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My Move to the Country

Planting a Squash Seedling

When I first started Greenimalist, I began with lifestyle changes that were compatible with life in the modern city. On one hand, I am amazed at how far I have come towards lowering my impact while living in the city. At the same time, however, I have always felt stifled by life in the urban jungle. Without land of my own, I could never take Greenimalist to the next level. In a small apartment, it can be a challenge to make compost, start a vegetable garden, or even test out a solar oven (we didn’t have a sunny patio for the cooker to sit on). Hsinya and I have wanted to raise poultry for several months now, but we have always hesitated to raise them indoors. A lack of space, combined with uncooperative neighbors and landlords, has made it difficult to experiment with Greenimalist living. For this reason, I had been planning to buy land of my own someday. In the meantime, however, I had little recourse but to watch other homesteaders with envy.

All this changed last week when my aunt offered me a chance to start a garden in her vacant country-house. Located in a rural farming town, this unoccupied house has a backyard over half an acre in size — plenty of undeveloped land for experiments in self-sufficiency. I was essentially given free reign to experiment with any project related to homesteading, such as organic gardening, setting up off-grid solar panels, collecting rainwater in barrels, and composting chicken poop. I could hardly contain my excitement.

Hauling Compost to the Garden

I had very few expectations for the house itself. In fact, I was fully expecting to live in a low-tech, off-grid primitive shelter, more resembling a log cabin than a house. In a strange way, the idea of roughing it in the countryside seemed almost enjoyable. To my surprise, the country house was modern and luxurious for a homestead — it had electricity, refrigeration, natural gas, and indoor plumbing. I could, in fact, sign up for broadband Internet at any time — so much for roughing it. After a quick reflection, however, I concluded this was probably better anyhow. I should be concentrating my efforts on gardening for now, not on how to build an off-grid shelter.

The backyard also far exceeded my expectations. There was plenty of fertile land for subsistence farming. Having never been sprayed with pesticides, the soil was teeming with a healthy ecosystem of insects and microbial life. (In fact, some pests from this ecosystem ate my pumpkin seedlings last night.) Trees dotted the backyard, and underneath the leaf litter, there were rich layers of humus perfect for gardening. The land was definitely excellent for gardening.

Without hesitation, I knew I wanted to stay. Sure, there were minor flaws — hordes of virulent mosquitoes, the lingering smell of cow manure — but I couldn’t pass up the offer. That very night, I packed all my minimalist possessions, took the bus to the countryside, picked up the house keys, and became the new tenant.

This is a big step forward for me in my journey towards a more sustainable and natural lifestyle. As always, Greenimalist will still be about simple, green living: shopping less, owning fewer possessions, conserving natural resources, and protecting the environment. Since many of us will continue to live in the city or suburbs, I’ll definitely keep writing tips for green living in the cities. However, I’m excited about the latest saga of my Greenimalist adventure: low-impact self-sufficiency on a country homestead.

Coconut Palms on the Frontyard

Why I Want to Homestead

Homesteading is the most ecologically-sound lifestyle possible. Unlike the modern, consumer lifestyle, homesteading is gentle on the land, good for your health, low on stress, and very cheap. It does require plenty of patience and hard work, but that’s a small price for sustainability, independence, and a healthier way of living.

A More Wholesome Life

Healthy food is difficult to find nowadays. Most supermarkets are filled with junky, processed food. Even the fresh food section is contaminated with the poisonous pesticides used by conventional farms. These toxins harm the earth, the farmer, and your health. Only unprocessed, organic food is truly wholesome. Growing my own food is one way to ensure that I will have plenty of fresh and nutritious food year-round, even in towns that don’t sell organic food.

Ultimately, I want my home to be the nucleus of a sustainable family life. A good homestead provides a retreat from all the unhealthy stressors of modernity. It’s a place to get away from traffic, smog, cigarette smoking, pesticides, and synthetic food. When we have kids, we want them to have a wholesome childhood — free from potato chips and video games.

Financial Independence

By homesteading, I also plan to save money. Not only does growing my own food help save thousands of dollars each year, but a house in the woods represents a huge savings compared to a house in the suburbs or city. Undeveloped rural land is much cheaper than urban land; I can buy acres of land for just a few thousand dollars. If I learn how to build my own house, I can also save on housing construction costs. My goal is to continue working online while ruthlessly cutting expenses to build up savings.

Homegrown Papayas, Set to Ripen In A Few Weeks

My Goals

I don’t expect to be totally self-sufficient this year. Instead, I plan to use this opportunity as more of a learning experience. This country house will be a sandbox for self-sufficiency experiments, including organic farming, permaculture, country living skills, and alternative energy.

Our first goal is to produce all of our own vegetables by the end of this year. I’ll also experiment with growing quickly maturing fruits like melons and strawberries, as well as rice and beans by the end of the year.

Our second goal is related to the first: we will try to process all the food we eat on the homestead. Hsinya will make everything we eat (e.g. soymilk, cheese, bread, and soy sauce) right on the country house. We experimented with some of these ideas before, but having more space allows us to process on a larger scale.

Our Homesteading Principles

Organic Gardening

Obviously, we’re not going to be using toxic pesticides and chemical fertilizers on our homestead. Not only do these poisons harm the soil, they also poison the farmers that use them. Organic agriculture, however, means much more than just abstaining from chemicals. Growing food organically is also about cultivating a richer ecosystem for the farm through building fertile soil.

As I homestead, I hope to strengthen the ecosystem in our backyard. Unlike modern farms, which destroy the soil over time with chemicals, I’m hoping to actually increase the amount of topsoil over time. I plan to compost kitchen scraps, mulch the soil, practice companion planting, sow cover crops, plant fruit and fodder trees, and encourage beneficial insects. Farming organically is like buying carbon offsets, only better: instead of paying someone to plant a tree for me, I’ll plant my own apple tree and harvest the literal fruits of my labor. It actually pays financially to make a positive impact on the environment, because it improves the fertility of each year’s harvest.

Self-Sufficiency

I will try to avoid shopping — not even for farming supplies. Whenever possible, I want to live off the land and be totally self-sufficient. My main motivation is to save money: it’s expensive to rent rotary tillers, import compost, and buy lumber. Many aspiring homesteaders fail because they waste too much money buying expensive farm mansions loaded with fancy appliances and equipment. Such a facade is not true self-sufficiency; even worse, it is outrageously expensive.

Appropriate Technology

Whenever possible, I will opt for low-tech, simple tools on my homestead. So far, all my gardening tools require human labor rather than gasoline or electricity. It may be tempting to use high-tech machines for homesteading, but there are often cheaper, more sustainable solutions. When I lived in the city, for example, I discovered that bicycling was more cost-effective than driving. This homestead will give more opportunities to explore appropriate technology for self-sufficient living.

We’ll keep you updated on our homesteading as we learn from our mistakes. I hope these articles help provide a candid look at one ordinary couple’s journey towards self-sufficiency. Until then, our homestead awaits.

How to Eat Healthy in a Food Desert

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Sometimes, it’s hard to eat healthy. In urban neighborhoods and at travel pit-stops, our food choices are often limited. Restaurants often serve nothing but burgers and soda, and groceries often carry more potato chips than fruit. These food deserts—regions with limited fresh food—have spread all across America. It’s made healthy eating hard; and sometimes, near impossible. In fact, food deserts have contributed to our massive obesity crisis. How, then, can we eat healthy when we have no control over our food choices?

With a little resourcefulness, you can often find healthy food items when you’re trapped in a food desert. If you can find a nearby grocery, you can almost certainly build a balanced, healthy meal covering all five food groups. And even when you’re stuck eating at a convenience store, all may not be lost. Your food won’t be gourmet, but at least you won’t have to settle for a greasy burger.

Here are three key strategies:

Scout around. There might be a grocery store nearby. You’re much better off eating lunch at a supermarket than at a restaurant or at a gas station. Grocery stores are more likely to carry unprocessed food.
Eat whole, unprocessed foods. Processed foods are stripped of their nutrients, and are often bundled with extra fat, sugar, and chemicals. They’re also more expensive.
Follow the food pyramid. To eat a balanced diet, you’ll need grains, beans, vegetables, fruits, and dairy (1). If you can’t get all the groups, just do the best you can.

Here are the tactics for each food group:

Fruit: Buy fresh, not canned. Don’t get picky about the type of fruit; cheap, common fruits are fine. Oranges, bananas, and apples are packed with fiber and micronutrients like Vitamin C and phytochemicals.
Dairy: Get whole or low-fat milk. Stay away from chocolate milk/flavored yogurt products; they’re loaded with sugar and preservatives. It’s much better to drink organic, but conventional milk is acceptable in a pinch.
Meat: You don’t need any. Organic meat would be acceptable, but I doubt you’ll find pastured beef in a food desert. To get enough protein, eat some beans and nuts. It should be easy to find a package of peanuts with no additives besides salt. For beans, scavenge for a can with no extra additives like lard: refried beans are fine. Look for a can with a self-opening top, since you probably won’t want to buy a can opener. Beans aren’t glamorous, but they’re lean and jam-packed with protein. Avoid processed beans like baked beans or chili beans.
Grains: Stay away from pastries, donuts, and muffins. A loaf of 100% whole wheat bread will give you plenty of energy without excessive sugar or oil. Sometimes, I’ll carry a box of oatmeal with me. Secret tip: If you’re not picky, you don’t need to boil oats in water. I eat them all the time in their raw, dry form.
Vegetables: This food group is the hardest of all: I’ve never seen a convenience store carry veggies. However, if you have access to a grocery store, you’ll have plenty to choose from. Any common vegetable will do: carrots, tomatoes, and lettuce are all fine. Buy some bell peppers and cucumbers and wash them in a bathroom sink. Eat them raw. If you buy a salad, throw away the ranch dressing (better yet, return it to the clerk).

Be sure to avoid these common pitfalls:

Don’t eat out. By preparing your own meals, you can better control what goes in it.
Stay away from brand names. Commercially trademarked “food products,” such as Cheetos or Coca-Cola, are often loaded with harmful additives like corn syrup, sugar, hydrogenated oils, food dyes, and preservatives. They also lack vitamins and minerals.
Minimize packaging. Most things packaged in excessive plastic or aluminum aren’t good for you. Unflavored, canned beans or tuna are the only exceptions I can think of.
Stay away from conventional meat. In all likelihood, you already eat plenty of meat. Conventional meat products are extremely bad for the environment, and often contains added oils, fats, sugars, and chemicals.
Don’t drink sweetened beverages. This includes not only soda, but also fruit juice. Juice is only healthy when you prepare it yourself and don’t discard the fiber. Most commercial juices have tons of added sugar, and virtually all of them discard the natural fiber. Watch out for deceptive labeling–a juice-flavored drink isn’t really juice.
Avoid food that never spoils. Fresh food is more nutritious. Food products with a perpetual shelf life–ramen noodles, candy, microwave burritos–are highly processed.

By following my own guidelines, I’ve managed to scrape by in food deserts while traveling. Even when most restaurants were selling junk food, I was able to maintain a healthy weight eating whole-wheat bread and bananas while drinking milk.

Hopefully we’ll have some real alternatives soon. But until then, we need to be resourceful scavengers of the food desert.

How difficult is it for you to get fresh fruits and veggies? How about organic food?

The USDA updated the pyramid; the meat section has been replaced with protein. Protein from beans/nuts, the USDA says, is plenty. Dry beans and peas may be counted as part of the “meat, poultry, fish, dry beans, eggs, and nuts group.”
A group of volunteers from the Brooklyn Food Coalition went around and mapped all the local food sites and what types of fresh food they served. The data is available at their site, Food Census. Let me know if any of you have seen similar done on a national scale; the rest of us could sure use it.

The Western Diet

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A new contagious epidemic is currently afflicting the Western world. Unlike the diseases that plagued us in the 20th century–malaria, smallpox, and polio–this new disease cannot be treated with vaccines or antibiotics. As our politicians debate about how to fix the crisis, it is already killing millions each year and spreading quickly. I am speaking, of course, about the obesity epidemic that is sweeping the Western world.

In America, one in every three adults are now clinically obese. Obesity cripples a person both physically and financially by unleashing a myriad of diseases and health complications. Obesity can cause diabetes, heart disease, and stroke; it’s also associated to cancers of the colon, breast, and prostate. Even when obesity doesn’t directly cause illness, it can complicate an existing condition. Obesity can aggravate osteoarthritis, intensify the flu, and complicate childbirth.

It’s easy to see, now, how as much as half of our healthcare expenses could be spent on treating obesity and its related diseases. America currently spends around 16% of its total GDP–one in every six dollars–on healthcare alone. No culture in history has ever spent so much money to treat its sick, just to remain as unhealthy as ever. Being grossly overweight results in an unending stream of medical bills, which in turn makes healthcare bills one of the leading causes of bankruptcy in the United States.

How, exactly, did our country become so fat? Like all major problems, the obesity epidemic happened gradually. Over the course of one hundred years, Americans gradually transitioned from a wholesome, organic diet to a highly-processed, junk food diet. We ate fewer fresh fruits and vegetables and replaced them with more oil, sugar, refined grains, factory-farmed meat, and chemicals. The resulting processed food was more calorie dense, but, ironically, it contained fewer of the micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, antioxidants) that our bodies needed. In sum, we got fatter while getting less nutrition.

Doctors have coined a special term to describe our hamburger, french fry, and soda pop cuisine: the Western Diet. It’s a catch-all phrase that describes our unhealthy cultural eating habits. Not surprisingly, the more doctors study this diet, the more ill effects they see. The Western diet is linked to high blood pressure (hypertension), stroke, heart disease, osteoporosis, and every form of cancer. It accelerates aging–and yes, it can even cause acne.

These diseases of diet are expensive because they are chronic. In other words, once you acquire an illness, you’ll be paying for it for the rest of your life. This is because most medical treatment can only cure symptoms; they don’t deal with the underlying cause of the illness. For example, patients who suffer from high cholesterol levels often take Lipitor to stave off heart disease. While that pill may be extremely useful for preventing heart attacks in the short-term, it can’t fix the root cause—a bad diet.

In the long run, it’s dangerous to resort only to taking pills without changing our diet. Not only are these drugs toxic in the long-term, but these high-priced prescription drugs can cost hundreds of dollars each month. Over the course of a lifetime, we could easily spend hundreds of thousands in medical treatment (1). And so a crisis of malnutrition turns into a crisis in health care, which turns into a crisis in finance, which ultimately leads to bankruptcy.

The good news is that losing weight through healthy eating isn’t hard. We just need to switch over to an eco-friendly diet of whole, natural foods. Whereas most diets focus solely on outward appearances, a natural foods diet focuses mostly on your internal health. The optimal natural foods diet is high in fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, beans, and grains. Shun synthetic foods like factory-farmed meat, hydrogenated vegetable oil, sugar, and refined flour. To conveniently purchase natural foods, shop at farmers markets, where organic alternatives are often available.

There are plenty of benefits to eating right. You’ll help the environment by reducing packaging and food chemicals. You’ll also save money, both on groceries today and on healthcare tomorrow.

So do it for yourself. Don’t become another healthcare statistic. You can’t afford not to eat healthy.

This life expectancy calculator estimates how long you might live based on your current lifestyle. Can you make any improvements in your diet?

A 2009 CDC report claims that the obese spend $1429 more on medical bills than their normal-weight counterparts. If that money were invested instead, at 7% return on investment for 40 years, it would be worth around $63,500 per person, after adjusting for inflation. A family of two could save at least $127,000 just by eating healthier.
Keep in mind, though, that God has sovereignty over every aspect of our lives. While we should definitely strive to live healthier, God has absolute control over the span of our lives. See Luke 12:22-34.