I just bought my new house in one of New Mexico’s larger cities.
It’s not a rural homestead. But it is a nice neighborhood and I’ve spoken with my neighbors a few times. So far so good. And I certainly couldn’t have afforded this home in my old stomping grounds in Southern California. I financed this house in part by liquidating some investments and in part by getting a loan from my parents, which I am paying back at a regularly monthly rate (including interest) that’s lower than the rent I was paying at the apartment that I stayed in for my first few months in town. This way, the family wealth is being kept in the family instead of going to some greedy woke corporation. I strongly urge SB readers to exercise this option for home or other large purchases whenever possible.
The backyard and front yard are empty. One of my work colleagues calls this “zeroscaping” – have a yard and put zero work into it. (As opposed to true xeriscaping, which is landscaping with plants for arid regions that needs little to no water.) On the plus side, the yards are blank slates that I can do with as I please! I will have to hire a stump removal service to get rid of the tree stumps left behind by the previous owners. I will turn the backyard into a big garden. I’m thinking about some dwarf pecan and walnut trees, because those nuts are so expensive.
The backyard gets the morning sun. When I work at home, I can dry my clothes on the hooks and nails that the previous owners thoughtfully left on the patio eaves. It’s neat to see the water vapor rising off the clothes under the full morning sun. I can also cook meals in my solar oven. In the afternoon, the front yard gets the sun; that means that if I entertain in the afternoons or evenings during the ferocious summers, my guests and I won’t be broiled.
There is much work to be done. The fascia are rotted in some places, so I must have that fixed before I can have gutters installed to catch rainwater. I had originally planned to get window bars, but the high cost and long lead time forced me to get an alarm system instead. That’s good as long as the telecom grid stays up, but that grid is awfully fragile. IT is my day job; my teammates and I have to deal with problems caused by software programs not getting along with each other, or mechanical failures, or user ignorance. I really think there would be panic if people had any idea how fragile the modern telecom net (internet, electricity, cell service, landlines) is and how easily it can be taken down, either by mechanical failure, software problems, cyberattack, or EMP. But hey, we’re all good as long as social media works, right?
I have a lot to learn about upkeep of a house and homesteading. I’m a good gardener and cook, but I’m woefully deficient in plumbing, electrical, painting, and other skills. My parents (now retired) were both academics who just hired technicians to do any work that needed to be done. Fortunately, there are many videos online and books which provide hints and tips on various things. Thanks to one of them, I was able to plane a door down so that it fit better. In addition, my father is from Lebanon; some of his family still uses the traditional methods of preserving food. I wish I had learned more about that when I was a youngster, but at that time I hadn’t caught the prepping bug.
I’m making a California wage in New Mexico. I’m grateful for that, but my pay is being eaten by inflation. Every time I go to the grocery store, it hurts. I’m cutting beef out of my diet for a while; it’s just too expensive. (I had a barbecue a few weeks ago in which I served beef hamburgers and beef hot dogs. I think that was about $50 of my grocery bill that week. Ouch!!) On a more positive note, I’m not paying $5 per gallon for gasoline, and I can work from home two days per week. Furthermore, I saved $300 – about 13 ounces of silver – by using a folded heavy cardboard box to block the intake of the swamp cooler so that cold air isn’t coming in the house. Three cheers for cardboard!
When spring comes, I’ll put in a crop. I made a compost bin by stacking four tires with the sidewalls cut out on top of each other. Someone down the street put several bags of leaves out to be picked up by the city sanitation service; I took them to my house and I am feeding them into my pile bit by bit. Leaves are carbon (brown) waste and must be balanced out by nitrogen (green) waste to produce compost. My green waste is kitchen waste and my own urine. This way, I’m saving water and building soil. Building soil will take much time; there’s some very bare topsoil, and below it is caliche – a sort of mineral-laden crumbly rock.
Saving water does not get rewarded here. The water utility is able to measure water use by the gallon via smart meter, but it bills by acre-foot (748 gallons), and they round up, not down. In other words, I managed to save about half an acre-foot through collecting urine rather than flushing the toilet, but I still got charged for that half acre-foot that I did not use. Yay, government. I’m still saving money because I don’t have to buy nitrogen fertilizer.
While I am no longer in overcrowded Southern California, I’m still in a city large enough to be problematic if SHTF. I confess to some ambivalence to buying my house now; it might have been useful to keep the apartment longer in order to keep the flexibility of being able to move on short notice to get a better job, or just to move to the rural areas of New Mexico. Yet the Democrats are against private property in general and single-family home ownership, and the real estate market in town is sizzling. Furthermore, there was a rumor going around my apartment complex that the rent will go up 50% in 2022. In other words, I was concerned that it was now or never. Nevertheless, I’m paying less in mortgage than I am in rent, and at least I have some property of my own, even if it isn’t a ranch in the Redoubt. If the real estate market stays high (thanks in part to other refugees from California like me), then I would be able to sell this house and move to one of New Mexico’s smaller towns. On the other hand, there are more jobs in town, and I just got a small pay raise. If I am able to get an all-remote job, then I can move anywhere.
The next step is to find a wife to go with my new house. In 2019, JWR posted a quote from President Rutherford B. Hayes: “Do not let your bachelor ways crystallize so that you can’t soften them when you come to have a wife and a family of your own.” That’s tough nowadays, when there is a strong correlation between “woman” and “liberal”. Furthermore, many women may not be interested in moving to a rural area, or learning skills like gardening, slaughtering a chicken or rabbit, making soap, or homeschooling. Yet I do want to give up my bachelor ways and have a family; it is no longer enough to serve myself. However, my wife must be a Helpmeet, not a standard-issue fussy liberal suburban chick. It would be nice to have someone to walk through life with and to not have to do every #$%& thing myself. One of the reasons I’m here in the city instead of in a rural town already is that the dating pool is larger here; the flip side of that is most urban women are liberals. It’s a tough problem.
My day job isn’t about service either; it’s for a company that provides “healthcare”. This company doesn’t have any hospitals or clinics; everyone is just a paper-shuffler of some kind. I long for a more meaningful job. I was not permitted to join the military due to a childhood medical problem that was not a problem when I became of military age and is not a problem now. (I’m no longer of military age.) I have thought about joining the New Mexico State Defense Force, but a) I have a full-time job, and the State Defense Force is not paid unless it is mobilized, b) I have to maintain and upgrade my house, which gobbles up more time, c) I’m not sure that I want to serve under the command of the current Governor of New Mexico, who was recently declared the worst governor in the Union, and d) if SHTF and I get called up, who will defend my home? (Another reason to find a Helpmeet who has some steel in her backbone.)
I’ve been spending a lot of money over the past few months, but things will be better soon. My real poverty is time. I’m glad I have a job and a steady paycheck, but working every day means time I can’t spend on getting the house in shape and keeping it that way. I do my own cooking and cleaning and laundry—that’s a time gobbler. And sometimes, I want to do something fun or just rest. That doesn’t always leave a lot of time for prepping. Yet I have a feeling that time is running out. As blogger Charles Hugh Smith points out, the supply chain is under a lot of strain. It wouldn’t take much to break it entirely. The 2022 and 2024 elections are coming, and political polarization has not gone away. It could be very bad, even if Donald Trump doesn’t run again. There is also the possibility of war against China and/or Russia. Lastly – just maybe – is the possibility of extraterrestrials, who may or may not exist, and who may or may not be benevolent. The federal government already admitted that the homeland (the 48 mainland states, or CONUS for those who were in the military) is no longer a sanctuary. We need to keep prepping!
I am fortunate to not be one paycheck away from the streets. In theory, I could quit my job and be part of the Great Resignation, at least for a few months. While I am not one of those who thinks that work can be abolished, I really am burned out. Yet I will stay with the job, because it puts me in a better position to find something else, and because I have to keep up with the inflationary policies of the Federal Reserve. Maybe inflation is a feature, not a bug – keep those workers on the job so that they don’t quit and live and work for themselves, as depicted in Poul Anderson’s short story “The Last of the Deliverers,” summarized here.
My new house might not be my final house. Yet it’s a step along the way. It’s another opportunity to learn more about taking care of a house and property by myself.