As we are growing this farm I yearn for the community of past. The group of ladies gathering to make sour kraut, the group of men helping to erect structures, the motley crew of children climbing, roaming and making mischief. I often feel quite alone and brainstorm ways to devise this community. Is it even possible anymore. People’s lives are too busy rushing from this to that that the modern world deems important. I don’t want to be self-sufficient I want to be community sufficient! You both are and will be a boon for any community that inherits your hard won skills and knowledge!
It's really the crux of the matter when it comes to people trying to untangle from the system. There's few of us to begin with but then with those that are making these changes and taking things on, the diversity in how they approach it, and what they want their lives to look like, is also wildly disparate.
We have been trying to build community. We've hosted classes here in the past and I've taught simple fermentation workshops to some local people. It gets into the question of what community even is. I think we like to call people from all over the place our "community" when they think like us or belong in our group, but I, personally, don't believe that's community. I think those are friends. I think community is the gaggle of mixed personalities and talents of people around us that come together to make things in this little microcosm work.
For where the lunatics are steering this ship, I think our ideas around being able to travel or have people come to us, or us to them, will be greatly hampered. That's why I think we really need to take seriously the limitations they are hoping to execute when it comes to travel. So, then what? If people around you live in a different reality, how to even impress upon them the need to start coming together?
Tara, if you or Troy host more classes, workshops or work bees in the future, would you post them here? I would absolutely love to do something like that and have a lot to learn!
Definitely, even 30 minutes away and like minded is not close enough in some ways. I have created relationships with those who live close to us and will continue to do so because I do feel like people in the country help others out. I also get the feeling that I am the kooky chemical free, unjabbed upstart! It’s a difficult thing to balance!
I have the same longings Janelle. And I share the same sentiment, Tara, that you cannot coax people onto this path. I convinced my family to go in on a beautiful old homestead with so much potential for resiliency and bounty. But the hard work that it would entail is too much for the modern worker bee who has is deterred by the smells of animals and the reality of physical labor. Those elements are part of the whole calling to rejoin nature in her unforgiving rawness to me, and every day out under the sun with my hands in the soil is a blessing. Now I have family carving out acreage for oversized homes and beaming starlink down onto us all. It's such a heartbreaking turn of events. A dream of a homesteading compound or family community is really just a dream in the distant wind. And now I'm wondering if my husband and I were put into this situation to learn some hard life lesson. As much as I love my family, it pains me to see them blinded by the flashy glamor of a toxic modern life. And I realize this is many people, which brings me back to what I think we long for- all the neighbors in this thread that live nowhere near eaceach other!!
Thank you for this! Your words have captured all the rumblings and worries of a heart that yearns for a similar self-sufficient lifestyle such as the one you and your husband have built. My husband and I are on a path to inherit our family farm that needs much TLC and repairs. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed before we have even reached that place in life and I wonder how we will support our family and our dreams with me wanting to be a stay at home mother. I wonder how we will support our family without sacrificing our values and the hopes we have for our land. I probably put too much on myself by thinking of all of these things that come in due time and through experience. It’s hard not to when your dreams run so richly through your veins! Thank you for your words of wisdom and the reminder that you and your family came to be where you are over time, not all at once.
It can sure be easy to let the enormity of it take hold in your racing mind. You'll learn to prioritize and let some things simmer while others take centre stage. Children will surely help you do that :)
The struggle is real!! We live in an area that is being built up what feels like exponentially. The cost of living here is very high, and lot sizes are very small. I am feeling quite suffocated, but unable to leave the area because my MIL is quickly aging and will likely need substantial support in the not too distant future. In addition instead of individual self sufficiency, there is a growing network of people here who are working toward supporting eachother with the best we can create within circumstances here. Most of us homeschool our children, so they help (and/or run amok depending on age) while we work through learning how to harvest our animals, make medicine, milk goats, and learn gardening and preservation skills. We share plants and seeds, trade labor, and have come across many old timers (and new timers who are still learning) who are willing to share information. There is a *lot* to learn, and then it takes even more time for that new knowledge to become routine. There is a part of me that craves the wilderness, but I'm not sure I could leave all of this behind. So this article really hits home for me.
I hope the bugs clear out soon!! I am working through something myself, as are so many others! Good health to all of us!
I'm so glad you shared this comment, Angelina. It's wonderful for us all to share the myriad ways we can build community. And isn't community relationships? As long as we have people around us that actually share the same reality with us (increasingly NOT a given), who understand the need to build resiliency on a local level, there is hope and security. It's also important that these various things be built into structures with organization and are not just one-off classes or workshops. We need to build these things into a framework of living. It's no good to know how to do things if we are not doing them. To build parallel systems and then live them.
I enjoyed reading this so much Tara. Many points that too have been on my mind lately. We depend on each other, we need each other and is that so bad ? Any step away from the system is great yes but maybe not from everybody else... Forever inspired by you and your family. Since moving back home to my parents farm, Ive been raising my daughter in the house next to them since she was 1 month. Seeing how precious they all are to each other is a gift I enjoy living every day. Huge believer in generational co living. Its just perfect. There is no self sufficiency. Just Life.
No, it's not bad to need one another. But when most of us have been raised to be independent, we have become unaccustomed to the notion. We can't make people value community. It's a conundrum.
I’m in a phase of life where I so deeply wish my ancestors were here to share their stories and answer my questions. That last sentence touched me. I hope your healing is swift!
Thank you for voicing this Tara! I know a lot of us feel the same way.
I think a lot about the power and beauty of community and unfortunately it's one of the reasons i wrestle with not having a child in this world. "It takes a village" , man , I would get pregnant tomorrow if I was surrounded by family and friends all living on the same compound! Haha it would change everything !
I raised my kids quite isolated, having lived according to the dictates of the military - moving all the time, husband gone 300 days a year, often no friends or family around me. I would do it again in a second. In fact, I'd have had more. But, yes indeed, how much better it would have been to share that load and have loved ones offer their wisdom and care into the mix.
Thanks so much, Kelsey. I hope I feel better soon, too :)
Yes. "There’s no such thing as self sufficiency. We are all intricately woven into each other." Sorry the bugs have found you. Feel better soon. Probably it was time for your immune system to take in a needed update?
I think I can get caught up dreaming about the community of my dreams - multigenerational families all in fairly close proximity sharing the workloads to make everything easier and more fun. Everyone time I go camping with a bunch of friends I always think "this is how it should be!" But when I think about my actual community, there is a lot to appreciate. I don't mean my friends - they are great and some are in my community - but my neighbors and the folks in my town are my community. It's a small-ish town of about 4000 people, moderately rural depending on your standards. As for the people on my dead end dirt road, there are those who are always willing to lend a hand, the neighbor with all the good sugar maples letting us tap their trees, the neighbors who cut a bunch of trees to run electric lines up to their house after 15 years of living "off grid" who offered up the wood to us for heating. The mechanic who will squeeze me in at the last minute. The farmer who uses our field for her sheep. We aren't all sitting around the campfire sharing drinks and meals and stories, but we help each other with the tools we have.
And it's not all rosy. We also have the guy who tries to shoot geese from his porch while drunk at 10 in the morning, the guy peeing in the middle of the road about 100 yards from his driveway, but they just keep things spicy!
As for self sufficiency, I used to try to do "everything" myself and realized it was slowly killing me. But it was never even close to everything. As you say, Tara, it's nearly impossible to truly extract ourselves from the system. For now, I'm trying to stock up on knowledge so when whatever aspects of the system fall apart, I feel like I might have a little bit of a clue how to survive. And my kids are learning right along with me so hopefully they will be even better prepared. I'm not sure what I'm preparing them for but food, clothing, and shelter seem like basic needs and life skills. Can't go wrong, there, right?
I have often wondered if we were meant to camp. Seriously. I think our bodies would be healthier, our minds less captured by possessions, and I think we were meant to traverse the land, never surely settling. At some point along the way we were convinced that it was too difficult, and so building permanently into the ground we made migration a passed day. But is it in fact better? I guess it's a nod to the native ways of living and hunting. How terrible of an existence was it really?
That's where my mind went with this essay lol.
I think we can strive and create and try to evolve through trusting our bodies and souls over the propaganda pursuits by the organized crime syndicate. Regaining the wisdom from the earth and slowly making our way to wholesomeness.
I almost commented on one of your last essays about the need to be a visionary. To hold the light for others who are lost. There is a need for inspiration and you are doing it through your writing. We can all do it- be the change. We don't have to coax or prod or prove ourselves, we can just rejoice in our choosing to live authentic, resilient, joyful lives even despite being surrounded by gimmicks, gadgets and darkness. It sounds a little idealist, I too struggle with the lone wolf existence often, but I try to lean into a more positive and promising identity whenever possible!
I just read this piece out loud to my five and three year old. My five year old asked what grass fed beef was and once I explained she asked why our dog ate meat and not grass. Later she declared not to be grass fed. And I just laughed because ditto.
Absolutely beautiful, Tara! I loved seeing the photos of your farm this week. It looks so lovely!
All of my grandparents had at least some experience raising livestock and butchering them, but I wasn’t able to get that knowledge from them. It does make me feel closer to them though, and other members of my family no longer alive, as I slowly acquire these skills elsewhere. Very grateful to folks like you willing to share what you know now.
All of your words touch deeply but this subject particularly so.
Since as young as I can remember I was fascinated by the “old ways” or “communal ways”... if I watched a nature documentary and there was a part involving a tribe, my eyes were hungry for absorbing all the details.
As a young and single mother, I lived communally, living in converted vehicles and travelling around.
It did not provide the solidarity and connection to the earth and each other that I sought.
I travelled to other countries and observed others living in the mountains in tipis, but the same - everyone brought their ideals, their traumas, and while things were magical for moments where we would support birthing mothers as lay midwives for example, things were sharp and disjointed and unsafe. It screamed of non-community but rather friends with shared ideals. There was no intergenerational engagement. Just a bunch of people with their egos!
I agree with you - part of being a community is sharing varied skills. I would say it is about getting done what is needed to survive (and hopefully thrive); being able to lean on each other and for the collective to have each other’s backs.
Every time I feel myself choosing something that is a part of the convenience system, the matrix if you will, your words scuttle through my brain and remind me of the deep and nourishing life I’m working to build, albeit very slowly, for myself. Freedom, personal responsibility ancestral knowledge are cherished pillars I want to look back on and say yes, it was quite hard and incredibly confusing to pick through sometimes but oh so worth it. And when I feel myself stray you and a few other voices are my favorite to turn to and see just what it could look like. Different for me than you, but the soul of it, the spirit of it, has common cord. Thank you for finding a way to stay with us and share your life.
We have realized a lot of this over time as well. “Self sufficiency” is so appealing in this time, I think, because of the extremely interdependent delicate state of our global networks of goods & services. My husband and I knew we wanted to work towards a farm and some degree of self sufficiency even before we were married, since we thought - and still think - it’s the necessary way to raise a family away from the degrading aspects of modern life. Now that we are on our farm and building our life here, it’s very fulfilling and lots of hard work, like we thought. But I guess there was always some subconscious thought that we’d be able to escape modern life more than we have... but nope. Like you said, still have to work a full-time off-farm job just to sustain the lifestyle. Insurance, bills, vehicles, and more. Yet we can never build our farm enough here to mostly sustain ourselves unless my husband quit his job and devoted 80% of his time here, instead of evenings and weekends! It’s a sad catch-22. When my children are older we can get more done with their help, but even so, it’s frustrating that there’s no way to truly extricate yourself from the unwelcome trappings of modernity, even with the “country life”. We had dreamed of my husband taking a less demanding, lower paying job, moving somewhere more remote, and reducing our lifestyle down to the minimum just so we could be together more as a family, but our oldest child has Type 1 Diabetes after having covid earlier this year 😣 so we need the good insurance his job provides just to pay for his medication. I think all of this is just reminding us that we need to live Gods will for our lives, and it’s not usually what we planned for it.
On a related note, I personally have come to think that most of the mentality of the prepper community is a false hope coping mechanism. The people who store their basements full of Mylar bags of freeze dried food and sit on mountains of guns with the thought that “society might collapse one day and you don’t want to be the guy on the bottom” maybe can’t deal with the reality that society may just continue the slow grind totalitarianism for... a long while.
You are much too young to throw in the towel. Which I know is not what you are suggesting at all. I get the pull of wanting to be with your grand babies. I was there. What I do like is that you want to hand down your knowledge. Heck maybe I am just seeing myself in that story and saying “Not yet. You can still do this!” Even though it gets more challenging by the year.
As we are growing this farm I yearn for the community of past. The group of ladies gathering to make sour kraut, the group of men helping to erect structures, the motley crew of children climbing, roaming and making mischief. I often feel quite alone and brainstorm ways to devise this community. Is it even possible anymore. People’s lives are too busy rushing from this to that that the modern world deems important. I don’t want to be self-sufficient I want to be community sufficient! You both are and will be a boon for any community that inherits your hard won skills and knowledge!
It's really the crux of the matter when it comes to people trying to untangle from the system. There's few of us to begin with but then with those that are making these changes and taking things on, the diversity in how they approach it, and what they want their lives to look like, is also wildly disparate.
We have been trying to build community. We've hosted classes here in the past and I've taught simple fermentation workshops to some local people. It gets into the question of what community even is. I think we like to call people from all over the place our "community" when they think like us or belong in our group, but I, personally, don't believe that's community. I think those are friends. I think community is the gaggle of mixed personalities and talents of people around us that come together to make things in this little microcosm work.
For where the lunatics are steering this ship, I think our ideas around being able to travel or have people come to us, or us to them, will be greatly hampered. That's why I think we really need to take seriously the limitations they are hoping to execute when it comes to travel. So, then what? If people around you live in a different reality, how to even impress upon them the need to start coming together?
Tara, if you or Troy host more classes, workshops or work bees in the future, would you post them here? I would absolutely love to do something like that and have a lot to learn!
Definitely, even 30 minutes away and like minded is not close enough in some ways. I have created relationships with those who live close to us and will continue to do so because I do feel like people in the country help others out. I also get the feeling that I am the kooky chemical free, unjabbed upstart! It’s a difficult thing to balance!
I have the same longings Janelle. And I share the same sentiment, Tara, that you cannot coax people onto this path. I convinced my family to go in on a beautiful old homestead with so much potential for resiliency and bounty. But the hard work that it would entail is too much for the modern worker bee who has is deterred by the smells of animals and the reality of physical labor. Those elements are part of the whole calling to rejoin nature in her unforgiving rawness to me, and every day out under the sun with my hands in the soil is a blessing. Now I have family carving out acreage for oversized homes and beaming starlink down onto us all. It's such a heartbreaking turn of events. A dream of a homesteading compound or family community is really just a dream in the distant wind. And now I'm wondering if my husband and I were put into this situation to learn some hard life lesson. As much as I love my family, it pains me to see them blinded by the flashy glamor of a toxic modern life. And I realize this is many people, which brings me back to what I think we long for- all the neighbors in this thread that live nowhere near eaceach other!!
Thank you for this! Your words have captured all the rumblings and worries of a heart that yearns for a similar self-sufficient lifestyle such as the one you and your husband have built. My husband and I are on a path to inherit our family farm that needs much TLC and repairs. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed before we have even reached that place in life and I wonder how we will support our family and our dreams with me wanting to be a stay at home mother. I wonder how we will support our family without sacrificing our values and the hopes we have for our land. I probably put too much on myself by thinking of all of these things that come in due time and through experience. It’s hard not to when your dreams run so richly through your veins! Thank you for your words of wisdom and the reminder that you and your family came to be where you are over time, not all at once.
It can sure be easy to let the enormity of it take hold in your racing mind. You'll learn to prioritize and let some things simmer while others take centre stage. Children will surely help you do that :)
Patience, dear grasshopper. xo
The struggle is real!! We live in an area that is being built up what feels like exponentially. The cost of living here is very high, and lot sizes are very small. I am feeling quite suffocated, but unable to leave the area because my MIL is quickly aging and will likely need substantial support in the not too distant future. In addition instead of individual self sufficiency, there is a growing network of people here who are working toward supporting eachother with the best we can create within circumstances here. Most of us homeschool our children, so they help (and/or run amok depending on age) while we work through learning how to harvest our animals, make medicine, milk goats, and learn gardening and preservation skills. We share plants and seeds, trade labor, and have come across many old timers (and new timers who are still learning) who are willing to share information. There is a *lot* to learn, and then it takes even more time for that new knowledge to become routine. There is a part of me that craves the wilderness, but I'm not sure I could leave all of this behind. So this article really hits home for me.
I hope the bugs clear out soon!! I am working through something myself, as are so many others! Good health to all of us!
I'm so glad you shared this comment, Angelina. It's wonderful for us all to share the myriad ways we can build community. And isn't community relationships? As long as we have people around us that actually share the same reality with us (increasingly NOT a given), who understand the need to build resiliency on a local level, there is hope and security. It's also important that these various things be built into structures with organization and are not just one-off classes or workshops. We need to build these things into a framework of living. It's no good to know how to do things if we are not doing them. To build parallel systems and then live them.
I enjoyed reading this so much Tara. Many points that too have been on my mind lately. We depend on each other, we need each other and is that so bad ? Any step away from the system is great yes but maybe not from everybody else... Forever inspired by you and your family. Since moving back home to my parents farm, Ive been raising my daughter in the house next to them since she was 1 month. Seeing how precious they all are to each other is a gift I enjoy living every day. Huge believer in generational co living. Its just perfect. There is no self sufficiency. Just Life.
What a gift to you all! That's beautiful, Inga.
No, it's not bad to need one another. But when most of us have been raised to be independent, we have become unaccustomed to the notion. We can't make people value community. It's a conundrum.
How lovely! I really hope my parents can someday live on our property in their own house.
I’m in a phase of life where I so deeply wish my ancestors were here to share their stories and answer my questions. That last sentence touched me. I hope your healing is swift!
I think a lot of us are, Tracy. We have lost so much by letting go of the chain of our past when industrialization promised it was useless.
The voice in my head is also stuffy and hoarse! What a wonderful article, community is both the problem and solution no one has quite solved.
Hope you feel better soon! No, we haven't gotten there yet.
Thank you for voicing this Tara! I know a lot of us feel the same way.
I think a lot about the power and beauty of community and unfortunately it's one of the reasons i wrestle with not having a child in this world. "It takes a village" , man , I would get pregnant tomorrow if I was surrounded by family and friends all living on the same compound! Haha it would change everything !
A great read and I hope you feel better soon !
I raised my kids quite isolated, having lived according to the dictates of the military - moving all the time, husband gone 300 days a year, often no friends or family around me. I would do it again in a second. In fact, I'd have had more. But, yes indeed, how much better it would have been to share that load and have loved ones offer their wisdom and care into the mix.
Thanks so much, Kelsey. I hope I feel better soon, too :)
Yes. "There’s no such thing as self sufficiency. We are all intricately woven into each other." Sorry the bugs have found you. Feel better soon. Probably it was time for your immune system to take in a needed update?
I think you're right, Louisa. My immune system needed a little reboot. :)
I think I can get caught up dreaming about the community of my dreams - multigenerational families all in fairly close proximity sharing the workloads to make everything easier and more fun. Everyone time I go camping with a bunch of friends I always think "this is how it should be!" But when I think about my actual community, there is a lot to appreciate. I don't mean my friends - they are great and some are in my community - but my neighbors and the folks in my town are my community. It's a small-ish town of about 4000 people, moderately rural depending on your standards. As for the people on my dead end dirt road, there are those who are always willing to lend a hand, the neighbor with all the good sugar maples letting us tap their trees, the neighbors who cut a bunch of trees to run electric lines up to their house after 15 years of living "off grid" who offered up the wood to us for heating. The mechanic who will squeeze me in at the last minute. The farmer who uses our field for her sheep. We aren't all sitting around the campfire sharing drinks and meals and stories, but we help each other with the tools we have.
And it's not all rosy. We also have the guy who tries to shoot geese from his porch while drunk at 10 in the morning, the guy peeing in the middle of the road about 100 yards from his driveway, but they just keep things spicy!
As for self sufficiency, I used to try to do "everything" myself and realized it was slowly killing me. But it was never even close to everything. As you say, Tara, it's nearly impossible to truly extract ourselves from the system. For now, I'm trying to stock up on knowledge so when whatever aspects of the system fall apart, I feel like I might have a little bit of a clue how to survive. And my kids are learning right along with me so hopefully they will be even better prepared. I'm not sure what I'm preparing them for but food, clothing, and shelter seem like basic needs and life skills. Can't go wrong, there, right?
I have often wondered if we were meant to camp. Seriously. I think our bodies would be healthier, our minds less captured by possessions, and I think we were meant to traverse the land, never surely settling. At some point along the way we were convinced that it was too difficult, and so building permanently into the ground we made migration a passed day. But is it in fact better? I guess it's a nod to the native ways of living and hunting. How terrible of an existence was it really?
That's where my mind went with this essay lol.
I think we can strive and create and try to evolve through trusting our bodies and souls over the propaganda pursuits by the organized crime syndicate. Regaining the wisdom from the earth and slowly making our way to wholesomeness.
I almost commented on one of your last essays about the need to be a visionary. To hold the light for others who are lost. There is a need for inspiration and you are doing it through your writing. We can all do it- be the change. We don't have to coax or prod or prove ourselves, we can just rejoice in our choosing to live authentic, resilient, joyful lives even despite being surrounded by gimmicks, gadgets and darkness. It sounds a little idealist, I too struggle with the lone wolf existence often, but I try to lean into a more positive and promising identity whenever possible!
I just read this piece out loud to my five and three year old. My five year old asked what grass fed beef was and once I explained she asked why our dog ate meat and not grass. Later she declared not to be grass fed. And I just laughed because ditto.
Hope you get better Tara 🤍
Absolutely beautiful, Tara! I loved seeing the photos of your farm this week. It looks so lovely!
All of my grandparents had at least some experience raising livestock and butchering them, but I wasn’t able to get that knowledge from them. It does make me feel closer to them though, and other members of my family no longer alive, as I slowly acquire these skills elsewhere. Very grateful to folks like you willing to share what you know now.
Co-sufficiency!
All of your words touch deeply but this subject particularly so.
Since as young as I can remember I was fascinated by the “old ways” or “communal ways”... if I watched a nature documentary and there was a part involving a tribe, my eyes were hungry for absorbing all the details.
As a young and single mother, I lived communally, living in converted vehicles and travelling around.
It did not provide the solidarity and connection to the earth and each other that I sought.
I travelled to other countries and observed others living in the mountains in tipis, but the same - everyone brought their ideals, their traumas, and while things were magical for moments where we would support birthing mothers as lay midwives for example, things were sharp and disjointed and unsafe. It screamed of non-community but rather friends with shared ideals. There was no intergenerational engagement. Just a bunch of people with their egos!
I agree with you - part of being a community is sharing varied skills. I would say it is about getting done what is needed to survive (and hopefully thrive); being able to lean on each other and for the collective to have each other’s backs.
Every time I feel myself choosing something that is a part of the convenience system, the matrix if you will, your words scuttle through my brain and remind me of the deep and nourishing life I’m working to build, albeit very slowly, for myself. Freedom, personal responsibility ancestral knowledge are cherished pillars I want to look back on and say yes, it was quite hard and incredibly confusing to pick through sometimes but oh so worth it. And when I feel myself stray you and a few other voices are my favorite to turn to and see just what it could look like. Different for me than you, but the soul of it, the spirit of it, has common cord. Thank you for finding a way to stay with us and share your life.
We have realized a lot of this over time as well. “Self sufficiency” is so appealing in this time, I think, because of the extremely interdependent delicate state of our global networks of goods & services. My husband and I knew we wanted to work towards a farm and some degree of self sufficiency even before we were married, since we thought - and still think - it’s the necessary way to raise a family away from the degrading aspects of modern life. Now that we are on our farm and building our life here, it’s very fulfilling and lots of hard work, like we thought. But I guess there was always some subconscious thought that we’d be able to escape modern life more than we have... but nope. Like you said, still have to work a full-time off-farm job just to sustain the lifestyle. Insurance, bills, vehicles, and more. Yet we can never build our farm enough here to mostly sustain ourselves unless my husband quit his job and devoted 80% of his time here, instead of evenings and weekends! It’s a sad catch-22. When my children are older we can get more done with their help, but even so, it’s frustrating that there’s no way to truly extricate yourself from the unwelcome trappings of modernity, even with the “country life”. We had dreamed of my husband taking a less demanding, lower paying job, moving somewhere more remote, and reducing our lifestyle down to the minimum just so we could be together more as a family, but our oldest child has Type 1 Diabetes after having covid earlier this year 😣 so we need the good insurance his job provides just to pay for his medication. I think all of this is just reminding us that we need to live Gods will for our lives, and it’s not usually what we planned for it.
On a related note, I personally have come to think that most of the mentality of the prepper community is a false hope coping mechanism. The people who store their basements full of Mylar bags of freeze dried food and sit on mountains of guns with the thought that “society might collapse one day and you don’t want to be the guy on the bottom” maybe can’t deal with the reality that society may just continue the slow grind totalitarianism for... a long while.
You are much too young to throw in the towel. Which I know is not what you are suggesting at all. I get the pull of wanting to be with your grand babies. I was there. What I do like is that you want to hand down your knowledge. Heck maybe I am just seeing myself in that story and saying “Not yet. You can still do this!” Even though it gets more challenging by the year.