Homesteading: The Golden Chalice

This article is a guest post I did for Survivalblog.com and can be found here.

Our America is changing and it isn't looking pretty. Constitutional rights are disappearing, school education is lagging, and the Almighty dollar is all but a joke. Illegal immigration, lawsuit-happy money grabbers, GMO mega-corporations, half the country on some form of welfare...where does it end? 
For our family, it ends now. Thanks to Obama care, one of the two hospitals in my company's organization closed their doors permanently last month (May 2013). Now, our smaller rural hospital has been gobbled up in a corporate buyout. I was informed that I no longer had a job...over the phone on a Friday afternoon...while visiting Oklahoma for my Grandmother's funeral.

Thus begins our journey to relocate to the country and take care of our family ourselves. No more traffic, smog, insane crime rates, grocery store dependency, the bottom of the barrel public schools...and the list goes on and on. As the Robertsons (from Duck Dynasty)would say: "WE GONE!"

As we debated how we could attain our ultimate goal of becoming self-sufficient on our own homestead, there appeared to be four clearly distinct barriers we had to overcome.

• First, what would be our final homestead location?
• Second, how would we sustain ourselves when we arrived at our new home?
• Third, how would we physically get our family and our assets to the homestead location?
• Fourth, what type of home would be the best homestead building?

These were the four major decisions that were crucial to our plan but each had several smaller factors that had to be sifted out. Once we determined the major obstacles, we sat down and went through each obstacle and picked it apart. Each major hurdle became its own independent topic of discussion. By making a step by step plan to overcome each major hurdle, we were able to break down what seemed to be a huge difficult task into many small manageable tasks. Being an Indiana Jones fan and sharing the same last name, I declared each of the four major issues my own quest for the Holy Grail or "Chalice."
The First Chalice
The first Chalice is choosing a homestead location. If you have a place already in mind then congratulations! This is one of the toughest decisions to settle on.  For Wifey and me, deciding where we wanted to raise our six daughters and spend the rest of our lives was not so clear cut. I had read James Rawles thoughts on the American Redoubt and also purchased Joel Skousen's Strategic Relocation--North American Guide to Safe Places, 3rd Edition.  Both of these highly recommended resources will arm you with the information necessary to intelligently decide on a homestead location based on crucial data such as population density, potential disaster fallout, military targets, maps of private and public land use, satellite  terrain (including highways, surface streets, and trails for bugout purposes), and why you should vote with your feet. Remember, if you can’t afford Skousen’s book, check it out from your local library.

While we desired a homestead in the American Redoubt, we have no family or close friends there.  Arguably by some folks, I’m sure, we feel the community is crucial to survival.  Can we go it alone…sure. Should we? It wouldn’t be smart. So we chose an uninhabited old family farm in Oklahoma where we had a large number of family members and a few (but very solid) friends. With a storm shelter in place, we will be safe from tornadoes with our only major concern being possible long term drought.  A few well-placed deep wells and massive water storage is in our future plans. With permission to live on the family farm complete, the first Chalice had been secured.

The Second Chalice
The second Chalice in obtaining our homesteading Holy Grail was to secure income producing employment near our homestead location. We have every intention of becoming 100% self-sufficient in time but at the beginning of our journey, we agreed that we should have a means by which to pay our monthly bills without fear of failure. There would be no moving to our homestead until this income was established.  With this in mind, I laid out a plan to find a job within thirty minutes of our location in an attempt to minimize gasoline expenses and travel time. Obviously, the closer the job is to the homestead, the higher the savings in time and money. Your results will depend on your comfort zone. If I owned a moped or motorcycle, perhaps I would be willing to drive a little further for employment.

There are several ways to search for employment and in today’s digital age, I think it is somewhat easier to find potential employers. I started with the usual job search engines: Monster, Jobing, CareerBuilders, and Indeed.  Knowing your desired field is not necessary but very helpful.  I am trained in healthcare and pursued that avenue but you could just as easily search “all jobs” in your desired location. Make sure your resume is up-to-date because applying for jobs in another state means your resume may be the first thing a potential employer sees of you.  Get a friend to help you or research the topic on the internet if necessary. The resume is there to sell your skills. Don’t slack on this step.