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A Small Plan

A Small Plan For an America in Recession. (What I would do if I didn’t have a good job right now)

Out of a job? Can’t pay rent? Credit stacking up? You’re not alone. More Americans are looking for a job right now than in the past XX years. If you feel like just getting away from it all, I have a solution that might just work for you… Re-farming America.

Good land is cheap. You can get 5 acres on a hillside, with running water or a well for less than $40K if you’re willing to drive just 5 hours away. You can get a much smaller place for even a lot less (blah for blah right now on Craigslist).

You can be self-sufficient. You can grow all of your own food. There are many available resources to help you. And it can be really fun. You can build a treehouse… even live in one. You could even dwell in the side of a hill (If, you know, you’re really into JRR Tolkein Novels).

But Rex, you say, what about internet access? “I’m not addicted, but uh, I get uncomfortable when my iPhone dies”. Well, you have a few options there… Satellite Internet is widely available, pretty affordable, but pretty slow I believe. Mobile Broadband (Cellular) could be an option if you have decent 3G coverage on the property, but that’s also not very fast yet. If you’re lucky, you can get really high speed internet through a LASER. This is currently available near where I live, but I have yet to try it, as it is more expensive, and traffic is metered. (And I get 16Mbit Burst from Comcast, which I’ve been pretty happy with).

Obviously, you can’t grow everything you need, so you’ll have some expenses… So you’ll need to find a way to make some money. If you manage to get a decent internet connection, there are various ways to make money with the help of the internet. If you’re reading this, you might be interested in blogging professionally. If you go that route, it won’t be easy unless you’re really passionate about something and you’ve got a good plan for marketing your work. There are various businesses that will pay you to work online. You can make music on your computer and sell it on iTunes. Get a following on Twitter and leverage your expertise and connections. Study up on the stock market and buy and sell shares. Do work for the Mechanical Turk.

You can also use the internet to provide a local service… like you could do tech support for neighbors to help them get online, maybe even to teach them how to use things like YouTube. On the other hand, you can use your location to provide online services, like provide a natural getaway weekend experience for urbanites (maybe do countryside tours, or hikes). Or make arts and handicrafts with local inspirations and sell them online. The possibilities are endless, because you don’t need to make that much money when you own your own property and grow most of your own food.

If none of those businesses sound appealing, you can default to tradition and be a real farmer… growing and selling food. If you’re going to the effort of growing you’re own food already, it’s only an partial increase in effort to produce fruits and vegetables in significantly higher quantities. You’d just need to stay relatively close to communities with farmer’s markets, preferably multiple for the sake of competition and mitigate risk. And you’d probably want a truck.

Please let me know if this inspires you to do something. I want to see your pictures, and hear your stories. You should write a blog about it.

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