Survival migration or self-sustaining retreat?

Assumptions: limited to North America and conditions / laws stay as they are now and you act within the law.

If you were challenged to eat only by living off the land entirely, would you migrate to best harvest areas with the opportunities / seasons, or try to set up a self-sustaining retreat in what you judged the best area?

That is a little bit hard to answer Dweste. It calls for a couple of other assumptions to even attempt an answer.
First I wonder how long term we are talking about?
I would need to know just what the resources were that I would be migrating to, and what I had as resources for farming.
I suspect I would follow a blend of the two.

The location means everything. Any areas worth practicing agriculture are likely under cultivation already. I might try raising a few small crops like potatoes, squash, corn and beans.
This assumes I have the seeds, the land and the tools to cultivate a garden with.
Homesteading is not easy.

If the area has crops or that can be gathered more easily than raised then being a hunter, gatherer and forager makes more sense.
This also requires some skills, equipment and knowledge.
There is no sense migrating anywhere to harvest anything unless you already know it is there, and have the ability to harvest, transport and store it.

There is a third choice which is to follow the eat as you go gambit. In this case you choose total nomadism and graze as you travel. It means no food storage, very limited possesions and no permanent shelter.

We tend to think of nomadic or aboriginal cultures as low tech, but they were very high tech for their time and place. In some cases their technologies were the equal of modern technologies, especially if you remove our access to cheap and abundant fuels.

Most arable land is privately owned, and most of those owners would fear vast numbers of squatters, just like the ranchers did 150 yrs ago. If you moved onto someone's property without permission, you would be breaking a law if they found you and objected. As with dogs chasing or killing livestock, they might revert to the SSS rule (Shoot, Shovel, Shut up).

Other uninhabited lands are owned by the government, which might overlook a bunch of squatters, esp if they had no way of enforcement.

A local problem causing survival migration would be enough of a problem on all sides, but some kind of large regional disaster would probably be a nightmare, and the longer it lasted, the worse it would be.

Most people who think about possibilities like this are really thinking only about themselves or including mostly a like-minded group of friends/relatives/neighbors. But the reality would be far from that.

The three most populated counties immediately east of Puget Sound here in WA are Snohomish, King and Pierce, with a total population of approx. 3.5 million people. Suppose something bad happened in that area (esp with warning), and all those people migrated east into the foothills of the Cascade Range.

Most wouldn't have shelter with them, most wouldn't have much food with them, and the local water sources would quickly become more fouled than they are now.

Combining the usual lack of preparedness with the national attitude of entitlement, it would get nasty very quickly. By the end of the first week there would probably be bodies rotting all over the place. YUCK!

Sue

I live and work in one of the richest agricultural areas of the country and have seen trainloads of produce rotting in the fields and/or plowed under. I have thought it was such a waste and wondered why homeless individual didn’t
"set up camp” somewhere in the area for gleaning the rabbits and veggies, even though the taking of either one would be illegal.

What land did you have in mind that could be lived “off of” and what could be taken while acting within the law?

Seasonal migration would seem to be the way to go, if there were no restrictions.

Assume this is just you with what you have and know now.
No emergency or disruption of other people. Just you doing your thing for a year.

I would setup a garden to live off the land where I am now and hunt for other wild edibles, and creatures to eat. 100% legal.

I am not sure what your driving at,
but I will give it a try.

A retreat that is completely secret is very difficult to
pull off. There are so many people flying airplanes in
remote areas. They are looking to shoot game or varmints or
just to find remote cabins that they can loot. Government
planes are looking for poachers, Mary Jane gardens, etc.
Anybody who is hiding will be investigated.

A heavy tree cover with shelter under trees would be the
obvious way. Very limited gardening in random-looking
patches. No fences. Hunter-gatherer is an "if-y" existence.

It does not appeal to me.

Another approach is too migrate to an area with good soil
and sufficient water. Grow a big garden and have a few animals.
You would not hide-out and, on the contrary, would try to be
friendly to everyone, so you could fit-in and be accepted.
This is easier to do before a crisis than after, but I would
not count it out.
Why and how after a crisis? If you have
something to trade for a land-lease, or share-crop. Remember
that sometimes large tracks of fertile land go un-planted,
because of oil prices etc. There are also many niche lands
with good soil, that are not easily tilled with a tractor,
that a big land-owner might allow you to garden.

This sounds so good to me, I may retire to a garden-spot
any time now.

Hike4Fun, it sounds a lot like my great grandfather's farm.
A hundred acres of reasonable land should support 12 people, a few head of cattle, pigs, chickens and two horses to use as tractors.
Would most of us have the skills for subsistence farming though?
Somehow I doubt it, so it might be worth looking at how the old order Amish do things in your area.

Hi Dweste,

I would go the self-sustaining retreat route. I saw a book a LONG time ago called "5 Acres and Independence" if I remember the name correctly. I'll look around a bit to see if I can find more information. That looks to be the best way to go based on the constraints you have listed.

Cheers,
LW


Edited to add : http://www.amazon.com/Five-Acres-Independence-Handbook-Management/dp/0486209741

dweste,

Can you explain what you mean by this. How it works. Or, some
examples.

"migrate to best harvest areas with the opportunities / seasons"

Wheat and grain harvesters move northward each season and
harvest wheat for farmers. Few jobs. Highly mechanized.

Migrant farm laborers, fruit and vegetable pickers move around
as needed. Hard work. Lots of poor people to compete with
you. I flash on "Grapes of Wrath" by John Steinbeck.

It is really hard for me to think of good examples of this;
but I guess if you were starving, you would try anything.

legal harvest of wild foods

fruits and berries ripen, fish spawn, birds migrate, etc. seasonally and often with south to north patterns

The second unreasonably broad hypothetical in one week - 12 foot floods outside of floodplains, now where to go for self-sustaining harvest areas when those areas are massively complicated by overpopulation, ownership, and rules of entry (squatting). But if we can ignore the illogic of a 12 foot flood, I'll ignore the hard part of this scenario too. I would go east of the Cascades, to the Columbia River basin, where native americans lived in reasonably peaceful populations for 10,000 years migrating between the river for salmon, uplands for camas croots and berries and to hunt deer, and most recently over to the prairies to hunt buffalo. Migration patterns were stable, tribally based, which shows that people could survive in any of several different microclimates, but most likely they moved between them freely and seasonally. It could be a good life. I, personally, would die of starvation within 3 months, but what the hell. Its just a scenario.

Every word of defense is of course an admission of guilt, but thanks for playing along even if you find the scenarios unreasonably broad.

Perhaps the 'hard part' of each scenario is the point: what can you actually do to survive long term in the wild?

I would sail into the Pacific Ocean and cruise the coastal and estuary waters of the West Coast fishing, free-diving, tide-pooling, and beach-combing. I do not think I could survive on land with my current skills and resources.

I am interested to read your strategies.

Does anyone really think that is possible?... I don't.
Too many humans searching for too few resources = too many calories expended searching for not enough calories to fend off starvation.
In my opinion, that seems like the only reasonable conclusion to such a "migration".

This is a thought experiment in which everything else stays the same, but you alone are challenged to live off the land legally. How would you rise to the chasllenge with what you know and have now?

Personally, I would try to stay home. Migration is a hard life, both in old and modern times. Today, fences alone would be a huge obstacle.

Today's homeless dumpster divers are probably the new foragers.

And, basic survival is usually different from a nutritional diet. You may be able to collect enough calories, but in many areas, the protein might be a problem. While staying within the law, anyway.

I guess I just find the topic (just) out of scope for what I thought was the topic of equipped.org - survival preparedness for time-limited events and disasters. If your scenario challenges me - or us - to go live off the land for a year, that entails a significant general calamity or personal disaster. It makes a difference to know which one you mean. If I am burned out of my home, I find another one. If the 9.0 quake hits my area, I may move to another area. Its doubtful anything short of a nuclear strike - in which I as a survivor count myself extremely lucky (or not) to continue breathing - could cause me to migrate and start living off the land, and that seems a decidedly survival-ist scenario. There aren't many scenarios where I would either abandon the comforts of civilization or go back to the land on my shy half acre, which is presently unsuited to cultivation. Poverty alone doesn't make me a farmer or return me to migration.

Thank you for hanging in on this discussion.

No disaster is part of this scenario for you or anyone else.

It is just a question of what you would do with what you know and have if you had to live off the land for a year, say if you were offered a lot of money if you succeeded.

It is just to see what strategies various members of this ingenious community come up with, and to stimulate thought about other things you might want to add to your arsenal of knowledge and gear.

I guess I'm just not very motivated by vague prospects of financial reward. I volunteer with the Red Cross, and right now the actual health and welfare of alot of folks depend on me doing my job running shelters, not skinning rabbits or grubbing for camas root for an entire year to win a prize. I get jazzed by the actual survival and preparedness aspects of enabling lots of folks to survive urban disasters.

Wow, we are having another failure of communication.

Choose whatever would motivate you to try the experiment. Money was just an example that motivates many.

The point is to think through and share with us what you would do if you accepted the challenge.

If it makes no sense to you, then so be it.

I don't understand why so many people want to take the scenarios offered as mental exercises as THIS IS YOUR LIFE.

These are just 'What If' exercises that everyone with a brain should run through all their lives.

What would you do if you broke down in the desert? For three hours? For three days? For three weeks?

What would you do if you were parked at a RR crossing and were slammed from behind by another vehicle and your car got caught on the side of the train and dragged?

What would you do if Earth was hit by a solar flare right this instant, where you are and with what you've got right now?

Outside of this forum, do some of you never do this, think about things like this? Are you waiting for the actual situation to happen before you start thinking about it?

Or... *drum roll*... do you think it will never happen to you because of A, B, C, D?

Thanks for getting it.

I think many of us have vague notions and half baked
theories on primitive woods surviving with migration as an
option. I for one, do not think it has a substantial probability
of success. There is a huge amount to know for very little
return on investment. Example: study plants books and actual
plants and get really good at identification and prediction
of locations; a lot of work and the knowledge will fade,
if unused.

Some of the primitive woods forums will deal with
this much better. I think Elpel did a walk across Montana and
there are plant experts who have written books and post on some
of these forums.
Do some Googling and you will find a lot of the important
info is already posted.

Another problem, if you publicize a decent strategy, and provide
details, the animals and plants along that route may disappear.
Nature is very fragile when attacked by a bunch of recreational
scavengers.

A thread with a well chosen context and constraints for the
discussion will get much better results than one that is too
general.

In addition to the coastal and estuary cruising stratgey I mentioned earlier, I think that stayng in a major delta area might be aviable strategy. In the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta's 1000 miles of waterways there are abundant legally harvestable fish, crustaceans, molluscs,and plants year-round with seasonal fish and bird migrations as well. I might get tired of clams, crawdads, and cattails but I sure wouldn't starve.

i have the gear and skills to harvest everything except the birds; need a shotgun for them.

How about the major deltas and estuaries near you?

The estuary as a survival location is a good one, for all the reasons you mentioned. But it would be interesting if someone had the money to do some testing on the water, plants and game in those areas. Most of the estuaries I've seen are overly loaded with algae due to chemical farming and manure runoff, plus all the other businesses that dump into the water sources, including community sewage operations.

You might be able to use snares to catch birds, but I'll bet you would need some practice. The easiest would be the scavengers, like gulls, using a chunk of waste meat on a hooked fishing line. But I have always assumed that scavengers would also be the least desirable. I would have to be pretty hungry to eat an opossum.

A fair number of beaver, muskrat, and raccoon still call the Delta home, also.

Pollution is a problem almost everywhere with wild harvesting.

Presently, there are no estuaries, deltas, or large rivers
near me. The few rivers are barley navigable. My limited
exposure was as a kid in and around the Chesapeake Bay and
some swamps in the mid-west.

I guess you would want a boat with a shallow draft or a
retractable keel. Sail power is an advantage, but have a very
reliable motor or engine to get you out of trouble fast.

I used to catch numerous fiddler crabs but never ate them.
If you chase them, they run into a hole. You can wait for
them to come to the surface to "take a look"; you immediately
plunge a stick (flat is best) at a 45 degree angle into the
adjoining soil, but pointing toward the tunnel and this
will block their escape. Now dig up the crab.

Agree, that pollution is a real problem that is hard to
analyze. Piracy is on the up-swing, so piracy copy-cats
or piracy wanna-be's will increase. Corrupt LEO's can
harass you or confiscate you boat.

Sailing, coastal sailing, fishing, and coastal scavenging
is a whole different world. I have seen articles written
on this life-syle, but I cannot remember where. There must
be other sailors doing this life-style and forums where
you can learn some tricks of the trade.

The question for this thread is, what would you do if you took up the challenge of living off the land for a year?

In this order I would look for

At least part of the land above a flood plain level
Good Soil and water
Existing Perma-culture, wild and tamed
Garden Plot
Small animals chickens, rabbits (can be left alone for days)
Medium animals mini-goat milkable. Ties you down!
I would only get a milking animal if I had a partner or
extremely trusted neighbor.

Naturally Small cattle -- general purpose.
An alternative to a draft horse or mule is an ox (steer).

BTW, you could have a couple chickens on a 20ft boat.
I saw 2 chickens on a ship in the movie Captain and Commander.
You could feed them fish guts and let them graze on shore.

Had 'possum as a kid. I remember it as greasy, but not bad. I ate seagull as an adult. I'm probably going to find something else to eat, before I get hungry enough to eat that again.

To support yourself off the natural materials at hand for a year, you would have to cover a lot of area, even if you were by yourself. Hunter-foragers of the past were nomadic because they had to move with the weather and available food. It would be very hard these days. Traveling by itself is labor- and strangth-intensive, not to mention the time.

It seems to me that it would be far easier if you could find some decent soil and had some seeds, to stay in one place. It certainly would take less land.

So do you think you could make that work for a year?

In a crisis situation, is seems to me forage in rural areas would be reasonable. It wouldn't be legal, and you could face some risk dealing with the landowners, but lots of folks have livestock, crops, and other supplies handy if you are willing to sneak and/or fight for them. This may not fit the premise of the OP, but when it comes to survival, I don't follow rules that artificially limit my chances of success. It is hard enough just having to deal with natural laws.

I know lots of places that are pretty far out in the woods where there is plenty of wildlife, fish, and water. I'd bring my .22 along and shoot whatever meat I needed. As far as anything else goes, I'd get back to basics as far as roots, tubers, and berries are concerned.

"So do you think you could make that work for a year?"

Not at the rate I'm going now!

One thing I don't see in most of these plans are ideas about what other members of your group are doing.
One of the things that makes humans effective competitors with other species is our ability and willingness to co-operate to achieve a goal.
On person might not be able to kill a bison, but 10 people can slaughter a herd of bison and turn a bear into a nice rug.
It is the same for making a camp or plowing a field.
One person can only carry enough gear for the barest of existences.
10 people can carry enough for a decent chance at having some sort of technology.
Then there are the skills and specialties. You might want a skilled forager and a skilled herdsman as well as a skilled cultivator.
If you are really proposing living just off the land you will need a community that can provide a bit of support to the members of it.

The "it takes a village" thing is just not this scenario.

Yes Dweste, it is still something to consider though.

The truth is that the rugged individual does far worse than the social creature.

I stated earlier that I would likely blend small agriculture with medium range foraging, and I left the idea of external inputs out.

However when I see threads like this most people miss even vaguely considering the technology they need to obtain to put their solitude into effect.

As soon as you are going past the sticks and stones level of subsistence then you are no longer living totally from the land. Even just a steel knife requires miners, smelters and a smith with a forge.
If you are going to garden you likely need seeds supplied to you.

Try telling me where the line between subsistence and living off a year's worth of stockpiled supplies can be drawn.
I doubt if you or anybody else can really tell me that.

If we don't want to consider any external input at all then we start talking about being a hermit for a year.

I am fine with considering what a hermit has to do to live for a year. I know what that is like.

No man is an island, John Dunne. I get it. We are all beholding to our civilization and do not exist separate from it.

In an effort to make a workable scenario, only the food was to come from the environment. Everything else is wide open to your planning.

I draw no philosophical lines. This is just a what-would-you-do thought puzzle.

Not a problem.
So would I be OK in considering what things I could sell or trade in the local markets? So long as it was profit from what I could forage or grow in excess of my needs it qualifies as living off the land.
Am I getting that right Dweste?
This means I might do like the west coast mushroom and berry picking travelers. If I had a homestead I might grow some specialty herbs for local restaurants and gourmet stores.
One of the points would be to grow crops that don't lend themselves to massive monocrop cultivation, mechanical harvest or travel well. In other words, the stuff which agribusiness operations can't deal with yet.

For an example Mulberry jam might be a good product. Mulberries travel poorly and have to be hand picked because their ripening time is spread out too much. On the other hand they are very tasty and sweet. A person should be able to produce enough in a kitchen from two trees to make it worth doing.
If you had kids they could pick while Granny and Gramps did the canning.

If you were in the north eastern states or Canada then maple syrup could be another good thing to do.
Maybe a few bee hives.

If you were on the wet west coast, lets say Oregon, Washington or B.C. you might do pine spike mushrooms, chantarelles, wild currants, salal, and possibly cedar incense bundles.

If your travels took you though eastern Oregon, Montana and Alberta you might want to time your trip to gather sweetgrass or prairie sagebrush to sell in the new age type stores as incense.

If you are traveling about the sunbelt you might want to look at a bit of rock hounding.
I have met a few people who were living on the water and they included work on other people's boats as well as some salvage work in their strategies.
However, I am not a boat person Dweste, so I will leave that part up to you.

I might be going off thread a bit, but I see no reason to limit people's options by failing to consider the other human resources around them.

I think it is all good and within the scenario. I'd like to experience more mushrooming.

This weekend I heard a short piece on National Public Radio
that was discussing modification and exploitation
of coastal areas by pre-historic man. It was a sort of a
promo for a Science Magazine article. The particular thing
that caught my attention was: stone walls that collected
sand and allowed clam farming.

Here is a link to a Summary
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/325/5943/952

I have not read the article, but thought it might fit in
with your coastal research.

Thanks. Happened to hear it myself.

That's pretty much what native americans and later the chinese did around the turn of the century with their shrimp and abalone camps. Now thats some gourmet survival eating right there.

I think that hardly any of us have any idea what "self sustaining" means, and that the majority of us (myself included) would fare very poorly if we tried to live off the land for any length of time.

Given that my garden this year produced less than 1/4 of what I expected and that winter is coming, if I knew I had to feed my family this winter and I had no supply of local food, I'd pack what I have now and get out of the area - head south where it's warm.

Migration has always been a coping mechanism for survival.

I'm not too far away from the self sustaining generation, my fathers generation was the first to have a job outside of the family farm, my grandfather never held a job outside the farm but even he wasn't fully self sustaining, he sold animals and crops to buy things he needed. You need a lot of land and a lot of hands to work it, a lot of buildings and animals.
You need someplace to store your food, my family had dug out the side of the mountain and then walled off the front to make underground storage. Then you need to store the crops for the animals, barns for the hay, corn crib, oat bin, etc. You need a smoke house and/or place to salt the meat for storage. You need a wood/coal shed for haeting your home and/or barn. You need to have food and supplies stocked up in case you have a bad year or two to get you through those. You need to have a large family as a good% will die young and you need some to take care of you when you get old.

Thanks Eugene for the invaluable and sobering been-there-done-that.

Foxfire series?

Foxfire books.
They were about old time mountain living.
You can find the first 4 of them on Scribd if you want to look at them.

Thanks.

All are available from amazon for purchase too.

Along those lines .... I believe it was Readers Digest who put out a book years ago called "Back to the Basics". I'll double check that name if anyone is interested. I have a copy stuck in a cabinet at home.

LW

I figure with this rig, you're covered whether you hit the road or shelter in place:



For more information and additional photos (see how he sleeps):
http://dvice.com/archives/2009/08/tiny-bicycle-to.php

Grandfather died in the early 90's and grandmother a couple years ago so I'd just be going by my memories.

Wv and the applicain mountains have all kinds of small valleys where streams and creeks flow. way back you found yourself a valley, made a spring and built your house/farm. I don't know what order things were built since they were there already when I was born. But you had his house and across from that his parents house then up from that his grandparents house which was had cut square logs that my father's generation turned into a barn. So that would have been my great great grandparents (right number of greats for my grandparents grandparents?). In between was the chicken coop, pig pen and barn, luner shed, wood shed and a couple other sheds that I can't recall the purpose. South of the house was the coal shed, smoke house, garage/shop the "cave" for storing vegetabels. Then a pond and barn, up on the side of the hill was the spring. Then there was a sheep stable furthur up the mountain and a few barns for horses/cattle/sheep/hay/corn on top the mountain where the majority of the ctop land was. You lived within walking distance of the rest of your family so each could take turns going to take care of the old, you went up or down the valley or over to another valley and found a spring and setup your space there.
Most of those old structures are now gone but I'm trying to get my parents to let me start with some of the farm land and build a cabin and an orchard and stuff like that, told them to let my brother have their house down in the valley, when they are gone I won't be able to take care of it so I'm going to build a simple 1-2 room cabin off the grid. There are no decent jobs there anymore, my father drove over an hour each way for work, his last job even being across the state line, plus there are no schools there and my kids are not 3.5 and 2 years old so it will be 16 or more years before I could move there is we wanted to. My long term plan now is to build the small cabin there, maybe even get it with an address and make it my permanent address and live in an RV or apartments or somehting, will be retirement years by then anyway.

You have connections to the land that most of use lost long ago. Thanks for sharing and please do continue when you are in the mood.

I need to organize and write down all my thoughts so I can add things as I remember them, maybe find old photo albums at my parents and scan them and such, another forum had a similar discussion.

That would be great!

My family is at least three generations away from farming so I have never been exposed to the day-to-day details and find them both sobering and fascinating. There is so much I do not know.