A note on off-the-grid living

Samuel Taylor Coleridge had a famous word on how you must raise a child in the countryside. Coleridge is a must-study author as he's part of the Authorized Reads in the Canon of our (yours and mine) household catechism : namely, he is a character in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.
So, his Frost at Midnight goes :
"(...) For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze,
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags.
[...]
Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw (...)"
I like poetry. I like how putting superfluous efforts into writing in order to express oneself truthfully begs readers to put efforts into considering alien thoughts.

So anyway, reading it and about it put my mind to thinking about living in the countryside again, and then how it means that in the lifelong struggle between the Urban and the Rural mes in my mind, the latter is winning more and more battles.

It should also one day progress into reading (again) how Tolkien argued against the urban and industrial complexity of his modern world, because i think a lot of my rural aspiration comes from a legendary setting instilled in me through his stories. Coming back to the nurturing stages of my will to live away from the rat race would clean up any fantasy or romanticism still wedged in it (the will).

It echoed on the few words i had read of Thoreau's Walden at Jackie's, and how profoundly stupid i thought this immensely popular author was, which is in itself unsettling. My argument is : that in his first pages, the guy exhorts everyone to combat the mind-numbing, life-crushing cycles of an industrial, developed society, by satisfying oneself in the simple life of living from little in the wood, where he goes as far as estimating the -limited- cost ; but doing so, it underlines how dependent of this industrial society the hermit is, because the cheapness of a raccoon's hat or a carpenter's trousers comes from mass production, specialization of work and the gathering of financial power to invest in this mass production and specialization (ie banking). I compare it to something i read on your wall about how "changing women's behaviour to prevent rape" matches the proposition "make sure he rapes the other girl" : "go buy cheap stuff and live in the wilderness" is tantamount to "leave the dirty work to others so you can leave contentedly". Living cheap would not work if you had to make everything you need to do so on your own and from scratch ; even the mindset of living in the wild comes from a philosophy that was only allowed by food surpluses produced at some point by someone else. It is something of an obvious conclusion that civilization was built at some point when a few generations in a row didn't need to devote all their time to producing food, clothes or shelter, because someone else did.
Plus, he failed to address the problem of purpose ; in the passages i read, Thoreau only argued in favor of watching nature cycles unfold around you. It doesn't quite pack enough intellectual punch to develop one's personality, capacity or experience.

Anyway, this all came back to my current thoughts about "living off-the-grid" and how i think it is crucial to define it before trying to do it. Wikipedia defines living off-the-grid first, as i think the first people who used the term did, as living without the necessity of a remote infrastructure. Most essentially, electricity. But it sure doesn't mean living without electricity, nor even living without a weekly visit to the supermarket and get a McDonald's order on the way back. The basic idea is not even associated to living cheaply or eco-friendly, as an engine-generator working on diesel complete the requirements of being off-the-grid.
Wiki reminds that "A common misconception is that a true off-grid house is able to operate completely independently of all traditional public utility services. Although this is not the case". As i said at another time, i don't think living off-the-grid is desirable to me, if it means living in autonomy. It would mean more sacrifices in means, comfort and entertainment that i'm ready to make. Off the top of my head, eating all meat groups (beef, pork, lamb, poultry) would require a big volume of production and consumption (a community) to be sustainable or even workable ; clothmaking is fun and works for a lot of things, but some of the garments i want in my wardrobe need bought, especially shoes ; even if a lot of moving and hauling can be done with a horse, a vehicle has to be bought and serviced. Actually, the whole concept of being autonomous disregards the need of servicing ; to be able to maintain and repair all of the equipment needed to live off-the-grid would need a huge amount of dedication, that you couldn't put in some other, more interesting, more profitable tasks. The most obvious solution to not need exterior aid with your amenities is to do without them, and you fall into the cycle of shrinking your comfort instead of learning how to maintain it smartly.

So i think the strict definition of living off-the-grid is not enough to embody what i would like to do, and the abusive definition of living off-the-grid as in autonomy goes far beyond it. Defining it as eco-friendly is not broad enough, and defining it as smartly is not specific enough.
More interestingly, living without the need to pay for utilities (which is what the off-the-grid celebrities mostly do) falls short of what i picture myself doing in terms of horticulture, self-sufficiency in consumer products, low-impact technological equipping, and aesthetical considerations.
The sources of what i would like to do are :

• the will to be able to produce things to be able to comprehend, not barely understand, how they are made
• the will to make and use beautiful, smart and useful things
• the fantasy of being in a position corresponding more to people and settings i've read about and loved,
• the fantasy to open my routine to more contemplation (through idling, entertainment, working and moving)
• the need to have a lower impact on nature (as a whole, not within my own three acres only)
• the need to be less dependent on outer production of goods and services

A consequence and self-sustaining force of this mode of living would be living cheaply, which would in turn allow for :

• less need for a high income, and
• more limits on the expensive comforts I could afford, hence decreasing my threshold of entertainment or comfort tolerance (little side-note on this : not reducing comfort and entertainment down to Thoreau's "sit and watch the leaves fall, that's all you need to forget your teeth are chattering" ; and it may be the point on which our opinions and needs may differ the most.)

As for what i picture myself being able to produce, by opposition to buying, i would say :

• power-related : power for lighting, machinery, and electronics, whole heating system (air and water)
• Food : vegetables, fruits, dairy products (from outside milk), poultry, fish, game, beer, bread
• health and household products : soap, cream (from oil or animal fat, homemade or not)
• clothes : t-shirt, male and female skirts, dresses and tunics, lightweight fabric (linen, kombutcha or home-grown fabric), maybe some wool spinning and crocheting (i don't see myself doing it, from lack of patience, but it's doable)
• furniture : some casual or temporary fixing could be homemade

What i don't picture myself being able to produce, hence what i see myself buying :

• power-related : light bulbs (clever architecture and smart tricks could go a long way to prevent over-consumption, but you'll still need some bulbs), machinery itself and electronics (although i should strive to replace complexity with tricks and smarts as often as i can)
• Food : flour, yeast, beef, pork, lamb, exotic fruits, out-of-season produce, sea fish, exotic meats
• health and household products : drugs, exotic creams and soaps, lye, acid, ammonia, oil and animal fat not homemade
• clothes : rain clothes, shoes, nice clothes (like, going-out clothes, or meeting-people clothes)
• furniture : some can be done, but the sheer volume of wood needed to cover all of one's needs for furniture is quite big

Some of this buying could come from or be replaced by recycling, repurposing, salvaging, or gathering from the wild.
Some more of this buying could be replaced by bartering or exchange for services.

The means I would see necessary to this mode are :

• horticulture : not farming yet but not just gardening
• husbandry : at least poultry enough to have twelve eggs a week and two chickens a month. Some sheep would help, though not for their meat (i can't see myself preparing a whole sheep on a regular basis).
• a horse : i may be romanticising, but a horse is a lot better than a lot of machinery. It hauls a lot, goes everywhere (slopes, undergrowth, rocky patches), gives you manure, stabilizes your mood as a pet, and you can also ride it.
• dogs and cats : self-explanatory
• indoor space : a lot of indoor space, not necessarily in the main house, but in spaces which temperature and humidity can be somewhat controlled. I think necessary to have a lot of underground space.
• outdoor space : even if a lot of space isn't needed for vegetables and poultry, a lot more is necessary for by-products farming like linen/flax, oil/sunflowers, essential oil/herbs, and timber/trees. However, i don't think more than a demi-dozen acres is needed.
• running water : a well or stream, and some connected ponds
• power generators : i don't quite have a set ideas on the best way to generate electricity, but i'd guess that the more diverse your sources, the safer you are
• walk-in or a lot of freezers and fridges : living sustainably means storing and freezing a lot of shit to waste the least
• electronics : a heavy reliance on probes, servos, and cameras, and a strong computer system. Automated watering system, indoors water system, automated heating... Also, remote-controlled cannons to help growing shit, like automated airgun to deter birds and foxes
• smart or low-impact building materials : i strongly believe in getting rid of plastic, concrete and other non-basic materials for wall and floor construction. Rammed earth, for example, seems to me a perfect, industrially-tested method of construction which is manageable at a one- or two-persons scale (with the help of a rented vibrating compactor or a homemade hydraulic press that you fill in from the top unto a certain mass, then slowly empty through a tap in the bottom)
• method : i think it integral to this mode of living to be planning, describing thoroughly and noting down the results of every system. This will need a strong commitment. The scale i'm thinking of is like writing down the ingredients, amounts and results of every dish you're making on a day-to-day basis (even if, obviously, it won't be needed for cooking).
• four or five children of our own, to bypass the legislation against child labour