Day 59: Where To Go

Dear Student,

While the ideas discussed throughout this course can be practiced anywhere in the world, you can make it all a good bit easier on yourself by choosing to set up in a place where self-sufficient living is easiest…

This world is full of places of sunshine and plenty, where Mother Nature is kind and her bounty is easily harvested. Places where you don’t have to fight the land, nor brave danger, isolation, and snow.

In many places, the biggest struggle isn’t building shelters strong enough to survive blizzards or to chop enough firewood for a five-month freeze. There are places where your biggest struggle is to harvest the enormous bounty the land offers up… places where things never stop growing.

For examples, a well thought out food forest in the right climate takes only a single day’s work… ever. In the tropics, a self-sufficient life grows on trees year-round.

In the subtropics, I can produce nearly everything I need by planting the correct combination of trees. They will take a few years to bear fruit but will continue to bear for decades to come, and they can require practically no maintenance per year or attention for decades or centuries to come after I have spent a few moments planting them.

In the correct climate and with the correct information on self-sufficiency—using just trees if you wish—you can:

• Grow nearly all the food you need year-round.
• Grow renewable building and roofing materials.
• Grow medicines and health supplements.
• Grow fiber for ropes and fabrics.
• Generate valuable gas from the leftover wood and saw dust to run generators, vehicles, and to be used in cooking and drying.
• Generate sustainable incomes selling these products and others.

But this isn’t possible everywhere in the world…

Is your home climate harsh and unforgiving?

Do you have to spend a lot of your efforts and/or income simply staying alive where you are—keeping warm and out of the elements, spending the majority of your money on food or winter transport?

Are you unable to grow your own food or generate your own solar power due to long, dark, snow-packed winter months?

If so, a self-sufficient life will be hard to achieve and you might want to consider relocating.

Below are five places in the world I think offer the best environment for a self-sufficient life…