Newby --Hello!

[akemt]

I just wanted to pop in and say hello!  I'm the mom of 5 (my signature may still say 4...it has been a while since I've been on since he's 15 mo) and we're planning to very shortly move off-grid and homestead.  I am not pregnant but if/when we have another, my choices will be to either A. go completely at the whim of welfare medicine and be flown to a medical facility to birth without my family or choices as to with whom and where or B. have an unassisted chilbirth.  So, I've already found a few threads asking which books to read and I'll start there.  I'm a researcher at heart, so I'll be back (especially when pregnant) to ask all kinds of questions and find out all there is to find out!  Thanks for the resources!

[howdeepistheocean]

Wow, I would definitely pick B. lol. Flying while in labor does not sound fun. That is very off-grid to have to be flown to a hospital. We are somewhat homesteading in a modern sense of the word. But not off-grid at all. Love to hear about it, as we've talked about going totally off-grid before. Where are you moving off grid? In Alaska? My dh has really wanted to move to Alaska, but as I look at the snow covering the trees and floating down steadily all day...at the end of April I think we're North enough. I hope you find all the info you need, and welcome to the forum.    

                                                                                                                                                                      ~Kristie

[akemt]

Thanks for responding, Kristie.  They don't fly you during labor, you take a 747 about 2-3 weeks before you're due and stay in a hotel in the chosen hospital's town till you're both released to go home after you've had the baby.  And I don't think you realize how big Alaska is or what it is like.  We hardly get any snow where I am and it has been overcast/partly clowdy and in the 40's and 50's for the past month or two.  We're somewhat homesteading now, but find that we're constantly stuck between both worlds...We don't have enough time to homestead effectively due to the need to work, and never enough money to live a "normal" life either!  Always needing time and money.  If we move off-grid with start-up money we'll have all the time we need as well as LOTS of means for making more and the ability to use it much more efficiently (as in, only spending $2-300 a month instead of $2,000 a month on living expenses).  Best wishes!

[howdeepistheocean]

Sorry, I wasn't thinking...my mind pictured a little bush plane...lol

   Yes, I'm in the Rockies, and we get a lot of snow. I can see it would be warmer and less snow on the coast where you live. I told my dh about it, and he said. "Let's move there." Neither of us have ever been to Alaska, so I always picture it as a lot colder and longer winters than where I live...I didn't realize AK had that long piece of land coming down beside BC. Neat.

    We regularly talk about wanting to move somewhere where we could afford more land and be self-sufficient/off-the-grid.

  Anyways, I think I would still vote for Unassisted, but I can see it would be a harder decision as you'd have no access to emergency medical help. Though you wouldn't have access to medical help for any other emergency's that could happen either...so it's a risk all around..and if you're willing to take the risk with other things that could go wrong with children, dh, etc, then why not with labor? Maybe not the right way to look at it, but it's kinda how I would look at it.

  Yes, I'd love to be able to live off of 2-300 a mo instead of $2000. We could save up enough for 10 yrs of living quite easily...lol.

I hope everything works out for you. Will you have internet where you move?         ~Kristie

 

[akemt]

Yep, Alaska is about 1/3 the size of the contiguous United States...most people think it is much smaller, so our climates, wildlife, habitats, etc are all very different.  We are where the cruise ships come for the Alaskan cruises and it is green here year-round.  It does freeze, and there were a couple of weeks where we had 20 degree weather and that wasn't fun, but for the most part our weather mirrors that of Seattle --just more rain!  The benefit to homesteading here is that there are plenty of places with no taxes, there is no state income tax (you actually get a paycheck from the state once a year care of the Permenent Fund Dividend -$1300/person last year) and we have some of the highest rates on personal freedoms compared to the rest of the states in the US.  Not so high on coporate, though!

[akemt]

Sorry, for some reason this thing won't let me move my cursor...REALLY annoying.  How dare I click away from the reply box!?  Anyway, there is a hospital where we are planning to move and homestead (though we'll be on a neighboring island to it), it just doesn't have an OB.

Homesteading-wise it is a VERY good area.  It can be harder to grow some of the traditional fruits/veggies.  Berries grow like weeds here, literally, and things like carrots, lettuce, zuchini, potatoes, peas, chard, spinach, cabbage, apples, etc grow well here.  Most anything else can grow if you've got a greenhouse.  We get TONS of light in the Summer, just fairly wet and not a ton of heat.  The difference is, though, that this land is SO full of food that grows wild it is almost unreasonable.  You've got to be an idiot to starve here!  So a mix of gardening, gathering, livestock and hunting and fishing means you'll have plenty of food.

Thanks for the response!  It appears this forum is fairly slow?

[ElizabethE]

Lately it's been a little slow, but sometimes it gets hopping. I hope we get another flurry of positive activity around here, soon! :)

[Multimomma]

Elizabeth is right, it changes from time to time! Welcome and congrats on your move...I'd love to do that. Maybe not with kids though lol!

I'm Melissa, I come and go based on if I'm nursing, if the kids are in 'recess' (we unschool) or if I'm sick. lol, so it's really random, I might spend a few hours on, or not come in for days. And I don't usually post unless I feel like it will be helpful to someone, so I do a lot of reading. lol

[howdeepistheocean]

Akemt...I Pm'd you some more questions about homesteading in Alaska, so as not to flood the Unassisted board with non-relevant information...did you get it?