A Few Acres and a Cow

A Few Acres and a Cow
As always, every time there appears to be a collapse of the economy, the talking heads start promoting a small farm purchase. Every time they trot out their arguments for this action, I see failure in store for those who follow this ill-founded advice.

Here are the problems:
#1 People moving into a rural area are immediately suspect. You have no friends or family. You have no established reputation. You probably have no skills that the area is in need of.

#2 Living in rural environments requires an entirely different mind-set from suburban or urban areas. There is no corner store; big-box stores are miles away. Most all of the supplies needed to afford a reasonable lifestyle are imported to the area. Rural areas are NOT self-sufficient. The days of rural self-sufficiency went away decades ago. Succesful farming is corporate monoculture with plenty of access to credit.

#3 The homestead type farm is an illusion for the major part. It takes skills and experience to grow a garden. With minor carpentry skills you can build a chicken coop, but I'd bet money that your flock will die off within a few months. The skills needed to just maintain a subsistence lifestyle are almost overwhelming. It can be done, but you won't learn the skills in weeks or months, but rather several years.

#4 During this steep and exhaustive learning curve, you will need access to lots of money. You lack the skills to provide for yourself, so you will have to purchase them from others. You will buy skilled labor or you will die.

#5 If Federal Reserve Notes become worthless due to hyper-inflation, you better have something valuable to barter with that is in actual demand. Almost everything you own is total crap with no value in a subsistence environment.

#6 Most people will attempt to buy property based upon location, location, location. You live in a mind-set that still operates with investment potential as the prime driver for your choices. You will choose your land based upon the following criteria: On a well-travelled road, close to town, close to neighbors, ... etc. All of these criterias will put you square in the sights of the hungry masses that will have easy access to your assets. Survival success demands remoteness. The more remote you are, the greater the survival and farming skills you will need.

#7 Long-term success demands income from off the farm. Once again you are faced with lack of marketable skills in a rural environment. It is almost impossible to succeed without getting supplies you can't grow or make.

#8 All the talking heads promoting a bug-out farm fail to grasp the economic realities of rural life. I state all because all of the above reasons. You will not be an asset to the community, but rather a competitor for the limitted resources available. The most capable of surviving will know that you and your family will die, but until you do, you will drain away resources and put everyone else at risk of failure. The people will eliminate you from the herd. You can't survive without the herd.

Death is NOT an option. It is inevitable. You can stack the odds one way or the other on the time and place, but odds are for Las Vegas. So when you decide on "Going Up The Country"* bring lots of toilet paper, sugar and salt. The decending hoards of hungries will kill you and clean you out, but they are too stupid to pack off toilet paper and salt.

Don't depend on government for anything. Government produces nothing and consumes everything. Besides, their hands will be full with the hungry masses left in the cities. Remember those corporate monoculture farms? They are effectively owned by the USDA and all their production will go to the cities on government trucks with armed escorts.

So the question for me is, am I prepared? No. But I am established in the rural community and after beaucoup years I have developed the basic skills needed to survive. None the less, bring lots of toilet paper because the shit will hit the fan.

* "Going Up The Country" special thanks to Canned Heat. If only the water tasted like wine.