I have been thinking a lot lately what it means to be actually poor versus frugal or choosing a lifestyle that many people would describe as being poor even if it involves many expenses not apparent on the surface. Some of it’s joining the Frugal Living group on Facebook, but also it’s been my observations lately on SNAP, watching and reading about homesteaders and homesteading families, and even farmers who spend enormous amounts of money on their livestock and feed but often live in rundown homes and drive old beat up vehicles. Probably what brought me to term was reading about the old Positivity Alliance, one of those communes where the members gave away all their wealth to be poor enough that where exempt from paying income taxes and funding the war.
I ride my bike and take the bus home most days from my office in suburbs. It’s not fast, the bus is clunky and slow. But I certainly could drive to work with the acres of parking. Yet, I’m well aware that there are many people who can’t afford to drive or have no choice but to take the bus. I suspect many of the people I see riding the shuttle back and forth and then transferring to city bus even at my office don’t do it because they choose that lifestyle.
Likewise I shop at primarily at Walmart and thrift shops, live in a pretty rundown but cheap apartment, don’t use my heat much, live without a television or high-speed internet, and it’s been months since I’ve had my laptop at home. But those are choices, as people point I out, you’re a director, you could live some place a lot nicer, a lot warmer, with all the color and light of a modern suburban home. Indeed, compared even to my neighbors or even many poorer people in city, I live particularly simplistic. But a lot of it is I don’t like the world of advertising, buying shit, plastic, landfills. Even if I do drive a big jacked up truck out in wilderness. The money I don’t spend now I want to save and eventually put towards my off-grid cabin.
Truth is it’s not always clear how much money people have, and why people choose to live the way they do. While it’s obvious the status symbols of wealthy suburbanite – the fancy chemical lawn, the grid-tied solar panels, the weekly trash pickup and television and high speed internet in each room – many others do choose to live simply. Many homesteaders are poor, in part because opportunities for good paying work in rural areas are few and far between. Or they just don’t want to participate in the often scammy-consumerist business life of hawking questionable products to both government and the private sector. And certainly many farmers give up much to reinvest in their land, and keep them and their familes on it.
Farming and homesteading is really expensive. It really is shocking even how much used equipment costs, to say nothing of feed and fuel bills, fencing. Land is remarkably expensive, much less building a house or off-grid systems especially if you’re seeking maximum comfort and compliance with building codes. It’s easy to be impoverished in a conventional sense with all those costs if you want to dedicate your life to your land. To say nothing about tax bills – they are no joke for farm families or anyone that owns a significant amount of land, especially compared to what the land can return in commercial product sales. It’s different to be struggling to stay on one’s own family land by trying to squeeze enough produce out of it compared to struggling to stay off the street, but often the margins after cost and the risk to life and legacy are pretty similar.
I have nothing but distaste for the fake nature of suburbia, the chemical lawns, color and light of modern homes full of appliances, the constant drone of advertising telling you to buy and discard shit, the seemingly limitless electricity, the packages that appear mysteriously on your door step when you order them, the flushing of toilets that disappear the poop to far away place or the trash that disappears when you put it out at the curb. All the brightly colored packages at the store. I think I’d much rather smell the cattle and horny buck goat or the smoke off burn barrel, see the sun hit my solar panels, or have food that less then perfect. Like the poor people. But I’m saving for that life, and some day I will make the leap.
Truth is that I’m not poor even if I don’t keep much money in my bank account and I’m loathe to spend and waste money unnecessarily, buying more crap that I later have to get rid of. I don’t love paying large electric bills for something that is invisible and gives me little joy. I’d rather sweat a bit in summer, shiver in the winter. Sit in darkness in winter and spend my nights as much as possible in the wilderness, next to fire and out riding trail and exploring. I don’t like the comforts that so much of middle class suburbia is addicted to.
I have become a big listener to audio books from the library, both on Hoopla and Libby. Audio books have one big advantage over E-books and paper books – they don’t have to get your undivided attention. Some people disagree with this notion – but it’s still a way to learn and think critically about issues – when you have to keep your eyes on the road or whatever you are doing.
Riding my bike to work and driving places are the two places where I do the most listening to audio books. When your hands are on the steering wheel or bike handles, it is a chance to give the audio book your undivided attention – in the sense you can’t easily flip over to other social media or other distractions. You start the book, and you get through it cover to cover. I have done so much more getting through full books on the bike then during any other activity.
Delta Lake is situated in Oneida County, New York, approximately 5 miles north of the city of Rome. The lake is a man-made reservoir, created in 1908 by damming the Mohawk River. It was originally built to supply water to the Erie Canal but now also provides flood control and water regulation on the Mohawk River and Erie Canal.
It’s often funny how much of our world is defined by socially learned context of smell. 👃🏽 A lot of babies eat poop, they aren’t all horrified by smell of their own poop — at least until they’re yelled out by the mom and told gross.
Non-farm people think honeywagons spreading manure really stink, 💩 mainly because their parents told them poop is nasty, and hydrogen sulfide tickles their nose in the wrong way. Farm people might instead joke, it’s the smell of money — maybe pungent but it’s the best stuff to make the crops grow really well and provide the chance of passing a profit or at least surviving. After a while, manure becomes almost unnoticeable or at least not very pungent to those who live out in the country.
Smell is very much part of our lives, 🌽 and so much of it is based on what we think is good or bad. Silage smells wonderful to farmers, as they know it will make for healthy cows and livestock that produce a lot of milk and meat. As does fresh cut hay and other crops. Non-farm people might smell the same thing and either have a negative impression or a neutral impression.
Whether it’s sewage treatment plant, the landfill, the barnyard, 🐄 so much of it based on our context and our experience. When you learn that smell isn’t natural but based on the context you give to things, it will give you a totally different way of looking at things — not based on whether or not something is pungent but what the real impacts of human activity are.
The morning started out cold but colorful with fiery red skies before the clouds pushed in. That said, it was a pretty cold and gray November morning but many are like that this morning.
Yesterday was a quiet day of reading, then in the afternoon visiting the Boy Scouts Sportsmart, not buying anything like cross-country skies but then riding out to Five Rivers 🐸 then coming home and reading for a few more hours before lights out by I don’t know, maybe 8 PM or earlier. It was so crazy 🤪 with tons of people 👪 at Five Rivers yesterday until dusk 🌆 but it was a nice ride home. Today is also busier then I expected, indeed I was shocked 🚽 when somebody was in the outhouse, and I tried to pry open the door thinking it was vacant until somebody shouted out, occupied! I ended up pooping 💩 in a little hand-dug cathole in the woods. I really try to avoid flush toilets when I can, as I rather the poop rot naturally in the ground. I just hate how everything is a celebration of landfilling and fossil fuels. 🌎 I’m not political even if I make my money from moving data for Democratic Party, I don’t go pushing for new laws, but I don’t also want to participate as much as I can from the shit one-way system we live in. Maybe that’s why I’m so fascinated by the off-gridders and homesteaders. 🐐
Pancakes 🥞 with cranberries, shredded carrots and apples 🍏 and lots of coffee at 5 AM this morning. Finished off the last of the one container of Greek yogurt I got last week at Walmart, rinsed it out before putting it in the trash so it doesn’t stink 👃 before I get up to woods and turn it into carbon dioxide. 🔥 I could pretend recycle it but I know there is no real market for No 5 plastic, and truth is I make a lot less trash then most and I need stuff to get fires started. ♻️ Maybe it’s all that reading I”ve been doing about the off-gridders this weekend that has my mind so focused on the wilderness and having fires. 🌲And thinking about those days riding through the wilderness on my bike after enjoying cannabis. I don’t do that shit at home nor do I ever touch beer at home. 🍻
Started out my day riding out to the Bender Mellon Farms Trails 🚲 and taking my bike around some of those trails, riding easy, hoping not to break and spokes or get a flat tire. So far so good. 🤞True of the wheels are decent, maybe I’m getting used to it and don’t want to mess with the spoke key, but whatever. It was skipping into low last night when I down shifted but didn’t have that issue today. ⚙️ Then I headed over to Five Rivers for a second time this weekend and walked around there before heading back home to make some cornmeal pancakes with onions and spinach for lunch. Also put carrots in them for extra softness and fiber. 🥕 Any chance to replace calories with fiber, I figure is a good thing.
Been doing a lot of reading on this cold weekend. 📚 I don’t normally bring my computer home, so I figure learning is a good thing by reading and it’s beats the endless ads and crap of social media. People say being well read is part of the healthy human life. Started out a book reading about the the History of the Rensselaer Train Station and railroads in the Albany area, Ernie Mann’s Railroads of Rensslear. Then I started reading Mark Sundeen’s The Unsettlers about modern day rural and urban homesteaders and off-gridders. For listening while riding, Cheap Land Colorado by Ted Conover. That book discusses the mostly rural poor, the outcasts, the crazies and others who have bought 5-acres of very cheap land on the Colorado plains.
I am endlessly fascinated by the rural poor, the homesteaders, the off-gridders. 🐐 Maybe I make too much of the nobel savage of the rural poor, and I confuse voluntary poverty with real poverty, but I deeply unsettled about the modern consumeristic suburbanite life. And it’s not just because I like all things dirty, the pungent smell of manure, wood smoke and silage. Some people make so much out of so little, while others drown themselves in big color televisions, plastics, and motoring everywhere as they eat organic twinkies and say their green because they recycle some of their plastic with their weekly 96-gallon garbage service, put solar panels on the grid-tied-house, and have their $100,000 Tesla parked out front. 📚 Got to take advantage of Libby now, though come Thanksgiving I should plan out my 10-Hoopla Borrows and get them out before I head up to camp. Libby is not reliable in places without phone service, like out in the wilderness.
Mom is sick this weekend with a cold, 🤒 so no visiting this weekend, though it’s probably what has been going around the office so everyone is hopeful including my sister and neice and nephew that we can all get together for Thanksgiving. 🦃 It’s all good, it’s expected to turn to a mixed-bag later on today, and while it might be too warm to stick, it’s going at least be pretty wet come the evening.💦 I want to read more this evening, prepare beans and acorn squash along with knead bread dough and prepare that for cooking at 5 AM tomorrow morning. I think I have enough clothes to avoid going to laundromat this week, though my 5-gallon compost bucket is overflowing but I’ll stick that outside in the morning and it will be fine with cold. 🪣 Going to rot at any rate either here or out in my parents pile. 🍏
It looks like it will be a good weekend to get out of town next weekend, ☀️ though rain or maybe ice and snow up north come Monday. I’ll probably take that following Monday off so I can get three nights camping 🏕️ starting Black Friday. I am leaning towards heading farther north for this trip, but no so remote that I’m far from plowed road should things turn to ice and snow by a week from Monday. Leaning towards camping along the Boreas River – Moose Club Way – NY 28N but I’ve also considered Old Lake Durant Road campsites or maybe just old East Branch Sacandaga. I’d just love a few days hanging out at camp, 🔥 have some nice fires, cook some delicious meals, 😋 smoke some weed and ride all day. 🚲 Kind of like those memories of Horseshoe Lake, or even the Adirondack Rail Trail. I like the idea of riding Moose Club Way but also the Roosevelt Truck Trail ain’t far from thee, and while gated and rough in places, might be quite nice on the mountain bike.
