Editor’s Introductory Note: This is part of a multi-part article series on retreats written by a Christian farmer who is praying and searching for a wife. Please prayerfully consider all of the topics that he discusses.
Solutions: The Journey for Possible Future Retreat Owners
It would be nice if there were other easy solutions out there. But for a family man the road of hard work done intelligently will often yield good results over many years. There are some who claim that you cannot save to afford land without a mortgage, but I can tell you that my grandparents and parents over the years have purchased land with money that they saved. I can tell you about years of sacrifices they made, so one thing I can offer for the vast majority of people reading this is the concept that has been successful many times among my family and friends of working, saving, and investing until you can afford to buy something.
I will briefly mention a few paths that people have in the past acquired or have tried to acquire or the use of land that do not work as well as the two ways that we know have worked.
You cannot truly develop land unless you own it. Here, I am talking about squatting which I am strongly against. Both people living in the city and rural landowners need to be vigilant. We have some very strong laws here against squatters and I have not seen any in our region. It is more of an issue with states with lax laws and enforcement against squatters. Poaching is just squatting without being on the land long term. Either one of these choices is not one to make because both are against the law and against common sense from a survival perspective.
Every landowner around here knows the other landowners. We know who belongs here and who does not. Years ago another farmer told my dad that he caught someone stopped on one of the roads bordering our land who they suspected of attempting to trespass. They moved along very quickly. We have never had any issues that we have seen or have discovered. I have known of farmers in other states who discovered abandoned encampments on their land. Thomas Jefferson said, “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance” and we now just do not have our eyes and ears, but our neighbors and various security measures that we have implemented. We use regular telephone, cell phone, and radio communications on our property. I have never seen anything that would require calling, but I know and have the cell phone numbers of the proper authorities.
Using debt to acquire land has been thoroughly discussed. The worst possible scenario is that you use debt to get land and develop your farm which could be transformed into a retreat, but then something happens and you can no longer make the mortgage payments. The “balloon” has not gone up, but your balloon has deflated and then when you need the retreat, it belongs to somebody else. Another way is to find an old farmer who is going to let you live on the farm, take care of him, and then you would inherit the farm. This was very common many years ago, but today retiring farmers often sell to other farmers and check themselves into “senior” communities as this provides more stability for them. Several farmers who I know did this. Most farmers who I know have children and grandchildren: their heirs many of whom live away from the farm want maximum value for the land — especially in the current economic environment.
However, now, land prices are astronomical for young family men and then it is very difficult to actually make money on a farm that provides an equivalent standard of living. Our farm has always been profitable as long as it has been in my family’s hands. The most important reason why is that we own the farm free of any debt. When you have someone that you are paying interest to, that in many cases is your profit and it can in an unfortunate series of circumstances that are often beyond your control lead to a loss of the property.
When you own your property, you can absorb some leaner years. Successful pioneers would always put something back in savings to cover for the inevitable lean years. The concept of having a large pantry and storing food to have enough to the next harvest is a form of physical savings. Your family needs to eat, so having food in storage is a form of second-level savings (instead of having money and then converting it into food). The next level would be for diversification into non-related businesses which are not correlated to the farm economy.
There are certain things that cannot be changed. You cannot change how you were born, who you were born to, or when you were born. Those are some immutable characteristics. You can change each day what you will do from this point forward. That young family man who I know is doing a few things right. He first of all has the realization that he would like to live in the country for the obvious reasons (crime, moral decay in big cities, wants to control his own destiny to a greater degree through business ownership, and so forth). The second thing he did was to convince his wife. Christian marriage is a partnership. It says in the Bible: “Can two walk together, except they be agreed?” (Amos 3:3).
It is one thing for a man to realize something. Men realize all sorts of profound things daily, but translating that into something that women can understand often takes a very skilled translator. Before the Covid pandemic it was difficult to convince young women when the stores are open and fully stocked that it would be a good idea to have the possibility of being able to go to a retreat. One of the positive things about the decade of the 2020s so far is that a lot of young women are waking up and realizing that big cities are rather inhospitable places to raise a family. One of the great difficulties for husbands “convincing” their wives when there are so many other things more attractive to women than buying land for a retreat or if you are in the beginning stages of purchasing some extra food.
There are a few exceptions where families have a very large income where they can afford for both the husband to have money for things he likes and the wife to have money for her various expenses. Usually, it is a matter of prioritizing expenses for families with high incomes when the husband wants to buy land and build a retreat. Instead of having expensive hunting and fishing vacations with their friends, a sports car, and other typical expenses that I have seen, the husband would use the money to buy a local tract of land for hunting and fishing and often this tract of land generates income.
For families with more typical incomes, it is more difficult to be able to save money as the cost of the usual living expenses take up a greater portion of that family’s budget than higher income earning households. For instance, as income increases food expenses typically become a smaller percentage of income. As income increases, there is typically a larger amount of money that is available for savings and preparedness projects even after accounting for the higher taxes at higher incomes.
Developing a surplus is very important because without a surplus, you are often running a deficit and this is the problem that our country has with the national debt, deficit spending, and inflation. On a family level, it works in a similar way. The young family man I know was not born into a family with land or who could purchase it now, so he has determined that he will create wealth and change the direction of his family. The most important thing he is doing is saving money. He has determined what is non-essential, cutting that out, and then saving it. This takes both husband and wife to be on board. This takes sacrifices and that is something most people are not willing to do.
The New Year will be upon us in less than two months and many people start with a resolution, but I read only nine (yes, 9) percent of people on average actually stick to their “resolutions” all year long. Breaking a bad habit often means replacing it with a better habit. For those who have a fantasy of being able to get back to the Old West: Even if you were born in a time to be able to take advantage of homesteading a property, there were no “free rides” to the homesteads in the Midwest and West. Every pioneer had to start with something (usually by saving money) and that often took a lot of initiative just to get to the point of being able to do more hard work of surviving the trail and then developing a homestead.
Retreats do not build themselves. You do not just find a retreat on the street like a lost dog or a dropped quarter. The amount of work to achieve this level of preparedness has taken generations. Real sacrifices are made in getting and keeping the land where a retreat is located. This young man who I told you about is making sacrifices right now in order to likely get something greater later on.
As I was writing about some good news to close out this discussion on land for retreats, I received an unexpected phone call from an elderly pastor who I have known for many years. He has declining health, but he was calling to encourage me to be a voice in this next generation of Christians out there. We agreed that the only road to success is work. I know many people are out there thinking that the latest “scheme” will be the thing that allows them have success without hard work. Over the years, so many people have approached my grandparents, parents, and myself with all types of “investment” ideas and all of them were just as hollow as funding a journey to discover the mythical “Seven Cities of Gold.” There is no “philosopher’s stone” out there turning base metals into gold and allowing you to become an immortal.
If you have been a long-term reader of SurvivalBlog, then maybe you have seen the Calvin Coolidge quote on persistence, but here is another: “Work is not a curse, it is the prerogative of intelligence, the only means to manhood, and the measure of civilization.” You may never get to the point of living at a retreat: I am writing this from a farm praying for the success of readers of this article that they may be blessed to live in peace and that their supplies are able to be rotated and used in recreation rather than out of dire circumstances.
It is our fervent prayer that this farm may just stay a productive farm growing food for people, providing a place where generations of my family will have lived and been able to continue to bless others, and never get turned into a retreat. People who are not in the preparedness community often think that “preppers” are just waiting for something bad to happen. The opposite is true for everyone I have ever met in this community. We prepare not just for ourselves, but also for others hoping that the day never comes when we need to activate the retreat.
In a commencement address in June 1963, President Kennedy tried to reduce the temperature of the Cold War saying, “For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.” The most important point is that we are all mortal. No matter what happens in a hundred years likely every reader who is reading this at first publication will be gone. The good news is that I encourage you if you are not a Christian, to ask anyone who is a Christian to tell you about an even more amazing community of believers now and throughout history. We may never all meet in this world, but I do believe that someday we Christians will all be gathered together.
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Message from Single Farmer:
My family and I are long-term preppers who currently live on a large farm that produces enough food for hundreds of people. Our farm will be our retreat. It has taken more than three generations of people to achieve this level of preparedness. This article was not sent for the blog’s writing contest. I am trying to provide you with what could be useful information and hopefully to find some family reading these blog articles who would be a good potential candidate for our retreat. Or perhaps a father reading this with a single daughter who is seeking to be a traditional wife. This article series will be useful for those who currently live at their country properties which can be activated into retreats or for those who would like to increase their level of preparedness. Please read my letter that was posted in SurvivalBlog in August with more details about me and what I am praying to find in a wife.