As I mature, my permaculture fantasies have mostly been replaced by a fantasy of financial and material austerity like this. It's a kind of vague and fleeting fantasy, but so romantic to part of me. "Look there at that side, its grass is so green," it says. Maybe this is how the painter, the one I used to imagine I'd be, would've lived.
Some go so far as to say that young Americans ought to move to foreign countries, where life is cheaper, the weather is “better,” and prospects all around seem more favorable. Yet I’m not so sure. It seems to me that there are a great many opportunities right here in our own country that would amply address the various grievances of so many of our nation’s young people. In fact, were it to be that any of those who seek a simpler, more straightforward, more affordable way of life matched themselves up with the various regions in which that kind of a life is on offer in spades — it just might make our country better. For, the places with inexpensive housing are often in great need of new blood; such places could often use the vigor, enthusiasm, and life that only young newcomers seem to bring.
For reasons I have been unable to discern, Massena is one of the poorest, least-desirable places not only in New York State, but in the United States at large. True enough; it’s very far to any large American city here — yet on the flip-side, it’s within very close distance of two major Canadian cities, and so you’d wonder if that’d make up for it. Apparently, it doesn’t. For though I personally find the area to be among my favorite in the United States, and in spite of having some of the lowest housing costs in America — the combination of distance from the rest of the US, a sub-optimal job market, a conservative culture (too conservative for the liberals), a liberal state government (too liberal for the conservatives), and perhaps above all, the endlessly “dreary” weather (which has far more upsides that it is presently popular to admit) has altogether conspired to make this place a totally forgotten hinterland.
With a flip phone for communication — at $8/mo from US Mobile — and a willingness to entertain oneself by reading books from the library and fishing, one’s total monthly expenses could look something like this:Taxes: $41 Electric: ~$30 Water: $0 Heat: Transit: $53 for a 30-ride pass for each person living there, assuming you go to town 3x per week at $2/trip. Multiple options to take the bus to town each day from this location. Food: ~$300/mo. Telephone: $8/mo Entertainment: Fishing and library, free Internet: Use libraryThis altogether totals up to about $432/mo, or $5,184/yr for a single person. And for those who might be quick to point out that there could be a dearth of jobs there, note that when people say “there are no jobs” in a given area, they generally mean that there are no jobs that could produce a normal, upper-middle-class lifestyle there. Which, even in Massena and Ogdensburg isn’t entirely true. But even if it were, the Stewart’s gas stations in both towns are actively hiring part-time cashiers at $17/hr. These places will let you work just one day a week if you like, and seem to be pretty good about flexible hours. In this case, you could work just one ten-hour shift per week, and in so doing, earn more than 30% of what you need to live well at this particular house with just four days of work per month.
