“The business of procuring the necessities of life has been shifted from the wood lot, the garden, the kitchen and the family to the factory and the large-scale enterprise. In our case, we moved our center back to the land.”
When living off the grid, you don’t have to be a large-scale farmer in order to make a little cash. Sometimes I barter and work-trade for supplies I need and vice versa. Today I’m going to share with you 7 ways you can generate an income off the land. You may or may not get rich, but one thing’s for sure: you CAN make a living while living off the land.
Contrary to popular belief, recent research shows that eating sustainably sourced meat is not taboo. In fact, eliminating meat from our food system could actually be unsustainable.
Walking into the markets here in Barcelona, Spain, I am welcomed to find an array of seasonal fruit, from three kinds of watermelon to cantaloupe and late-harvest cherries. Strawberries were on the shelves in late June, but as August rolls into September the last of the summer stone fruits make their appearance, getting ready for autumn’s harvest.
There are more than 500 seed libraries across the country in 46 states and 15 countries. Such libraries allow people to grow food and contribute back to the community. Like the seed library in Richmond, California, they create a web of integrated, food- and community-focused farming. These libraries create local models for sustainability. People learn seed saving techniques and how to promote rare and unusual plant varieties.
Seed saving, or the collecting and preserving of seeds from wild or agricultural plants, is a practice that dates back to the origin of farming.
It was by learning to save seeds from the plants we used that we were able to start cultivating crops, rather than going out and foraging for them in the wild. Simultaneously, the practice allowed people to bring their favored crops with them wherever they went.
Before the Industrial Era, the common practices for farming were largely much more organic in nature. The Industrial Era that began at the end of the 19th Century expanded into agriculture, and continued past the 1920s, which saw the introduction of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides. In 1939, Paul Muller developed DDT - the chlorinated hydrocarbons used in pesticides. Farmers embraced DDT, resulting in a marked move away from the previous agriculture methods that had dominated agricultural life for centuries.