I have my Little House on the Prairie dreams like _refugee_, like lots of people our age. But that's all they are ever going to be, dreams.

Wakey wakey eggs and bakey.

Look - the average American burns about 13,000 kWh a year. That's in electricity - we'll ignore transport for reasons that are about to become clear. That also doesn't cover things like heating.

13,000 kWh a year is 36 kWh a day. Let's assume you work 8 hours a day... and let's assume that the only thing you do is peddle an exercise bike to generate electricity. We're going to assume that because we have the best numbers there... depending on who you ask, a cyclist in good training can generate about a quarter horsepower indefinitely. That's about a fifth of a kilowatt, by the way. So. Sitting at your Peloton, which is one of the not-connected-to-the-internet, not-screened, not-powered spinning cycles, your workday involves generating 2 kW.

You're burning 36.

Before you get on the bus or get in the car.

Before you heat a tea kettle on the stove.

Before you take a warm shower.

Before you heat the house.

___________________________________________________________

Now obviously - you can cut your consumption. You can put up a windmill. You can dam a waterfall. You can hang solar panels (we won't get into what it costs in energy to make a solar panel). But as far as your raw energy profile, your physical output as a human is a little over 5% of your physical input as a human, just in electricity (a gallon of gas is about 37kWh so if your commute is 25 miles each way you've doubled your footprint, for example, and that's if you're driving a brand new Prius).

"Off the grid" is a lovely idea but in order for you to do it, you have to consume an awful lot of resources. You want water? You need water rights. You want access? You need a variance. Even if you wanna do subsistence farming you gotta be serious about it.

The population of London is about 9 million right now. The population of London under Henry VIII was about 50,000. That delta is due to the modernization of agriculture. Little House on the Prairie was set in the 1870s, when the population of the United States was under 40 million people. It's over 400 now.

You can have your dream. But you need to recognize that as envisioned by you, it's a selfish dream. Selfish dreams cost more money than selfless ones. If you want 5 acres and independence, you need to be producing enough crops to feed a CSA with 150 shares. That probably gives you $3000 a month from April through September. That's $18,000.

So. you've got 5 acres, you're feeding yourself, and you've got $1500 a month in bills. Can you do it?

I would argue you can. It's a pain in the ass, though. So it's not that you can't dream. It's that you can't dream easy.