I’m an infrequent user of Facebook, but I am a member of a few off-grid living and gardening groups. Some time back, the latter months of 2022, I noticed a number of posts from people seeking advice along the lines of: I have no knowledge of .X, or Y, or Z, I’m this age, I’m that age, I’m this. I’m that so should I consider moving onto some land or will I be setting myself up for disaster and disappointment?
Valid questions, because when I left the city I was 61 years old, I hadn’t grown anything apart from some house plants for about thirty years, I was an allied health care professional with the equivalent of a Master of Applied Science, and nothing about this background was of any use at all when I arrived at South Arm and had to confront the reality of establishing the infrastructure required for a comfortable life in the bush.
When I first moved onto the piece of land where I live the place had a house with a gas stove, a gas-powered fridge, a bath with a shower, a fire place, and that was it. To make the place comfortably liveable I had to add the energy and water supply.
The closest power pole is about 300 metres away, and in 2012, when I moved here, the cost of having the power extended to my house from that pole would have been about $50.000. So pay $50.000 for the privilege of grid power, and thereafter periodic power bills, or go off-grid solar. I chose the latter.
Water to the house was close by, a deep spring-fed dam about 100 metres away from the house, but a pump had to be installed at the dam and 1.5 inch ag. (agricultural) pipe had to be laid from the pump to a large holding tank adjacent to the house that as yet didn’t exist. This whole process had to be repeated after the bushfire that destroyed everything here in November 2019, and in the interim there was learning how to establish a perennial food supply.
Was all this easy? No. Was it all doable? Yes. Was all of the effort worthwhile. Most definitely.
So if you are someone wishing to do something in which you have limited knowhow all you have to do is to simply ask someone who does have the knowledge you lack. Below are just two out of many examples I could outline as illustrations,
After the fire I had to replace the chainsaw that I have to use on rare occasions, I went to a large hardware shop in the closest large town to where I live with the intention of purchasing a battery-powered chainsaw.
I approached a salesman and basically asked him to treat me as if I were a five year old and asked him to explain to me the features of the battery-powered chainsaws on display. Well I got more from that man was much more than what I’d asked for, because the first ten minutes of his reply to me was a discourse on chainsaw safety; what to do and not to do, situations to avoid, how to go about mitigating any chance of a mishap etc., etc.. All of that information freely given before he addressed the features of the chainsaws on offer. And although a lot of what he related to me I’ve forgotten before I consider using the saw I purchased I now assess much more thoroughly the job I need to do with the saw before I actually begin doing so.
Also after the fire I also had to replace the pump at the dam, the holding tank, and re-lay ag pipe between the pump and the tank. As I’d already done this in the past I thought that the task would be easily completed. I won’t go into a tribulations of laying 100 plus metres of, this time 2 inch ad pipe single handedly, suffice it to say that it was, well not a pleasant experience.
I then bought a pump from the ag shop in town, brought it home and installed it at the dam, and started it up, and nothing happened, the pump was running but no water was flowing. An hour or so of head-scratching, re-priming the pump and reattaching the pipes led to the same result – no water flowed.
At about 3.00 I drove back to the ag shop and sought same advice from the staff as to why no water was flowing. One of the staff members looked at the clock on the wall, informed me that he finished work in ten minutes and that he would drive out to my place, twenty kilometres away, to see what I’d done wrong.
After standing there looking at my pump for a couple of minutes a penny dropped in his head and, as if through some form of mental telepathy, a split second later in my head as well. “You’ve attached the inlet hose to the pump output and the outlet hose to the input of the pump”. The pump wasn’t receiving any water from the dam to pump to the house. “Don’t worry John, you’re not the first one to do that, and you won’t be the last.” So after attaching the hoses to the correct positions on the pump water flowed.
So should you embark on something you’ve never done before? I’d say “yes”, especially if you do so with an attitude to always be on good terms with people and are prepared to just ASK for advice when you. need it, most people will only be too happy to help.