Most books about the working class are written by elites 👨🌾👨🏭👷♀️
Most books about the working class are written by elites 👨🌾👨🏭👷♀️
I just got done reading JD Vance’s much proclaimed Hillbilly Elegy about the rough and tumble life of growing up poor in Appalachia – the drugs, the poverty, the unstable home life. The hillbilly code of honor. Seemed like a decently accurate story having grown up around many hillbillies myself grown up in the mountains in farm country. But it’s written by somebody who resembled less and less a hillbilly after being a graduate of Yale Law School. His childhood memories may be valid but they come from a now elite perspective.
I recently read Kristin Kimball’s The Dirty Life, a book about a NYC journalist who fell in love with a back to earther and they moved to the Eastern Adirondacks to homestead and farm using horses and the tools of the trade. They might live a life close to the land today, but they come from an elite perspective.
A few years back I read this book, the The Land Was Everything by Victor Davis Hanson about an English professor who came back home to run his family vineyard in California. Again, maybe he has dirt under his fingers now and as a child, his professorship distanced himself from the working class. He might have gone back to the land but he still has those college educated roots.
Then there is the Firefox Books which try to document a dying breed of Appalachian living in the late 1960s by students at Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School, a private secondary education school located in the U.S. state of Georgia. It’s a good tail of Appalachia but again it’s a story told in the third person rather than the people who are actually living the life.
Or Noel Perin’s Best Person Rural and his other series of books about living close to the land in Vermont. His observations were astute but again kind of represented an elite view of living off the land, out in the country. He was another of a dying breed but probably atypical of a farmer in Vermont.
Now I get that cow shit and silage probably smell the same wherever you stand. That many of the same experiences working on the farm – the animals and the work are the same if you are college educated or not. Growing up in Appalachian culture is not easily forgotten and the experiences documented in the books to remind me of experiences I’ve had in years gone by.
I guess true hillbillies and working folks don’t really have the time to write a book or the connections needed to see their book through publication. So we have to settle for third party accounts, documented through America’s elites, colored by the perspectives and values acquired through advanced education.
Indeed, while I’m certainly not Yale educated, I do know my college degree and professional occupation colors my view of the world. And I’m sure that many who read these kind of books are one or two steps removed from the land and the working class. I do worry such books while documenting such life also color the views of the elite.
When I build my homestead trash incinerator! 🔥
When I build my homestead trash incinerator! 🔥
They estimate roughly 1 in 4 rural residents burn at least a portion of their household trash. With most things packaged in lightweight plastics and paperboard, a significant portion of waste can be burned. Rural households that burn can often only run to the transfer station or the landfill once or twice a year as most can go up in smoke.
Most of it is inevitably burned in smelly trash burning barrels which are typically 55 gallon drum with holes shot or poked in it. But it can be done better. Burn barrels are fine for disposing of trash in outlying areas but they have several shortfalls that very from a nuisance to a downright public safety threat.
- They can smell bad when certain plastics and other trash is burned – as they tend to smolder due to the trash being wet and not enough oxygen
- Some of the chemicals released can be toxic, especially when trash solders due to moisture and lack of air
- They pose a fire risk – as many are used without screens and are placed near grass or trees
Hot fires eliminate the volatile organic compounds, along with many of the toxins like arsenic, dioxin and furans from incomplete combustion.
I think when I build my incinerator, I would include a fairly high stack maybe 5-6 feet high to create a good draft. A good draft would mean a hot fire, with less emission and odors. Forced air into the incinerator using a blower motor of some sort would increase the incineration process. While a fan would take energy which is always precious on an off grid cabin, the benefits of more complete combustion with less odor and ash might be worth it.
Adding scrap wood and cleaner burning plastics to the fire could further help increase combustion temperatures, reducing ash, unburnt waste, smoke, toxins and odors. Rip roaring fires can make ordinary kitchen and farm trash quickly disappear.
I would sort the waste that went into it. Food waste is good for composting or feeding to pigs and goats. A lot of and metal can be recycled – although maybe it would be better to burn the cans out then waste perfectly good water which may be precious on an off grid homestead. Plus who really wants to wash your trash?
I would also take steps to make sure that the incinerator is away from grass and trees, and that the smoke stack is covered so no paper or sparks could fly out. This would allow disposal of waste even during open burn bans and dry conditions outside. Trash accumulates regardless of the weather in our consumer society. Every time you go to the mail box there is more paper trash and kitchen waste baskets are quickly filled with plastic wrappers, bottles and paperboard boxes. Homesteads also produce feed sacks, pesticide containers and twine needing disposal.
It would be nice to use some of the heat from the incinerator to heat water for washing and other chores around the farm. A lot of city people pay to get rid of their trash, it would be nice for waste to be an actual asset – heating water and providing a useful service on the homestead.
There are a lot of good plans on the internet for improved burn barrels and incinerators widely used on farms and rural homestead. A hot fire can eliminate most waste, saving money and time, turning waste into an asset rather than more fill at the massive garbage dumps.
Ep 22:Homestead Startup – How you can get more land for less money
In this episode, we talk about how we were able to get a great price on land that wasn't even on the market at the time. We explain in three steps how we looked for land, found land that met our criteria, and negotiated pricing while considering start up cost and natural resource revenue opportunities.
Cabin with 24M views…….all the details
This Bush Radical video of his basic off-grid cabin is pretty neat. When I own land, I'd love to live the simple life like this.
Things I liked and disliked about that rural homestead next to my parents house 🏚️
Probably heading up to the Adirondacks to beat the summer heat plus the issue of fire insurance on the building next to my parents house sealed the deal of me not getting that property but I wanted to write down what seemed to be my concerns and the things I liked so I would have the list when considering future properties.
Things I liked.
- Great price when you consider the cost of rent over ten years and you’ll recoup some of the cost when you resell it especially if you’ve fixed it up
- Chicken coup, horse barn, outdoor sink and overhang for butchering livestock outdoors
- Relatively small size of the house
- Single floor and a relatively low slung roof that could easily be maintained by a short ladder
- Relatively new roof and windows
- I could have paid for it with cash and had the title in hand, then only paid homeowners insurance and property tax
Things I disliked.
- It’s in New York State with the burn ban and the bad gun laws
- Being rural and having to commute each day to the city
- Werid shaped property with one of the neighbors’ properties inset within the land
- Have to be careful what I burned due to being a residential neighborhood
- Vinyl siding, which was covering up obvious wood rot below it
- Grid-tied, an ancient oil burner which if it was still functional probably wasn’t energy efficient
- No wood stove
- No forest land to use as a wood source if I were to burn wood
- Cost of property taxes, homeowners insurance, and commuting would exceed my current rent, while getting nothing back in return — investments in stock and cash are
- So any unknowns …
- No guarantees I’d be able to get insurance on the property until I moved in as it would be a cash purchase
- Power is turned off as is the water, so don’t know if there are shorts in the building’s electrical, if the well and septic work. While I would have a home inspection done, that’s a bunch of unknowns and I would have to put up a bunch of cash not knowing what I would get in return.
- Floor is collapsing in one area. While it doesn’t seem serious as a one story structure, the whole foundation looks to be mostly of uncemented field stone, and I’m not sure how secure the whole building is without a full home inspection
It’s the commute 🚘
I’ve continued to think about country living and building my off grid homestead. Commuting sucks especially in the big city, as I’ve determined in the past two days when I drove to work – one day for the Pine Bush Hike and the other for heading out to Schoharie to camp.
- Traffic jams, traffic speeds up and slows down, you have to pay constant attention.
- So many broke down cars and crashes necessitating difficult lane changes due to Move Over Law.
- Cops everywhere – checking your speed, if all your tail lights are working, not using your cellphone, following the Move Over Law.
- A complete time suck – on the bus you can read and on the bike you get exercise but time driving is wasted.
- Expensive automobile maintenance and fuels.
And that was only one trip out of town and a trip up to the Pine Bush!
It’s nice to get out of town, but I’ve come to realize that much of the nice of the really nice land is beyond sensible commuting distance. There is no reason to live in a suburban subdivision surrounded by corn fields that smells like cow shit. Commutes aren’t certainly a good reason to live out in the country.
Maybe for as long as I have to live in big city, focusing on making money, I should continue to live in the city where I can bike to work. Continue to research and plan my dream homestead, but realize it’s not compatible with living in New York or being within commuting distance of my work. It just isn’t possible to put together to incompatible views of my future.