Crazy ideas

Do you ever get crazy ideas? I get 'em pretty frequently, some are dumb, some are just crazy, some are dumb and crazy...
Lately I've been thinking about how much I'd love to have a job that worked on my schedule in my location. The only thing I could really do that meets that is to be a writer. I've thought about that for years and years but of course its a difficult gig to break into.

A couple months ago I read "Twelve by Twelve: A One-Room Cabin off the Grid and Beyond the American Dream" by William Powers. Powers is a kind of greenie weenie activist. Honestly he's kind of a dork and I didn't really like the book that much (want it? Just ask, I've got loads of books that need good homes) but it got me thinking about my own remote cabin off the grid. Our camp is actually quite a bit bigger than Powers' (its not actually his, he borrowed but you get the idea) cabin, we've got a 16x24' main camp and 10x12' bunkhouse but they're similar in that we've got no electricity or running water. I've also read "Into The Wild" by John Krakauer which is a very good book telling the story of Chris McCandless and his adventure and untimely death in Alaska. Together they've gotten me thinking about attempting a long term stay at camp, a sort of "Walden Pond" for the 21st century.

How long? I'm thinking 6 months, mid-April through mid-November. With me I'd bring rice and beans and some other basic staples with the idea of becoming basically self sufficient by July. Self sufficient means no added inputs in fuel or food, I'd survive on what I brought and what I could find/grow. In support of this future idea (and to attract wildlife) this spring I planted what is essentially a big garden of corn. This was an important first step since most of our fields haven't been planted in a decade or more and the sod was TOUGH to break through. It'll be a big help to have a section of garden already started. I'll still need to do a lot of wild gathering as it'll take time for the garden to produce a significant amount of food.

Since we're off grid theres no electricity and since we use propane for cooking and light I'll need to be stingy with it, I also won't be using it for showers, fortunately we've already got a solar shower I can use. I'll supplement with a jug of kerosene (I have a kerosene stove I haven't yet written about here) and another of white gas. Finally we've got loads of dead trees and live spruce trees are usually loaded with dead branches so I'll have to set up a fire pit and do a lot of my cooking (especially for rice and beans) over a wood fire.

Anyway crazy right? I've got a mortgage that needs keeping up with, I'd need considerable financial buffer to make this idea work but the idea sticks with me. Over the next couple years expect to see me working on the skills that will be required to make it work. I'll mark posts related to the idea as "homesteading" because thats really what I'm talking about...