food is a time consuming and humbling thing. I have seen one or two ‘preppers’ who have seeds in their ‘preps’ for when ‘shtf’ but have never actually grown anything. They’re going to be dead of hunger by the time they find out about slugs.
No garden plot is too small to learn on, and anything you produce is a thing you didn’t buy. Salad leaves, spring onions, a bunch of radishes, every single thing will teach you something, and feed your spirit, even if it needs help from outside to feed your body. Grow, learn, and become obsessed, and your wait will become well spent.
Building
Building, conversely, is almost never on anyone’s list, and I think it’s been a real pain that neither of us is particularly good at building stuff. I’m not talking about brick and mortar houses, because apart from anything else, see: planning permission, above. No, I’m talking I suppose more about joinery. Throwing up a chicken coop, reconfiguring a shed, building a compost toilet, refitting the inside of an ancient caravan - are all things I really, really wish we could do, and didn’t involve ham fisted, childlike attempts at making wood stick together, water leaks, ill fitting doors, and screws sticking through the other side of gates that scar you for life. In no particular order.
If I was thirty years younger and embarking on this whole gig, I think a good wood-working course, and a basic building/DIY one, would be absolutely top of my list of things to do.
Preserving
Canning is currently quite fashionable in the UK but when I started out, it was a purely American thing and I even had to import my pressure canner from the USA.
Again, a true skill which takes, trial, error and patience to learn, these days there are Instantpots which allow you to pressure can a few jars ( the pressure is not guaranteed to stay high enough to constitute ‘proper’ pressure canning, but if you treat the food as water-bathed, and ensure it’s thoroughly reheated through before consumption, it’s all good) Actual water bathing is of course relatively simple to arrange with a good deep pan. There are plentiful resources, if you start at the safer and easier end of acidic foods (like tomatoes) you will once again have the joy of not buying something.
Dehydrating is also popular - but I do begin to wonder when the expensive, electrical kit begins to look like an elaborate hobby rather than a genuine stab at self sufficiency. I’m not against dehydrating, and if we lived as we wish we did, and somewhat as we used to, there would be a woodstove gently bumbling away in the background which would dehydrate stuff for us at no extra cost. Apparently your car windscreen is a fabulous solar dehydrator if you set it up right. And if the sun ever shines again.
As If One Day …
I’m not always a natural Pollyanna, but I do hold out hope that something soon will break. I fear the consequences of changes already taking place will, in their first fiery flare of being, appear to be very definitely Not Good. I am, though , filled with optimism for how we shall resurge (is that a verb?) like plucky groundsel between concrete patio slabs, and the round up and the pressure washer of late stage capitalism will be gone. No one will have the time or the budget to spray us out of existence, so our vigorous indigenous roots will have time to be really disruptive, and to start to break up the slabs.
In my rainier moments, I point out to myself that I shall be either gone, or in my “sitting in my rocker praying for people” period, and I will have been a historical stepping stone, a mere raised bed beside the path back to the true garden. But faith prevails, and I know that whatever part of this journey is mine to tread and share, is ordained and preserved, so I shouldn’t fret.
Always believe, and always behave ‘as if’ - because we can all do more than we think we can to claim simplicity - it may after all, just be a waiting game. And while we wait, we can learn, and while we learn, we can be present, and still. As if we all knew.