Living off the land

Does anyone have any suggestions on living off the land in a cabin with no electricity with 100 acres of canadian wilderness in atlantic canada and a hunting rifle like a mountain man? I'll keep the cabin heated with a wood stove.
(Oh and the pesimists who have never attempted anything like this saying it's impossible nowadays please don't post...ask any army ranger how possible it is to live off the land. Nature gives you everything you need.)

I plan on being completely self sufficient with no money except for ammunition(like 5-10 bucks a year and property taxes($30 cdn a year)

What should I hunt?
What should I plant? potatoes/fruits ect? How long will potatoes last?
Whats the best method of catching fish extremely quickly? I'm thinking running gill nets?

Anyone know how much it costs to drill a well? How would you pump the water? I'm thinking a hand pump.

How long will one moose carcass last if I canned all of it?

Anyone here ever live off the land completely self sufficient like natives somewhere? If so, please tell me about your experience!
I'm looking for some suggestions/advice.

If I'm off the grid and I have a cow, how would I store it's milk. Is there anyway to run a refrigerator without electricity? I'm thinking solar panels? How much are those?

 

How much experience do you have at this, hunting is not always a gaurantee, the way your post reads is that you are new at this game, it can be done but the longer you go the harder it will get. Good luck

 

Thats wild man. I've always wanted to become self sufficient, want to generate my own electricity with solar, wind and water.

As far as advice goes, im afraid I can't be of much help. For gardening i would suggest root pants like carrots, onions and potatoes cause they will keep long even without pickling. But it all depends on where you're living, soil condition, rain levels etc.

Good luck.

 

i really envy you, but i haven't got too much advice. do you know the seasons for the food you want to grow, and your zone? have you been hunting for awhile? fishing? its definitely not something to jump into, take small steps and soon you'll be there

 

Let me visit!!!!!!!

 

Loveflower wrote:
"have you been hunting for awhile? fishing?"

Actually, no I'm a vegetarian!(except for tuna fish) I don't believe in killing animals unless it's for my survival/living off the land. I don't see a reason to eat meat when your living in society. I think I'm going to have to find someone to show me how to hunt and fish. I was thinking a guide, but they charge a fortune. I'll have to go with some friends.

 

ya, you defineatly need to take the time to learn to hunt, fish, clean, and smoke your catches

For most of the questions you are asking your best bet is to do some research and try and find someone who is either currently doing or has done what it is you wish to do, you won't get much good advice here.

 

Sounds like you need to do some reading and learning. The idea is one I've been trying to work on for nearly twenty years. At this point we are providing about 50% of all our food. This is partly limited to the time it takes. I work full time at a job so this takes the time away from farming and hunting. There are other limitations such as to what we can grow in our climate.

Good luck. I know of nobody living that cheaply, even after a lifetime of living a subsistance lifestyle.

Whatever game is in your area. One moose provides more meat than we can eat in a year. If you are alone you will have way too much meat. This is where barter comes in. Trade a neighbor meat for fish or services.

You better get in some target practice before you go and try to kill anything. You don't want to wound an animal causing it to run off and die slowly.

Again, ask someone who knows what will grow where you are. Many seed companies will be able to tell you what will grow in your lattitude. Up here we do well with greens, potatoes, corn and berries. The berries are mostly wild, but we have managed to get strawberries to take over a portion of our land. Potatoes will last all year in a root cellar as long as they don't freeze.

Gill nets are the best for salmon, I have no real experience netting anything else. Some folks I know do some dip netting as well.

A comercially drilled well can cost up to $40 USD a foot. How deep you need to go depends on where you are and how deep you go defines how difficult it is to pump. A 400 foot deep well is really not going to be realistically pumped with a hand pump.

Where in Canada are you? Is it rainy? Does it freeze solid for the entire winter? You can go about the water in a couple of different ways. During the summer months you can use a catchment system where you collect the rain water and store it for later use. In summer monthes you can also gravity feed stream or spring water into a storage reseviour. And of course melted snow makes water.

A long time. I would not can all of it but smoke and freeze most of it.

Like I said we have been living a subsistance life style for close to twenty years and are about 50% self sufficient with food. All of my heat is provided with wood and we use only wood to cook all winter. You really need to know the land and climate. It takes years to figure all this out. The native americans had generations of knowledge behind them, you or I didn't.

 

There was this chap in Australia who wrote this book called , Rabbit On A Shovel. In a radio interveiw with him, he said that when his old man went bush, he would take with him a bucket of ,a bucket of salt, a frying pan, and a shot gun.

But more seriously speaking there is no such thing as total self-sufficiency.Is it called self-relience in North America?

Solar panels are quite expensive for what they produce.If there is a reasonable amount of wind , a wind powered generator can be far more cost effective.A wind generator at times will produce power 24hours a day.At the most solar panels will produce 8 hours if mounted on a tracker.If you are cluey enough it is possible to make your own wind generator using an old car alternator.

 

The ideal, if you were on a shoe string budget of time, is getting hold of old fashioned seeds through seed banks (which exist as hobby gardener clubs) and sourced within the region you'll be buying into. By doing so they'll have providence. Meaning, they're best suited to the localised climate and indeed the localised problematic P&D. Every region has a differing expression of pathogens and insect pests. Lacking providence, and if you're expecting food from that very season, you might get less than you hoped. However, after several seasons of selfing, you will get a seed bank stock of a number of genera to optimise to the clime you're in.

But in all balance of the years ahead, it's not like you'll be in trouble with commercial seeds, let alone commercial ferts for the better part of 20 years from now. Ferts store well, so do seeds -- provided they're stored cool and dry. Organic ferts, like manure, will for even longer if stored dry. Such will be part of the over all stock pile of supplies and equipment made in advance of the transition and in place at your rural setup. You'd be crazy to not have provisions in advance. I suspect they'll get very expensive as the recession worsens. All commodities in recession do. From disinfectant to soap.

Where I'm going on all of this is straight forward. You should start a veggie garden this season coming, in your suburban backyard if that's what you have and based on sourced old strains, to give you a seed stock bank that you can carry in a few paper bags later to your chosen zone.

Now you don't have to get that adventurous I should add. I will state I have already made a seed bank from what was simply purchased seeds some 10 years ago and older. I simply collected off the best examples of the vegetables and ran them the following year and have done so year after year.
Basically, if you have the water, you can do that will curbits, silver beet, tomato, lettuce, choi, beans, peas, onions all herbs ect and indeed perenating organ genera, such as potato. You don't even need to get that religious in collecting of seeds. The fact is, vegetables will naturalise, so do flowers and nasturiums are edible. Thus you will get this natural selection process occur for you. Yes, only what can survive will survive. Once you have built the garden beds, you will never need to dig the soil again...ever. You feed the worms in the profile and they will work for you. That's all I do. The fuel to feed the worms is lucern hay and failing that, barly or wheat straw.

 

you are embarking on my dream life!! you can do it, i am excited for you!
here are my suggestions for you,
plan, plan, plan, the first year will be trial and error, the better the plan you have to begin with the less major error you will encounter. for example, you want to live off of vegatables, it takes a while to establish a garden that will produce enough for you to survive on. and until you have spent at least one season learnign the soil, etc. you won't know how much and of what you can grow easily right away. so plan to have some major stock food supply for the first year (if you don't have enough for spring/summer, you won't have enought to freeze for the fall/winter ). so canned food or a market run or whatever you choose.
also if you are going to hunt for food, i suggest bow hunting instead of rifle, if for no other reason than to cut down on cost for bullets (there are lots of other reasons). also get a hide tanning book and other books on using animal bones/parts for stuff. so that you can utilize every part of the animal, not just for food. (ya know, the skin, hooves, etc) you can make coasters or something useful i am sure.
i would also make sure you have a extra stocked first aid kit as well as ace bandages, iodine, rubbing alcohol, tylonol, whatever else you may or may not need. if you are really trying to live without havig to go into town often or at all, the better stocked you are with random stuff you think you will never need, when you need them you already have them.

also the most important, you say you have no electricity, what type of water source do you have, this will be the most important thing to have plenty of. not just for cooking or drinking, but for growing the food to cook, bathing, etc. if it is a spring or whatever you will want to have a way to make it potable, you don't want girardia, it is the worst sickness ever! lol!

i wish you lots of luck!

 

"also if you are going to hunt for food, i suggest bow hunting instead of rifle, if for no other reason than to cut down on cost for bullets (there are lots of other reasons)."

What are the other reasons?
If I kill one huge moose, which I assume would be enough meat to last me the entire year, if I canned it. That's only one bullet???? Not a lot of money, right? Also, wouldn't it be more humane to kill with a large caliber rifle, like .308 or .50 than an arrow?

I'm not sure about water, I was thinking a well(you don't have to dig deep in most of atlantic canada, I'm near the ocean so I'm guessing I won't have to go that deep) hand pump or some kind of gravity fed system? Anyone have any suggestions?

Your absolutely right about planning... I'm going to have to do a lot of that!, but it'll all be worth it once I'm out there self sufficient living off the land!

 

that sounds very cool. i wold love to live like this. are you going to bring canned goods and bottled water and such with you as an emergency plan, just incase you have a bad hunting day??
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A .50? haha! nice... You blow the poor thing to pieces... I don't know of many rifles that use that caliber save for the Dragunov.

 

We live as close to the land as possible...I have numerous posts around the forum on some of the things we do.
When I first met my husband it was 1970 and he lived in a tipi right on the Canadian border in Vermont, tipi's are a good choice until you build something more permanent.
you can search the web for more info on that.

Someone here talked about a wind generator...best idea.
Also if you can build into to ground or into the side of a hill and use geothermal methods would be a help. If you go down a certain number of feet past the frost line you can get to regulated @55' temp. We have solar panels, bought second hand at 180 a piece, we have 6 batteries (golf cart type) that cost us 300.00 and they hold somewhat of a charge, we run everything off of these except for the fridge.But you have to know how to test them and how to hold a charge, also they have to be held at a constant temp. for maximum output.
But we also supplement with kerosene lamps in the evening to help the charge. My husband built a generator out of an alternator and parts from the dump.
We catch rainwater for the garden, off the roof of the house and store that in 55 gallon drums.

and will build a holding tank in the spring for a bigger garden next year, we also live next to a big runoff as we are surrounded on 3 sides by big hills.
I grow and can food, and we have a greenhouse to help get a headstart on the season and I plant right in the floor off the greenhouse and am able to have collards and kale and carrots, turnips practically year round.
We bought an auger and have dug a shallow well and will dig a deeper one this fall, using the roof of the house to stand on.
We are collecting gravel from my husbands job for the deep well. But it depends are where you are and how far up, as to getting away with a 25' well as we will.
There are ram pumps you can build too.
My advice is to wait a bit and gather knowledge, you seem to be asking rather basic questions here and if you do not have the knowledge yet to cover that much then you need more time.
Also www.backwoodshome.com is most excellent.
www.backhome.com
www.countrysidejournal.com
and good old mother earth mag. I think those are the correct addy's if not do a google search.
we have every issue of mother earth, back to 1970 and it has helped so much.
We read backwoods home through the library, another priceless resource,
You are embarking on an adventure that many people dream about but many give up on because they went into it not fully prepared, gather the knowledge and you will be fine.

 

Anyone in intersted in self -sufficiency might find my home web page of interest.

http://www4.tpg.com.au/users/alexcran/index.htm

 

Here's a .50 caliber. Bear/large game self defence rifle. Your right, not the greatest gun for hunting though.

http://www.wildwestguns.com/CoPilot_And_Guide_Rifles/body_copilot_and_guide_rifles.html

 

Wow, talk about a hand cannon

 

ok listen man when you get a hunting rifle dont get any old hunting rifle, get something that wont fail you... like a kentucky rifle, you can get them in kits from a place called dixie gunworks for not to much money and you dont have to worry about shipping it through an ffl dealer, this is because muzzleloading rifles are considered "antique weaponry" even if its a repro made in italy, you can get them in purcussion and flintlock, if you get flintlock its more diffacult to get used to shooting the gun and it's really hard to shoot in the rain, purcussion caps are cheap and easy to find and its easier to shoot in the rain, these rifle kits are cheap and accurate and look nice over a fire place in a rustic cabin, i got one or two around here one is sawn off to carbine length, i needed it short because of my hobby ahem... theres a company in kentucky that makes more custom rifles of very nice quality it is called early rustic arms and thhe prices are not bad for hand finished flintlock long arms, they offer a fowler which may be good for hunting in the woods, a fowler has a large smooth bore which can either shoot a solid lead ball or buckshot, but it only comes in flintlock, but theres a certain romance that comes with the flintlock long arm...

 

Make sure you have more than just a few shotgun shells, big brother don't like nobody going independent.