Living dirt cheap comfortably YouTube channel

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Hello everyone,

A couple days ago I found this channel on YouTube by this old mountain hermit. I have really been enjoying his videos. Some topics that are covered are: off grid living, eastern philosophy, minimalism, and living frugality.

So if any of those topics are of interest to you I suggest you check the channel out.

Here is the link: https://youtube.com/@wildernesshermit?s ... 8Jf5jcdgjM


Cheers,

CFL

I have been interested in the idea of living alone in nature for a long time.

When I was about 8-9 My Dad took my sister and I on a camping trip. One of the stops on the trip was a small old mining town in the southern interior of British Columbia called Coalmont. In Coalmont we met a friend of my Dad's who was a classic mountain man. He lived in the mountains above the town in a handmade log cabin. The cabin was a simple design with a main floor and a loft with a wood stove for heating. He used a combination of candles and gas lanterns to light the place at night, later he had a solar system donated to him that was installed on the property for lightning and a couple ac outlets. But other than the solar system he lived like it was the early 1990's. He hunted, trapped and fished for his meat and maybe had a small vegetable garden, but generally supplemented his diet through canned food. He would travel into town for supplies every few weeks to a month and then make the trek back up the mountain to his cabin.

Being exposed to this kind of life at an early age really turned me on to alternative lifestyles, although with my issues with executive function it's not a realistic goal right now. I think I would like to live close to nature but not too far away from resources because I find planing stressful and difficult. I can't see myself being able to plan for meals and items that I may need a month ahead or more. I struggle enough trying to manage my life one day at a time often. But hey, maybe one day I will gain the skills to manage my own life better, to make rural living more of a possibility.

Added you to my friends list (whatever that means).

Thank you for sharing the mountain hermit, a no-BS off the grid frugal lifestyle pioneer.[/quote]

You're welcome, I thought this channel was too unique and interesting to not share.

I could never live that way if I could help it. If I had to due to an emergency survival situation, I'd be begging to go back to civilization.

I'm tired of people making me feel guilty because my apartment has stuff in it. Including such luxury items as heating and electricity.

I am up to his seventh video so far and tune in every morning. He is definitely poor and talks about how to survive as a dirt-poor person. I think it is helpful for everybody, because he shows that there are options, besides sinking into debt. I like his ideas and insights.

I also use the "critical thinking" he talks about. I notice he has a big pot belly. And I wonder how he ever gets any fresh fruit and vegetables. I suspect that he and his girlfriend subsist on fattening canned food all the time. What else can you do living out in the desert? How does he get any vitamins? Particularly vitamin C. He may have some cancers budding in him right now. Plenty of our ancestors used to live the way he does, and they did not live to ripe old ages either, they died around his age, or earlier.

I had a friend who scorned vitamins and said all this nutrition stuff was a scam. Maybe that is so, but I have had good results health-wise from daily fruits and vegetables. I notice I feel better and more alive from not being very overweight. However it does require money. Eating healthy is a lot more expensive than subsisting on beans and oatmeal.

He has avoided the nutrition topic so far. But that is the #1 question in my mind.

Thanks to Google's war against Invidious, it's become rather hard for me to see YT videos without getting tracked, which is the only way I'm prepared to watch them. So it may be a while before I get to watch that little bunch.

But I'm familiar with a lot of tips and tricks for living much more frugally than the average humanoid, and broadly speaking I commend the philosophy, though taking it too far and living completely off the grid has certain disadvantages. I think it's a question of balance. Certainly I think most people in the developed world waste a lot of money and resources, and I wouldn't want to be very much like them, I'd feel that I'd gone down in the world.

Anybody ever heard of ligging?

I like the subject but cannot bother wading through someone else's interpretation of frugality, so I haven't tried to watch the channel.
When I did my first (part time) tree change we grew about 50% of our vegetables had a small orchard (mostly persimmons for some reason) and harvested at least 2 rubbish bins of blackberries every year. We had chickens and had enough dead wood on our rented property for hot water and heating. Many years and several interstate moves later, after working, saving and using my inheritance we bought this farm. The main selling points were basic off grid power, the privacy of living in the middle of a forest and an affordable price.
We attempted once more to become more self sufficient, but had very little success growing food here. Between the forest roots sucking the life out of everything, the forest critters eating everything, and lack of water for irrigation we abandoned growing much except tomatoes and potatoes in pots, and the mulberry tree. We have citrus and apple trees in large pots, and we grow them with some success.
Prickly pear grows well here and the chickens and peafowl thrive.
We have bees although they do sometimes have trouble with the meat-ants.
With our last update to our power generation and thanks to the wonders of LiFePO batteries we haven't had to fire up the generator for 2 years.
The forest supplies us with heat and cooking half the year. I still haven't yet implemented solar hot water, so our main household expense is bottled gas (about 2 cylinders per year), food and transport fuel.
I am always amazed how my partner balances our budget considering my proven ineptitude in this area, but we always have enough for our needs with just our pensions.
We're too broken to give the property the care it needs now, and don't have the energy to expand our food generation capabilities, so we've stopped breeding alpacas and are preparing the farm for sale, but I imagine with what we've built up the next owner would find modest self sufficiency achievable, particularly if climate change increases the yearly rainfall.