Most of us find it impossible to imagine a house without electricity. Now that we can easily and reliably generate all the electricity we need, the grid no longer defines the perimeters of settlement. We can select our home site for its merits alone, sure in the knowledge that we can harvest electricity anywhere we choose to settle.
Electricity is very likely to cost more and more as easy energy gets scarcer, and as visible and invisible subsidies are rationalized and monetized. Prices asked by utilities for line extensions have also risen abruptly, so the cost of stringing powerlines across a mere quarter mile of emptiness between a home site and the nearest grid connection makes a convincing argument for independence. As you will see in subsequent chapters, there are other reasons for disconnecting from the grid, or for connecting as lightly as possible, but cost continues to be a most compelling justification for creating a self-sufficient home.
If we have the inclination or the need to build independence into a home, we should pause first and review a list of the possible independences we may wish to attain. Homesteaders who have built independently tell about the freedoms they cherish with admirable vigor and intelligence. As I visit more and more homes, the list of freedoms keeps growing. Here are some basic freedoms worth considering, organized into the three phases of homemaking: building, occupying, and maintaining.
Freedom While Building
Faced with the demands of "curb appeal" and the real estate market, choosing a happy situation for a home has become a lost art and building a house can be frightfully wasteful. Developers flatten the land and parcel it into convenient lots without regard for natural contours, existing vegetation, neighboring views, or the vagaries of the weather. Builders of conventional custom houses typically waste almost a third of the materials purchased. These two mistakes have a major impact on the cost and quality of our residences. An independent home will be sensitive to the environment from the very first footstep on the site. In building, we try to preserve the spirit of the following freedoms:
- Freedom from the insults of local microclimate. It is important to build the home in harmony with local weather. Shaded north slopes are clammy in winter -- treasured in a hot climate, but uninhabitable in the northern forest. Unshaded exposure to direct sun without access to tempering breezes can make summer hellish in hot climates. A home's main entry should be on its most protected side, so that opening the front door during a windstorm will not rearrange all the light objects in the house, or rip the door off its hinges.
- Freedom from the hypocrisy of making war on the land before settling. We need not destroy the landscape and its lifeforms in order to occupy it. Where developers terraform, leveling mountains and filling swamps, purists attempt to move as little earth as possible. If earth must be moved, precious topsoil should be carefully set aside and lovingly redistributed after construction calms down.
- Freedom from reliance on rare, endangered, or strategic building materials. Local or recycled building materials are invariably cheaper and better suited to local conditions. Imported materials benefit the importers, distant owners, and possibly the builders, but are seldom helpful to the residents.
- Freedom from pollutants and extractive or exploitative materials and techniques. Homes made this way are healthier for their inhabitants, and demonstrate that we can live happily without oppressing others.
Freedom to Live
Once the home is built and we move in, another set of freedoms becomes important. When we live independently, we dedicate ourselves to treading gently on the land, knowing that such a life will give us freedom from many old patterns and dependencies:
- Freedom from dependencies on governments, far-flung monopolies, and extractive and polluting technologies. Local energy sources are in tune with their environment; to the extent that these are truly free even from hidden pollution and deferred costs, they bring a gratifying economy to our lives.
- Freedom from the necessity of daily travel. By integrating life and work, we may find that both are enhanced. Few who manage to work at home are sad to give up the daily commute, the inhaled exhaust, and the frustrations of traffic and parking. If we limit travel to necessities, share with neighbors, and adopt vehicles that minimally impact the biosphere, we may be able to preserve our treasured mobility.
- Freedom from estrangement with Nature. We know the restorative and inspirational value of taking nature into our lives. Why not live always with beauty?
- Freedom from food and clothing dependencies. Living independently, many find that their tastes in clothing and food change dramatically, needs becoming more manageable within a simpler context. To the extent that we can produce our food and clothing on the homestead, we liberate ourselves from dependence on external banking and marketing systems, which devour time and reduce our ability to concentrate while enforcing on us a culture of scarcity and perpetual obsolescence.
- Freedom from propaganda and regimentation. Only by taking responsibility for our own entertainment and education, by recreating neighborhood and community, can we free our minds.
- Freedom from our own garbage. By intensively reducing, reusing, and recycling our waste stream, we bring consumption under control. This, more than any other action, runs counter to the prevailing disposable culture, and emphasizes our eagerness to depend on ourselves and the place we have chosen as our own. In this freedom, civilization is slowly coming to meet us. Overflowing landfills and a new understanding about pollution in our air, oceans, and rivers has changed our national garbage behavior significantly over the last decade.
Freedom to Last and Restore
We may wish to build for the ages, but this is unlikely: All things fall, and are built again, and the building of them fills us with joy. We must accept the inevitability of decay, and from the start we must plan for maintenance of the home during its useful life, and the eventual restoration of the site to its natural state. Planning for the long term gives us access to further freedoms:
- Freedom from wastefulness. If we have built with materials and techniques selected to be durable, maintainable, and finally, capable of being dismantled and salvaged, the materials in a home are truly invested in it rather than consumed by it.
- Freedom from knowing we will be remembered for our selfishness. By treading lightly on the land while building and living, we leave a haven that may be enjoyed by our ancestors or restored to its natural beauty after we are gone. The notion of "ancestral home" has practically vanished from the American experience, although we and our children increasingly yearn to go there. Any action that outlives us bequeaths its own burden of care.
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