Ten years have elapsed since I bought the abandoned house and wooded acreage that became Dogpatch of the North. This online journal tells the story of my life here, and my efforts to discover anew how to live close to the earth. If you are content to read that story as it unfolds, there is no need to jump ahead to this epilogue. But if you want a quick synopsis of how it all has turned out so far, here it is:
As I have observed elsewhere ([1][2][3]), we need to forsake the linear model of industrialization, with its scarce resources at one end and its toxic waste at the other, and relearn the circular and renewable pattern found in Nature. Ironically, the passage of the months and years also reveals the opposite pattern. That is, that, ultimately, life is indeed linear. This world had a beginning, and is marching toward an end. All things eventually wind down. And each man's life winds down, and progresses toward an end, including Jerry DePyper's life. Not that, in my later 50's, I am completely decrepit, but the trajectory is obvious.
Even more important is to me is the deepening of the moral malaise which encumbers this present culture. This blog post explains that concern in greater detail.
All this is to say that I have gradually come to focus on starting a new chapter of my life, no big rush, but probably soon. To that end, I have been fixing up my house, still keeping efficiency and non-consumerism values in mind, but also with a view toward marketability, so that I can sell Dogpatch of the North, and move on to something else. (You may have noticed the "Dogpatch For Sale" ad.)
Here's what I mean: In the intervening years, I have carefully and thoroughly insulated the house, completely rewired and plumbed it, put a new roof on, drove a new well, replaced most of the windows and doors, water-proofed the foundation, and little by little made the house more livable in many various ways. These steps will all be recounted as they happened, in the pages of the journal. In the beginning, focused as I was upon living close to earth, I used a composting toilet, and built my own solar water heater for summer, and ran pipes through my wood stove in the winter, to heat my domestic water. I still use those things myself, but have now added an off-peak electric water heater, for both efficiency and marketability. Likewise, I have installed an up to code septic system, but have kept the greywater drains separate both for efficiency and future flexibility.
I'm still growing vegetables organically, mostly living on what I grow, and selling at the farmers' markets. I still cut and chop my own wood by hand for firewood. To save my waning energy, I no longer keep animals of any sort. With the time saved there, I spend a chunk of every week on the computer, a little sedentary break from manual work. And that's where things stand at this point in time (early 2009).
