Welcome! Allow me to briefly introduce myself and the vision I have for this blog. I’m Bill. I’m 28 years old, and I live in an apartment in Southwestern Pennsylvania with my amazing wife Chrissy. I have a B.S in Bioprocess Chemical Engineering from Penn State University. After graduating from Penn State, I spent 6 months working as a process control engineer in Philadelphia. To be frank, the job and my life out there was terrible, so I took a job much closer to the place where I grew up (back here in Southwestern PA) as a manufacturing engineer at a local plant. I worked in this position for about 4 years, until December of 2010, at which point I resigned.
Why would I resign from a well-paying, reasonably secure engineering position during an economic downturn, with no substitute engineering job lined up? What the hell do I do with all of my time now that I have no job in the formal economy? How will my wife and I survive financially? These questions will be answered in detail in this blog.
In this introduction, I will relate that my parents own farmland, and are gracious enough to allow me to use a small part of it to work on my projects. I feel a deep sense of gratitude toward them for this. It has allowed me to pursue this path at least a couple of years sooner than if my wife and I had to continue to save money to buy land. My general goals for using this land are as follows:
1) Construct a home for my family using the most ecologically sensible materials and methods possible.
2) Achieve the capability to provide 100% of the subsistence food and water needs for my family from the land.
3) Establish a profitable small business based upon producing low-tech, low-energy goods and/or services of high importance to the local community.
Why would I resign from a well-paying, reasonably secure engineering position during an economic downturn, with no substitute engineering job lined up? What the hell do I do with all of my time now that I have no job in the formal economy? How will my wife and I survive financially? These questions will be answered in detail in this blog.
In this introduction, I will relate that my parents own farmland, and are gracious enough to allow me to use a small part of it to work on my projects. I feel a deep sense of gratitude toward them for this. It has allowed me to pursue this path at least a couple of years sooner than if my wife and I had to continue to save money to buy land. My general goals for using this land are as follows:
1) Construct a home for my family using the most ecologically sensible materials and methods possible.
2) Achieve the capability to provide 100% of the subsistence food and water needs for my family from the land.
3) Establish a profitable small business based upon producing low-tech, low-energy goods and/or services of high importance to the local community.
It is my intention to use this blog as a way of relating our adventures as we work toward achieving these goals. I feel it is also critical that the reasons behind our decision to head down this path are discussed.
Essentially, my blog posts could be grouped into one of the following categories:
1) A description of a project in progress or recently completed at the farm.
2) An academic or philosophical discussion regarding a topic related to ecology, energy, economics, culture, or politics.
3) A reflective essay about a book that I have finished reading (I read A LOT!)
It is my sincere hope that this blog will have thought provoking content that will lead to the exchange of beneficial ideas.
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