Embrace your dream and proceed boldly!

thanks everyone. I was not expecting such enthusiasm...guess I have spent too much time on another social networking site lately. lol.

Wiley, thank you so much for your feedback. your last post made a lot of sense to me and like I tried to put across in the OP, I know that my dream/vision is someone else's current reality. So I appreciate your input.

I think deep down most of us here would want to have some sort of back up location, weekend getaway, ranch, compound, retreat, cabin, doomsday bunker, cache set up, fallback position away from it all in case a situation arises where we can't stay at home anymore or don't want to. From natural disaster to something more fictional becoming reality.

This is a long term plan, where unless something falls into our lap, then it will be putting things together piecemeal over time. Land first. Educating always. Luckily there is plenty of available land in my area. We've been gardening and getting better at keeping food till harvest, can't wait to tell someone, "everything your eating is from our garden." I'm trying to increase my experiences with mechanical, electrical components. Talk about starting small, I have a gas powered lawn edger that doesn't start that I am working on. Ultimately I want to be at a point where I can understand water pumps and solar energy systems.

comms, you're on the right track. i too learned everything i know by starting small and doing everything i could myself, making endless errors along the way.

anything of value takes a long time to make happen.

for patti and i, it was 15 years of finding the property, paying it off and putting up the smallest of dwellings. it took another 25 years of living on it full-time to work the bugs out.

focus on only what you can accomplish today, but plan for the long term. and in the end, you might just get your wish and build a legacy for your kids, and their kids.

good luck!!!!

Sounds like a fine plan. I offer a few caveats of the IMHO/YMMV/FWIW sort.
Mel Tappan, a widely published survival guns expert, retreated to his rural outpost, in preparation for the coming cataclysm. He passed away in 1988, quite young, apparentlty of congestive heart failure. This is a disease that is and was best managed in a sophisticated hospital setting. He might have survived longer in an urban setting with better access to health care.

I chose to retreat with my young family into 23 acres of heaven in the adirondacks. DW did not tolerate the isolation well, and DD's struggled with the limited resources and coonservative social structure of the rural educational system. There were lots of benefits to being there, but the tradeoffs were substantial. We were much better able to survive teotwawki, but less able to survive the very real struggles of daily life.

I admire the approaches of Susan, Blast and Martin Focazio, who integrate their survival preparations in the context of community and family. This seems to be the wisest of courses.

Good luck with your enterprise.

This was a fun read, and I'll keep checking this one for a while. As for energy, I've heard a great off-grid set-up is a wind & solar system. Imagine a crisp cold winter day with the sun blaring outside, needing sunglasses to be outdoors, and your solar panels cranking the amps into your batteries. Or an overcast dank spring day, fat rain drops pounding your windows, and the wind blowing your turbine keeping the batteries topped off. Or you can just be hooked to the grid and flip a switch.

Here's a link to a blog post from a couple who's lived off the grid for 22 years.

It's somewhere at the headwaters of the Buffalo National River, in the Ozarks -- pretty rugged country. But the road network is good. May be out in the boonies, but I'm sure it's pretty easy to get to.

The website where the blog is posted is the Ozark Natural Science Center, where fifth-grade students spend two days a night learning out door science. ONSC also offers/hosts a variety of classes including an outdoor survival institute.

I think you outline the down side of rural/wilderness living quite well. As a career National Park Service employee (retired) I am familiar with much of what you discuss. Either I have experienced it, or lived and worked with families that have. The negative effects of wilderness living are much more significant for children than for adults.

The better solutions involve situations where you can transition from urban to wilderness with ease. Even then, nothing is perfect. I was rudely shaken awake on San Miguel Island (as raw and screaming a wilderness as one could hope for) and spent a restless day wondering about the situation of my wife and daughter back on the mainland, to say nothing of friends and associates back on the mainland. My daughter grew up with the advantages of participating in a well functioning educational system but also many experiences in the northern Channel Islands helping dear old dad with the chores.

All great points! Wonderful discussion!

My youngest children have lived in both the 'burbs and small country town. They will continue to benefit from formal education and modern socialization. Exposure to the forest/nature is regular and respectful as is their introduction to farming. It increases weekly. My ex- (if we reconcile) already knows that she needs social contact (beyond online networking). We plan on being +/- 30 minutes from town and about 2-3 hours from a city. We expect to have "town jobs". I agree that large amounts of isolation can be quite harmful.

For electricity, I researched options and determined that wind & water were our best choices for our goal locations.

You've all touched on the 'raising kids' and social interaction component. Something I originally wrote into both my previous posts but took out. I could write chapters on my thoughts and meditations of raising my kids in a suburbia setting versus a more rural one...and contradict myself several times. Plus as Nursemike mentioned, its always a good idea to be near top tier medical facilities, especially important with some issues with my DS and taken into account. This is why we are looking to be within an hour of where we live right now.

I have not looked deep into wind power, but many of you are mentioning it. I suppose I have been brainwashed into believing the cost over weighed the benefit. I'll include average daily wind speeds into my land matrix and do some more research on it.