RPF0414-Donald_Byrne_interview
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00:02:40.000 | [Music]
00:02:56.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, the show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills,
00:03:00.400 | insight and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now
00:03:04.500 | while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:03:07.500 | My name is Joshua Sheets and I'm your host.
00:03:10.000 | Today, we tackle the subject of off-grid living.
00:03:13.000 | What would it be like if you chose to move out to the woods,
00:03:17.100 | set up a compound and figure out how to make a living completely off-grid?
00:03:22.000 | [Music]
00:03:28.400 | Last week, I was preparing the outline for my episode number 409,
00:03:35.700 | which is called "How to Get Yourself Put Six Feet Under Dirt Cheap."
00:03:38.700 | One of the aspects of that that I thought was really interesting
00:03:41.300 | was people who make simple pine coffins for people to be buried in.
00:03:45.600 | Well, in looking for cheap plans, I stumbled across these $5 pine coffin plans
00:03:49.900 | that were listed there and they were hosted on a site called piedmontpinecoffins.com.
00:03:55.700 | I started checking around and I read this guy's story.
00:03:57.900 | He had an awesome story where he's kind of living out in the woods,
00:04:01.500 | completely off-grid in North Carolina.
00:04:03.700 | And he makes his living with this little cottage business.
00:04:06.300 | So, I dropped him an email and wanted to check with him
00:04:10.600 | to see if he'd be willing to come on the show and he was.
00:04:14.000 | Enjoy this interview with Don Byrne and find out how he went off-grid in 2007
00:04:21.000 | in order to live his vision of a radical, simple lifestyle.
00:04:25.500 | Don, welcome to Radical Personal Finance.
00:04:27.400 | Nice to be with you, Joshua.
00:04:28.900 | I stumbled across your website, piedmontpinecoffins.com,
00:04:32.900 | the other day when I was researching a show that I was doing
00:04:36.100 | on how to get stuck in the ground pretty cheap.
00:04:38.400 | And I came across your $5 coffin plan.
00:04:40.900 | I thought that was a great resource and wanted to share it.
00:04:43.200 | But as I was reading a little bit about your story,
00:04:46.400 | it seems like you do this crazy, weird, off-grid, simple living approach
00:04:51.900 | and you operate a business at the same time.
00:04:54.400 | And I just thought, "This sounds like a perfect,
00:04:57.100 | a very perfect Radical Personal Finance story."
00:04:59.700 | And I wanted to get you on the line.
00:05:00.600 | I just hear a little bit more about your story.
00:05:05.600 | So, first of all, am I accurate?
00:05:06.900 | You live off the grid here in the South and you have a business
00:05:10.200 | and you live totally off the grid.
00:05:11.700 | Is that right?
00:05:13.400 | That's exactly right.
00:05:14.900 | Those are the things we've been aiming for since 2007
00:05:18.400 | when it was actually my father and I,
00:05:21.400 | we made the transition from sort of urban life
00:05:25.700 | out into the countryside of central North Carolina.
00:05:29.100 | So, first of all, describe a little bit of your lifestyle.
00:05:32.100 | I've seen some pictures and read a little bit of your writing online.
00:05:34.900 | But of course, my listeners, this is their first introduction to you.
00:05:39.900 | So, share with us a little bit about your lifestyle
00:05:41.900 | and what life looks like for you and why that was important to you.
00:05:44.900 | Sure, Joshua.
00:05:48.400 | The farm is 32 acres of woods and fields.
00:05:52.900 | And when we bought it, it was kind of bare land.
00:05:57.400 | Nothing built up on there.
00:05:58.700 | It used to be cow pastures in central North Carolina.
00:06:03.700 | And my dad and I, we had this vision.
00:06:07.700 | This was back in 2007, kind of right before the real estate crash of 2008.
00:06:14.700 | And we had this vision of doing something fun together.
00:06:19.700 | And we had also this secondary vision of learning new skills,
00:06:23.700 | sort of simple skills, old-timey skills
00:06:26.700 | that might help people survive if things got rougher and tougher for any reason down the road.
00:06:34.700 | And both of those motivations, sort of the positive one,
00:06:39.700 | which was learning new skills and doing something fun together,
00:06:42.700 | and also sort of the negative one, the more fearful side of,
00:06:46.700 | "Oh, wow, what if there's some type of collapse in society?"
00:06:51.700 | Both of those have turned out to be kind of awesome,
00:06:53.700 | sustaining motivations for us as we kept going.
00:06:57.700 | So you bought 32 acres without any major infrastructure on it.
00:07:02.700 | Where did you start?
00:07:06.700 | Right. Great question.
00:07:07.700 | We started with water, putting in some deep wells.
00:07:12.700 | And we started then with some access, driveways.
00:07:17.700 | And that process took about six months to get done.
00:07:22.700 | After that, it was time to put in a garden and get the cabins started.
00:07:26.700 | So there are -- in our county, there's a regulation about --
00:07:32.700 | sort of about the size of a structure before you fall under the building code.
00:07:37.700 | So what we decided to do, Josh, was build 12-by-12 structures,
00:07:42.700 | the largest size that was acceptable, 12-by-12 cabins.
00:07:48.700 | And we kind of set it up, if you believe it, sort of like a little monastery,
00:07:56.700 | where it was my dad and his monk cell, and I had my -- a cabin that was my little cell,
00:08:02.700 | and then we would come together in the refectory in the kitchen.
00:08:06.700 | So originally there were three structures, and it worked out great.
00:08:12.700 | Has that expanded now beyond three?
00:08:15.700 | It has.
00:08:17.700 | There are various storage sheds and garden sheds that we've added.
00:08:22.700 | And the personnel at the little monastery has changed.
00:08:27.700 | I laugh when I say that because, of course, we're not a monastery,
00:08:30.700 | though we take inspiration from some monastic values
00:08:34.700 | and homesteader values down through the ages.
00:08:37.700 | The personnel changed.
00:08:38.700 | Now there's -- in what used to be my little cell, my little cabin,
00:08:42.700 | there's now four human beings living there, my wife and two small children.
00:08:46.700 | Congratulations.
00:08:47.700 | And is your dad still with you as well?
00:08:49.700 | My dad, for health reasons, has moved to an apartment in a nearby town.
00:08:56.700 | And so that cabin that he used to occupy is now the wood workshop for Piedmont Pine Coffins.
00:09:04.700 | Nice.
00:09:05.700 | So up until now you've still maintained this habit of building --
00:09:10.700 | I'm throwing in all kinds of monasterial words --
00:09:13.700 | this habit of building cabins smaller than 12 foot by 12 foot so that you can avoid the building codes?
00:09:19.700 | That's correct.
00:09:20.700 | That's correct, yes.
00:09:21.700 | Now there's always the chance that in the future as the kids get older and they might need their own bedrooms,
00:09:29.700 | who knows?
00:09:30.700 | Who knows what we'll do?
00:09:31.700 | In fact, Joshua, this might be a good time to say one thing you find when you try to do an alternative living situation,
00:09:45.700 | you know, alternative to the mortgaged house or an alternative to the on-grid lifestyle,
00:09:50.700 | you find that the systems that society has set up have pretty sticky tentacles.
00:09:58.700 | Yeah, I would imagine it would be hard to build a larger house without having it fully meeting all of the code,
00:10:06.700 | including electrical code, plumbing code, et cetera.
00:10:09.700 | Exactly, yeah.
00:10:12.700 | And one issue we're facing right now is that the insurance on the property,
00:10:18.700 | the kind of liability insurance on the property has lapsed for one reason or another.
00:10:26.700 | And trying to get new insurance is a nightmare because everyone, even the Farm Bureau, the Farm Agency,
00:10:33.700 | will say something like, "Wait, you don't have a home out there that we can use as an anchor for this insurance?"
00:10:41.700 | And so they say, "No, we can't talk any further."
00:10:44.700 | Wow.
00:10:45.700 | So why does your property need to be off-grid?
00:10:48.700 | Let's see. It doesn't need to be. Yeah, it doesn't need to be.
00:10:56.700 | I think really it was more of a challenge that my dad and I gave to ourselves in the beginning as a fun challenge.
00:11:05.700 | And who knows why, what influences in our lives made us open to that possibility.
00:11:12.700 | And then as we've gone on, it's sort of been a challenge to keep up with that,
00:11:19.700 | to keep going deeper into that possibility and keep finding creative ways to live like that.
00:11:26.700 | Do you think you'll change in the future?
00:11:31.700 | I have a feeling that in the next three or four years there will be another structure out there with an electric freezer.
00:11:42.700 | I think that would be kind of the next step.
00:11:45.700 | One of the goals of living on a farmstead with monastic inspirations or homestead inspirations down through the ages
00:11:56.700 | would be to be self-sufficient in food.
00:12:00.700 | And we do have animals, flocks of sheep and chickens.
00:12:05.700 | And so it really helps to be able to freeze those for eating down the road.
00:12:12.700 | Usually when people are off-grid, it's often more situational,
00:12:17.700 | such as they buy a piece of property and the property is so remote that it's just simply not practical for them to pay the fees to get connected to the power grid.
00:12:25.700 | And it's simpler and easier for them to just build an off-grid system.
00:12:32.700 | Other people, of course, want to be off-grid because they're concerned about being dependent and reliant on the power grid.
00:12:40.700 | And so they prefer just to be dependent and reliant upon their own system.
00:12:43.700 | But it sounds to me like your decision was more in line with your admiration of monasteries and the love of the simple life.
00:12:52.700 | Is that right?
00:12:54.700 | That's a fair statement.
00:12:56.700 | Yeah, that would be sort of the biggest motivation for us.
00:12:59.700 | And the great thing, my great fortune is that my wife heard about it and she agreed to it and has come to love it as well.
00:13:10.700 | So I feel really lucky about that.
00:13:12.700 | It's hard not to walk into – I remember a couple of summers ago I was in an Amish house in – I guess it was Ohio.
00:13:22.700 | And it was a nice, beautiful, large Amish house.
00:13:24.700 | And I was just admiring – I was being given a tour and I was admiring how it had the – but with their use of gas for lighting, they had the convenience of on-demand lighting.
00:13:38.700 | Of course, they had heating facilities.
00:13:41.700 | So it was warm.
00:13:42.700 | It's hard to get around that requirement.
00:13:44.700 | And simple cooking facilities with gas.
00:13:48.700 | And of course, they also had propane refrigeration.
00:13:50.700 | But with the lack of electricity, the house was just peaceful.
00:13:53.700 | It just had that simple, peaceful air to it.
00:13:57.700 | There wasn't whirring and humming from all of the electronic devices.
00:14:01.700 | There wasn't the invasion of sound with all the noise pollution from the TV and radio.
00:14:06.700 | It was just a very peaceful place.
00:14:08.700 | So I can see the attraction in that.
00:14:10.700 | Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yes.
00:14:12.700 | Yes, I would agree with that.
00:14:14.700 | My comment following on that would be that during the winter, which is for the little kids when school starts, it's so much easier to get them to go to bed.
00:14:26.700 | The sun goes down early and it's a very natural thing for their bodies to fall asleep at 7 or 6 or 7 right after the sun has gone down.
00:14:36.700 | I'm curious about something.
00:14:38.700 | I've read that historically in the pre-industrialized era that it was very normal for humans to sleep in shifts.
00:14:49.700 | Oftentimes, there would be the first sleep and the second sleep.
00:14:53.700 | So people would go to bed at an early time.
00:14:56.700 | They would wake up and they would kind of hang out in the middle of the night together for an hour, a couple hours, depending on the situation.
00:15:03.700 | Sometimes, they would visit with neighbors.
00:15:05.700 | Sometimes, visit with people in their household.
00:15:06.700 | And then they would go back to sleep for their second sleep.
00:15:09.700 | And based upon the research I did a couple years ago, it seemed like it was – that was verified.
00:15:15.700 | At least there was substantial evidence in that direction from literary history as well.
00:15:19.700 | Are you aware of that and does that happen to you?
00:15:23.700 | The second sleep, yes.
00:15:26.700 | Especially in the winter, I found myself falling into that pattern and I really, really enjoy it.
00:15:32.700 | What typically would happen to me is I would get very sleepy right after eating dinner and would fall asleep by the wood stove or fall asleep as the children were going to bed.
00:15:45.700 | And then would sleep for two or three hours and get up around 11 and perhaps go to the workshop for two hours and then go back to sleep for a second sleep.
00:15:57.700 | So, yeah, it has happened to me and I have heard of that and I can vouch for it to a certain extent.
00:16:03.700 | How interesting.
00:16:04.700 | So, you went from – just to be clear, before 2007, you were living a relatively mainstream lifestyle, right?
00:16:11.700 | With all of the modern accoutrement that we all use.
00:16:15.700 | Is that right?
00:16:16.700 | Yes.
00:16:18.700 | And then you made this almost violent transition.
00:16:22.700 | What's been the biggest benefits that you have noticed for yourself?
00:16:27.700 | Yeah, there's this satisfaction that – I would say in two directions.
00:16:36.700 | The great satisfaction that comes with downsizing and simplifying.
00:16:40.700 | I know there's many, many people out there who could identify with that.
00:16:45.700 | When you have only a 12 by 12 space to organize your books, your clothes, it just feels really good to be working with less stuff.
00:16:57.700 | And so that would be one great area of satisfaction.
00:17:03.700 | Another one would be – I would say there's this thrill that comes for me when I realize that certain parts of my existence, my actual staying alive, that I'm now responsible for.
00:17:19.700 | And two examples I could give of that would be the firewood, making sure there's enough firewood, actually cutting it, actually splitting it, actually carrying it into the house and making a fire.
00:17:31.700 | Or else you're not going to be warm and you'll be miserable.
00:17:35.700 | That feels really good and surprisingly I enjoy all of that labor.
00:17:42.700 | And then there's the part about not being connected to the – how would you call it?
00:17:50.700 | Not the electrical grid but the plumbing grid or the sewer grid.
00:17:55.700 | I get satisfaction out of the fact that we're kind of taking care of our own human waste on the farmstead through outhouses and composting and whatnot.
00:18:10.700 | So it's – that sense of responsibility gives a lot of satisfaction.
00:18:15.700 | I would imagine that when you just look around and recognize that you can eliminate or massively reduce your own waste stream, that can lead to a great deal of personal satisfaction.
00:18:25.700 | What has been the most difficult aspects of this life change for you?
00:18:30.700 | That comes from the – there's a tension. There's a tension between remaining involved with the society of school, the society of work, and then your alternative sort of personal local lifestyle.
00:18:53.700 | There's a great tension there.
00:18:55.700 | I think in some ways, Joshua, a change to an off-grid lifestyle would be simpler or would have less tension if you were never going to leave, if you were sort of like you said earlier, going to live in a very remote place.
00:19:12.700 | You weren't planning to come to town much, if ever.
00:19:18.700 | However, I have small children and at one point I was a school teacher.
00:19:25.700 | So I had to – how would you say? I had to maintain appearances and show up to work looking a certain way.
00:19:34.700 | I had to – you have to drive places and so you have to have a device sometimes for school or job or to fit into that other world.
00:19:47.700 | You have to have devices like phones and iPads and things for your kids as well.
00:19:52.700 | So there's that tension I would say where you feel like, "Oh, I'm not maximizing the potential of this alternative lifestyle because I still have a foot in the other world."
00:20:06.700 | But that's OK.
00:20:08.700 | It's hard but good.
00:20:10.700 | I mean we're doing a Skype interview right now, which is clearly not being done disconnected from the grid.
00:20:14.700 | You have come into a coffee shop and you're using the internet connection at the coffee shop in order to speak to me.
00:20:20.700 | So you're right in the middle of modern society and yet when you go home, you'll be in the middle of what? The 1800s I guess.
00:20:28.700 | Right, right.
00:20:30.700 | And just down the road, less than a quarter mile is a cell phone tower.
00:20:34.700 | So one thing I've come to find is that the consumerism – and I'm sure you've talked about this and dealt with this in your own work and your own website.
00:20:45.700 | The consumerism that is baked into the American lifestyle, it's in our hearts.
00:20:54.700 | It's deep in our hearts and it's hard to get rid of even after you downsize, even after you do that perhaps multiple times in the last 10 years that I've been living off the grid.
00:21:08.700 | Your tendency to accumulate or think that happiness can come from things, it just keeps coming back at you because it starts real early and it's kind of seeded in our hearts.
00:21:21.700 | How would you say in the Western capitalist lifestyle?
00:21:26.700 | I'd love to talk a little bit about the finances and just have you share as much as you're willing because I think many people would admire what you've done.
00:21:37.700 | And yet there are benefits of it and some of those benefits could be financial.
00:21:42.700 | But I'd like to start first with your business which as I understand from your website is your primary means of support having a cash inflow to your household.
00:21:52.700 | What's the story behind Piedmont Pine Coffins?
00:21:55.700 | The story there is my wife and I were looking for something that could be done with a minimal input of capital right at the start.
00:22:07.700 | So basically that means buying certain tools.
00:22:10.700 | It could be done off the grid.
00:22:12.700 | We wouldn't have to build a factory to start this business and also was sort of – had a good business model and potential to it.
00:22:23.700 | And believe it or not, we got the idea from certain monasteries that do this.
00:22:27.700 | Certain monasteries that are – how would you call it?
00:22:31.700 | They're not active.
00:22:32.700 | They're not the kind that run hospitals or run schools out in the world.
00:22:37.700 | They're the kind of monks that they stay and pray basically in their monastery and they need something to do to make their daily bread.
00:22:45.700 | And some of them actually bake bread.
00:22:48.700 | There's one in New York that does that, New York State.
00:22:51.700 | You're probably familiar with the famous ones that make beer and cheese.
00:22:55.700 | The Trappist monks.
00:22:56.700 | Yeah, that's the story behind the Trappist monks, right?
00:23:00.700 | There's I guess one of the either most expensive or most highly praised beers.
00:23:06.700 | A friend of mine shared a bottle with me one time, the Trappist Rockfort, something like that.
00:23:10.700 | Uh-huh.
00:23:11.700 | Yes, you're exactly right.
00:23:13.700 | And then there's the famous phrase from Thomas Merton who tongue-in-cheek said, "Cheese is for Jesus."
00:23:19.700 | What did that mean?
00:23:21.700 | The creation of that as a product?
00:23:24.700 | Yeah, a monastery in Kentucky, that's how they made their money, making cheeses.
00:23:30.700 | Cheese is for Jesus. I like it.
00:23:32.700 | Sometimes he felt – I think as a mystic, he felt that the cart was before the horse sometimes with the business aspect of the monastery.
00:23:42.700 | Indeed.
00:23:43.700 | So you came across the inspiration that one monastery did woodworking and created these coffins.
00:23:48.700 | That's right. That's right.
00:23:51.700 | So I'm sort of copying an idea from a monastery in Iowa and one in – also one in New Orleans or Louisiana.
00:23:59.700 | Before we go on to more of that story, tell me more of the businesses.
00:24:03.700 | So bread baking, beer making, coffin making, cheese making.
00:24:07.700 | Can you think of any other monastery businesses?
00:24:09.700 | Catalog businesses for prayerful items like cards, vocational – how would you say it?
00:24:20.700 | Prayer books.
00:24:23.700 | There are all kinds of catalog items, food catalog items like popcorn, specialty popcorns, specialty jams and jellies.
00:24:33.700 | Those are a few that I know of.
00:24:35.700 | That's interesting. That would be a valuable area for some of my listeners who may be looking for home-based businesses to do research in that area
00:24:44.700 | because this has been a long – this idea of having a business that's near the home place can be done under the same roof or in close quarters and doesn't require a great disruption of lifestyle.
00:24:58.700 | There's a long history there with the monasteries needing to earn enough in order to support themselves but having a desire for a sense of serenity and simplicity.
00:25:09.700 | So those are some great ideas. Keep going with your story behind the coffin business.
00:25:14.700 | So we started in 2013 and the good news is that the – year over year, now we're in 2017.
00:25:23.700 | Things have been positive, growing positively every year slowly.
00:25:27.700 | We needed to grow a little bit faster. However, I'm really happy with the way things are turning out.
00:25:33.700 | So your primary business is the creation by hand using hand tools, non-powered tools.
00:25:39.700 | You build custom-ordered and also some standardized pine coffins for people who desire a simpler coffin. Is that right?
00:25:49.700 | That's exactly right. The hardest part with hand tools is getting the corners right and also building a big enough panel, a wide enough panel, so that you can make the sides and the lid of the coffin.
00:26:06.700 | My solution to that has been to use tongue and groove joints.
00:26:10.700 | There's this fantastic old-fashioned plane, plane meaning that tool that peels off little thin layers of the wood at a time as you pass it over the wood surface.
00:26:22.700 | There's a plane called a tongue and groove plane and that makes a joint where you're familiar with tongue and groove.
00:26:30.700 | The tongue slips into a groove and you glue those together and it looks really nice.
00:26:35.700 | How did you originally start your marketing plan?
00:26:40.700 | Right. Well, we knew that certain groups in society favor this type of product already.
00:26:51.700 | So we hit those pretty hard and that would be of the three Abrahamic faiths, the Jewish folks and the Muslim folks.
00:27:02.700 | They already do this and this is what they want.
00:27:05.700 | So it was very targeted marketing at the start.
00:27:09.700 | Surprisingly, it hasn't worked out so well with those groups.
00:27:13.700 | Most of our sales right now are internet sales where people find us on the net and also local funeral homes.
00:27:24.700 | We've been successful in getting a few local funeral homes to give us some attention.
00:27:30.700 | Although that's hard because historically they already have their business model and their contract set up and their cash flow going.
00:27:40.700 | You build all of these entirely by yourself or do you have a staff of people working with you?
00:27:47.700 | So far it's only me. I buy planks from a local mill.
00:27:52.700 | So this is North Carolina Southern Yellow Pine that comes from a short radius right around Central North Carolina.
00:28:01.700 | The planks are already planed when I pick them up and I take it from there with the hand tools.
00:28:08.700 | And you ship them all over the place or just locally?
00:28:13.700 | Yes, in an exciting development. We just scored our first sort of retail sale.
00:28:20.700 | A retail store, a natural burial retail store is opening next month in north of New York City and they're carrying our products.
00:28:29.700 | Do you think this business is replicatable for others with similar values to your own?
00:28:36.700 | I do think so. I think there could be one in every state to be quite honest.
00:28:46.700 | You know, there are so many funeral homes that it takes a lot of convincing.
00:28:52.700 | I won't say it has. I won't say it's been easy.
00:28:57.700 | There are already hand tool and small time coffin makers in Nova Scotia, in Charlotte, in Washington.
00:29:09.700 | There's one in Arizona. So they're already peppered around the United States and I think there's room for more.
00:29:16.700 | How much do you sell your coffins for?
00:29:20.700 | We have the plans, as you mentioned. A person can buy the plans and make their own coffin for under $200.
00:29:28.700 | And you know, that's fantastic. I highly recommend it.
00:29:34.700 | There's also a model we sell for $800, for $1,200 and for $1,800.
00:29:40.700 | And the one that costs the most, it's because of those corners, which I said are so important to get right in a box that needs to be strong.
00:29:50.700 | And so with that box, we do hand cut dovetail corners.
00:29:57.700 | And that's hard to do and it takes a long time. So that's why it costs so much.
00:30:02.700 | I was just struck by this increasing flow of people back to simpler items.
00:30:09.700 | Artisanal, hand-worked items definitely have a strong appeal in the marketplace.
00:30:14.700 | And so if somebody's looking just to save money, of course they could do a DIY using your plans, as you said, for under $200 of materials.
00:30:24.700 | But to me, just the simplicity and the simple beauty of a simple pine box certainly has an appeal to many of us.
00:30:35.700 | And it's just a neat business.
00:30:37.700 | I'd love to hear more about the finances of the homestead.
00:30:42.700 | Do you have any sense of what it costs you to live a lifestyle like you're living or how much money your family spends as compared to the average US American household?
00:30:51.700 | Yes, I don't have at my fingertips hard numbers for you.
00:30:57.700 | I did, however, think about this ahead of time, Joshua.
00:31:00.700 | And what I came up with is the general rule that it's cheaper, but it's not cheap.
00:31:08.700 | In other words, we have fewer bills.
00:31:12.700 | And because of that tension I mentioned earlier, we still have costs out in the world.
00:31:18.700 | So how should I put this?
00:31:23.700 | It's not cheap to -- it wasn't cheap to build those cabins in the beginning.
00:31:28.700 | It wasn't cheap to -- it's never cheap to maintain an automobile or to own an automobile, those kinds of things.
00:31:39.700 | And so I could easily see ways to do it with less startup capital than we did.
00:31:52.700 | In our case, my dad had sold a house in Pennsylvania right before the real estate crash.
00:31:59.700 | So he had some capital to help this project get off the ground.
00:32:04.700 | What if you were 220-somethings who had never had a job before?
00:32:09.700 | It might be harder.
00:32:12.700 | You might find yourself needing some provisional housing before building a permanent structure.
00:32:18.700 | Does that answer your question about sort of the sense of things I have?
00:32:24.700 | Yeah, especially when you start moving into a rural environment.
00:32:27.700 | Many things in a rural environment are just simply going to cost more.
00:32:30.700 | Things that would be inexpensive in an urban environment can be very expensive in a rural environment.
00:32:35.700 | First, many people who are buying move to a rural environment because they can buy land at a lower cost.
00:32:43.700 | But yet then anytime you go into town or anytime you try to get something, it's going to be miles on the car, fuel used up, et cetera.
00:32:52.700 | And then when you're starting everything from scratch, my guess would be that it would be far cheaper and easier to buy an old house with a little bit of land in the middle of the city and move in
00:33:03.700 | because you can get going right away versus buying everything from scratch.
00:33:06.700 | I remember when I first became a homeowner, I went to the big box store to buy a box of nails.
00:33:14.700 | And I was stunned at how expensive nails were.
00:33:17.700 | It's just one of those things that you never really count the cost of when you're just using a couple here and there.
00:33:22.700 | But when you need a whole box or when you're going to build a project, you're going to be spending a lot of money on nails.
00:33:27.700 | And all of those costs come right at the beginning to build out your infrastructure.
00:33:31.700 | So even if you can dispense with the costs, some of the costs of electricity, plumbing, et cetera, first, you still have to replace the functionality in a different way.
00:33:40.700 | And also, you still have all of the hard costs of getting things started.
00:33:45.700 | So definitely, I don't think it's for those.
00:33:48.700 | Those who don't have capital should not move to the country to set up an off-grid lifestyle.
00:33:53.700 | That's a really fair way to put it, Joshua.
00:33:57.700 | Now, like I said, I could imagine a cheaper way to do it than we did.
00:34:02.700 | For example, I don't think there's any government authority that could prevent me from pitching a tent on land that I own or having a teepee or perhaps even a movable yurt and using that as a semi-permanent situation.
00:34:23.700 | I don't think they could really have any say over that.
00:34:27.700 | It's your land and as long as you pay the real estate taxes, what are they going to say about a tent?
00:34:33.700 | What? I can't camp here?
00:34:34.700 | However, as soon as you start getting close to those sticky tentacles of building codes and things like that, yeah, then it starts to cost money.
00:34:46.700 | And also, your own personal level of skills will make a huge difference.
00:34:52.700 | In the old days, the reason that a homesteader could go out and carve a lifestyle out of a section of land, one of the reasons was they had significant skills and significant knowledge.
00:35:04.700 | And many of them didn't make it.
00:35:06.700 | But yet they had a basic understanding and a basic experience in a diverse array of skills that today are practically lost.
00:35:13.700 | And to replace those skills, to be able to go and to build or to build with traditional tools, traditional equipment, to know how to grow, to know how to care for animals, etc., there's a huge amount of knowledge that has to be built up.
00:35:26.700 | That's just not a common heritage for us today.
00:35:29.700 | And then also, what's the basic level of comfort?
00:35:33.700 | As I've studied old-time homesteaders, there's a reason why, although you could build a house out of sod in the western plains of the United States, cutting chunks of dirt and grass out and build a house, you could do that.
00:35:46.700 | But there's a reason why everyone who had a sod house couldn't wait to get into a house made out of wood because it was a dreadful existence.
00:35:53.700 | And when you think about modern society, you were fortunate to attract a wife that was interested in that.
00:36:00.700 | Things like that, other people might not be so interested in actually coming and joining you for your adventure.
00:36:07.700 | And so you've got to maintain a certain social standing just for the hope of attracting to you other people who are willing to make a change from the modern society but not yet to go down to that lowest of existence.
00:36:22.700 | Yes, you're exactly right.
00:36:25.700 | And back when I used to be a teacher for several years in the local school system, there wasn't a day that I'm aware of where I showed up to work.
00:36:37.700 | And mind you, I taught ninth graders and tenth graders, so there's some of the harshest opinions out there.
00:36:43.700 | And there wasn't a day that I showed up where someone said, "Wow, that's a strange, strange man. He must not live in a normal way.
00:36:53.700 | His clothes are dirty or his hair is oily," or something like that.
00:36:58.700 | And like you say, you have to maintain a certain social acceptance unless you don't have that type of job anymore.
00:37:09.700 | And I do feel that since I went full time with Piedmont Pine Coffins that I have changed.
00:37:16.700 | I have changed in certain ways.
00:37:19.700 | There's certain things that used to be no – I couldn't get away with.
00:37:25.700 | Now I can. Now I can wear the same work clothes, wear the same pants for three days in a row if I'd like to.
00:37:34.700 | And that freedom is really enjoyable, believe me.
00:37:39.700 | My wife and I have enjoyed watching a couple of these reality shows where they send young modern couples out into the wilderness.
00:37:46.700 | And there was one that the Canadians did. I can't come up with the name of it.
00:37:51.700 | But they sent two couples out into the Canadian tundra – tundra isn't the right word – into the Canadian plains.
00:38:00.700 | And they were instructed to build cabins and live out there for a year.
00:38:05.700 | And it was much better than the PBS one. It was just much more real.
00:38:10.700 | One of the first things – one of the first changes that people quickly changed was modern sanitary standards.
00:38:20.700 | It's very difficult to maintain this idea of a bath a day and fresh clothes every day.
00:38:26.700 | You can't do that without some of the modern technology.
00:38:29.700 | At least – never mind. You did it. But you can't do it without a lot of extra focus and a lot of extra work.
00:38:34.700 | Yeah. Yeah, you're exactly right.
00:38:37.700 | And two of the secrets here – I'll tell you two of the kind of the biggest changes that might interest your podcast listeners.
00:38:48.700 | The first one is bucket baths. That has been – for most of my family, that has proven to be the solution.
00:38:59.700 | Sure, there's an outdoor shower that we've built with a gravity-fed water system.
00:39:03.700 | And that works great when the black hose is in the sun and it's 80 degrees or above outside.
00:39:10.700 | But for the other 10 months of the year, the best thing to do is heat some water.
00:39:16.700 | We do have a propane burner in our living cabin.
00:39:21.700 | Heat some water and take sort of a bath in the bucket by the fireplace.
00:39:26.700 | And it's – if you look at it in a certain way, it's quite romantic as far as an experience, a rich, earthy living experience.
00:39:36.700 | And yeah, I just love it and it's worked for 10 years.
00:39:40.700 | The other part that's a big change is not having indoor plumbing.
00:39:47.700 | And so what does a family do for when you're brushing your teeth?
00:39:52.700 | What do you do when you wash your hands inside?
00:39:55.700 | So check it out. We brought back – you'll love this – the ancient concept of the spittoon or the – yeah, the bucket.
00:40:07.700 | There's a bucket. And yeah, so that's a collection point for all the gray water in sort of the daily routines of the household.
00:40:16.700 | And since our cabin is in the wood, that can be simply pitched out into the – to nourish the trees.
00:40:23.700 | One disappointment that I've had over the years is that I realize that even though the system works for us, that it's – that not everything we do is scalable.
00:40:36.700 | Can you just imagine if everyone in the city started pitching their gray water out the windows?
00:40:42.700 | Or if everybody needed to – in the whole western hemisphere decided to heat with firewood again.
00:40:49.700 | So I hope people can do something to make – to pick alternates and pick meaningful choices to change their lives.
00:41:01.700 | It's just that not everyone can do exactly this.
00:41:04.700 | Right, right. Yeah, if you want to know what it's like, just go visit any slum or favela in a third world country and you'll quickly find out what a blessing it is when people have plumbing that works well.
00:41:17.700 | Right, right.
00:41:19.700 | I personally – I don't understand why we constantly choose to contaminate our drinking water with human feces.
00:41:28.700 | But on the other hand, I find it difficult to argue with the dramatic health impacts and benefits that that has provided in what I know of human history.
00:41:37.700 | So my thought – before I do, I want to ask you a question.
00:41:42.700 | Are you a purist in this approach for example?
00:41:45.700 | Do you use a flashlight if you need to go out to the outhouse at night and you're not going to use a chamber pot in the house?
00:41:51.700 | Do you use a flashlight or do you – are you a purist in the sense that you take your gas lantern with you?
00:41:56.700 | We've done both, Joshua.
00:41:59.700 | We've done – we've tried lots of different things.
00:42:02.700 | And for many years, we used camping headlamps, so a little Petzl headlamp.
00:42:11.700 | For many years, I used regular lead batteries in those and only recently was able to set up a solar recharging station for those, which I feel much better about.
00:42:23.700 | So no, I'm not a purist.
00:42:25.700 | Because that to me seems to be the sweet spot is to appreciate the past and just for me.
00:42:32.700 | I'm not saying for you.
00:42:33.700 | But I look at it and I say, "What can we appreciate from the past?
00:42:36.700 | What can we learn from the past?"
00:42:38.700 | We tend to gloss over the ancient technologies.
00:42:41.700 | A simple example, you're in North Carolina.
00:42:43.700 | Just this last week, I was traveling – a couple weeks ago, I was traveling with my family and we were visiting various lighthouses.
00:42:50.700 | And I'm fascinated with the concept of being able to build a house that can be maintained cool without the need for an air conditioner.
00:43:02.700 | I'm a little bit jealous of those in northern climates because to me, the problem of how to build a house that is off-grid that can stay warm is so easily solved.
00:43:12.700 | But the problem of building a house that can stay cool without air conditioning is much bigger.
00:43:18.700 | So I was traveling – we were traveling.
00:43:21.700 | We were visiting Tybee Island, Georgia.
00:43:23.700 | And we went to the Tybee Island Lighthouse.
00:43:26.700 | And there at the lighthouse, they have restored the lighthouse and also the lighthouse keepers' cottages.
00:43:31.700 | And they've restored them back to as close to their original construction as they can do including original roofing, etc.
00:43:40.700 | Well, in this house, I was fascinated to see they had some pieces of technology which I think we would be well-served to pay attention to.
00:43:49.700 | One of the best was that they had built a cistern right underneath the kitchen.
00:43:54.700 | The house originally had an external kitchen much like you have.
00:43:58.700 | But then later they added on a kitchen onto the original structure and they built a concrete cistern right underneath the kitchen.
00:44:04.700 | And so before running water, they put in a hand pump that would just dip right down into that cistern underneath the house.
00:44:12.700 | And they had plenty of water right there in the kitchen where they needed it without needing to go outside.
00:44:17.700 | It's fantastic and to have that water storage was a really good idea.
00:44:20.700 | Another feature they had was in the actual construction of the house, they had what looked like closets.
00:44:26.700 | But upon closer inspection, they weren't closets.
00:44:29.700 | What they were is they were air ducts and they had windows that opened up to them and then curved walls.
00:44:36.700 | And the design behind them was they would use these windows as a way of collecting breezes but then diverting it with the use of the curved wall into the sitting room.
00:44:46.700 | So there'd be a constant cross flow of air right through the center of the house.
00:44:50.700 | These are aspects of technology and engineering that we don't pay a lot of attention to because they – the idea of having a house be as airy as possible is in direct contradiction with the idea of having a house being as buttoned up as possible for energy efficiency.
00:45:08.700 | So I say let's look back at those and let's understand them, the technologies, and let's try to appreciate them and then look for ways to improve them.
00:45:17.700 | Modern – I assume you're using modern nickel metal hydride rechargeable batteries in your headlamps.
00:45:25.700 | That type of a battery charger hooked up with a double A battery charger hooked up to a solar system that also has a battery backup, that is a fantastic piece of technology and is vastly superior to a kerosene lantern.
00:45:39.700 | But you're accomplishing the same type of benefits of illumination with appropriate technology that doesn't – that's not as destructive as some of the other modern ways of living.
00:45:52.700 | Yes, and as far as inexpensive funerals, something from the past that we can appreciate and we can actually skip in the modern day, in the modern funeral.
00:46:07.700 | We can skip, believe it or not, embalming.
00:46:11.700 | We can even skip a casket.
00:46:13.700 | We can skip the vault.
00:46:14.700 | We can skip the entire funeral home experience altogether if we wish.
00:46:19.700 | Part of our mission at Piedmont Pine Coffins is to let people know about an alternative or DIY type of a funeral.
00:46:28.700 | So that's a good segue.
00:46:30.700 | How did you first get interested in the concept of green burial?
00:46:34.700 | Well, when I was doing research – it had to be when I was doing research for the – for starting the business and also reflecting on the sort of the experiences I'd had with my own family members who had been buried or died in the last 20 years, things I wish had gone differently.
00:46:57.700 | In particular, looking back, now that I know what I know, I wish I'd had more time to spend in the home with my mom when she died.
00:47:09.700 | And it's so common for us to treat a dead body as a health crisis or an emergency.
00:47:21.700 | She died. Call the funeral home and let's get this dead body out of here.
00:47:29.700 | She's going to be crawling with bugs in five minutes.
00:47:31.700 | We've got to – nobody touch her.
00:47:33.700 | Yeah, exactly.
00:47:35.700 | So looking back, I wish I had more time to simply sit there and appreciate that moment.
00:47:42.700 | So another big influence in that respect is the Home Funeral Alliance.org.
00:47:51.700 | They have a website, the National Home Funeral Alliance.
00:47:54.700 | And listeners who want to know more about DIY approaches to funerals would do well to look at that website, HomeFuneralAlliance.org.
00:48:05.700 | I spent some time with – at their biennial conferences.
00:48:13.700 | And that group is really an amazing group.
00:48:17.700 | I see them as almost superhuman or extra-human persons, mostly because of their – the time they've spent in that – how would you call it?
00:48:27.700 | In that garden between the worlds.
00:48:29.700 | They've sat with dying folks and their families.
00:48:32.700 | They've sat in the room just before and just after.
00:48:36.700 | And it really changes them.
00:48:39.700 | And here's how I know it.
00:48:40.700 | They tell you simple stories of memorable deaths that they have helped with.
00:48:51.700 | And within a moment or two, you're hooked.
00:48:57.700 | And by the end of the story, you're on the edge of your seat and you're holding back tears even if you never knew the person, even if they were in a faraway state.
00:49:08.700 | And these women – they're usually women.
00:49:11.700 | Sometimes these home funeral guides are men.
00:49:14.700 | But these women are – they're simply radiant.
00:49:18.700 | And I was touched and moved by being with them.
00:49:23.700 | Yeah, when I – that was how I came across your site was just by researching that.
00:49:28.700 | And it definitely – it's hard to know the right words to use.
00:49:35.700 | It definitely does kind of seem more – it seemed – I was touched by their stories of how the process of preparing the body of a loved one for burial,
00:49:46.700 | how even just that process can be a very emotionally important process.
00:49:52.700 | It can feel very rushed to say, "OK, this person is dead.
00:49:56.700 | Now, we got to get their body out."
00:49:58.700 | But the whole traditional process of cleaning them, washing them, dressing the body, preparing it for burial can be a very emotionally satisfying time to grieve and to mourn and to weep but also to love and to serve the memory of somebody.
00:50:15.700 | As you prepare their body for burial, I definitely was also deeply attracted to it in that sense of emotional satisfaction.
00:50:23.700 | Yes, the duty to at least symbolically carry our loved ones all the way to the end and beyond it.
00:50:35.700 | I think that's what it really is.
00:50:37.700 | We carry each other and like you say that those acts of preparing the body can start the healing.
00:50:46.700 | I think it ties back into some of what perhaps you've been trying to achieve with your transition to a simpler off-the-grid lifestyle of just a sense of closeness with the normal ebb and flow of life.
00:51:00.700 | It can be very easy in our modern world to just be swept along with the current.
00:51:05.700 | So many of the simple life events that used to be so common today have taken on uncommon characteristics.
00:51:14.700 | For me, I always think of the birth of a child.
00:51:17.700 | My wife and I have chosen to have our children at home.
00:51:20.700 | Prior to having children, the only thing I ever knew of childbirth was what you would see on TV or would see in the movies which was a very jarring, draining, loud, difficult experience.
00:51:34.700 | And when we compare that to the experience of having our children in the privacy of our home in a beautiful, warm, homey atmosphere, it's just night and day.
00:51:45.700 | And I think the same way with regard to the concept of funeral. Why would you take what should be this intimate, emotional experience and disrupt it with other people and bright fluorescent lights and industrial equipment, etc., if there are ways to avoid it?
00:52:08.700 | So I definitely feel the same kind of sense of connection to the process that you described.
00:52:15.700 | Uh-huh. Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up.
00:52:18.700 | There's a saying out there, "Death is not the opposite of life," as we tend to see it.
00:52:25.700 | It's the opposite of birth.
00:52:28.700 | And I bet you're right, Josh, that the only two experiences that are that intimate are birth, the birth of a child and being there for that, and then the death of a loved one and being there for and through that.
00:52:48.700 | Right. Absolutely.
00:52:50.700 | Well, Don, this has been so interesting to hear a little bit of your story.
00:52:53.700 | And as we close here, of course, Piedmont Pine Coffins, you do beautiful work for anybody who would be interested in either the $5 coffin plans that I previously referenced on the show or in simply purchasing a completed coffin from you.
00:53:09.700 | Somebody who wants to have a beautiful handmade wooden coffin to use for themselves or for a family member, I encourage you to check out Piedmont Pine Coffins.
00:53:19.700 | For those of you who are in North Carolina who would like to buy local as well, I know there seems to me a thriving buy local movement in North Carolina.
00:53:27.700 | This could be a good option for you.
00:53:29.700 | As we go, any kind of final thoughts or words of advice to people who are interested in your story and who are interested in pursuing similar values in their own lives?
00:53:41.700 | Yeah, I would say that once you make the decision to try something alternative, then you're already 90 percent of the way there.
00:53:52.700 | The rest of it is just the slow, the slow, patient steps of trying different things and then realizing that you're already succeeding just by trying.
00:54:02.700 | So I say go for it.
00:54:04.700 | Don, thanks for coming on the show.
00:54:06.700 | Thank you very much. Nice to talk to you.
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