The above video contains snippets of reviews coming in for Surviving Off Off-Grid, one book that I highly recommend for those who are either disillusioned with things or already interested in agrarianism. 

Since before we were married the papa and I talked of gardens and country living. He, raised in the city but with fond memories of gardening with his Father and I, a country girl with farming grandparents… we had already been given a dream.

We also had student loans.

So naturally we got married, moved to the city, he got a desk job, and I stayed at home and had babies. That’s just what you do, right? Fast forward to last year and we had paid off $25,000 in student loans in 4.5 years. We were finally debt free.

If I had to pick a turning point, though, I would go back to September of 2006. We had been married just over a year when our oldest son was born. I’ll never forget the moment he was born. I looked at my husband, still shaking from 13 hours of labor and said “You have a son!” with tears rolling down my cheeks.

That moment and these boys changed everything. It was as if God had pierced our hearts and taken off the blindfolds and no matter how hard our flesh fought, we just couldn’t ignore all that was wrong and all that had to change.

Up to that point we talked about how something just didn’t seem right. We lived in this society where…

• We complain of unemployment and yet we grow lawns and not food.
• We claim that politicians are corrupt and yet we continue to spend our money at the corporations that pad their pockets and keep them in power.
• The status quo doesn’t seem right and yet we are told it is the only way to live.
• We often forget that this is a system that continues to send brothers off to war to maintain itself.  Brothers who most of the people forget are even there.
• We go through each day as slaves to a system (and to the lies we tell ourselves).  Don’t ask.  Don’t question.  Just consume.  It will all be all right.
• We question the surface things while not bothering to look at the real issues.

And suddenly there was this person, completely dependent upon us as parents for guidance. Everything we said he would say. Everything we taught he would do. The way we live our life could either say no to consumerism and debt and industrial foods and political slavery, all of the things that we verbally rail against… or we could be hypocrites.

Self-sufficiency is a popular term, but agrarianism, to us, is more about depending on God for our needs and seeking the spiritual lessons that come from working with our hands and leaving the results up to God.

Agrarianism is about becoming a producer rather than a consumer. It is about not supporting corporations that want nothing more than for you to be in debt, to give up your freedoms, to be dependent on them for your needs rather than God.

After all, how else would they make their money? If millions of people decided that they wanted land instead of houses, gardens instead of lawns, and freedom instead of comfort… the big corporation and the system they support would collapse.

We were disillusioned with industry, politics, media, food systems, and an unsustainable future. We noticed that no matter how many election days we made it to the ballot box and no matter which party was in power that nothing was changing.

What if you could vote every single day for the things you believe in most? What if there was something you could do every day that would support the family unit, encourage production over consumption, nourish us with God-given foods, and give us back our freedoms?  What if God put Adam and Eve into the garden for a reason?

What if we could give our sons a shot at something different… something better?

That something is what we call agrarianism. Before our oldest son was even born it was our prayer that we might be able to move off-grid and start a homestead by the time he was five. Lord willing we will be starting this journey before the summer is out and before his fifth birthday in September.

And if you care to join us we will share this journey with you.

If you’d like to help share this message with others please consider purchasing Surviving Off Off-Grid, for yourself or as gifts. In a “book bounce”, all book purchases today are going towards further advertising of the book. The author estimates that if we all bought three books per person we could really spread the message.