Founder: David Goebelt

As I write this, I don't want it to be too polished or read like a sales pitch. My goal is that you will learn something about my nature and my character to know what kind of community I want to build.

 

First and foremost, my personal pursuit is to live a Christ centered life.  I am married, father to 4 kids, and father of little Isaiah who is in Heaven already. I love exploring, nature, building things, designing complex systems and learning new things. For some reason, going off grid has always been in my mind before it was even a term I'd heard. I have a B.S. in Economics (ironically the study of the efficient allocation of scarce resources), and have been a small business owner for the last 22 years, first in insurance and for the past 5 years in construction.

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For maybe the last 30 years, I've fanaticized about buying a remote piece of property and hand building a log cabin. Over about the last 10 years that thought/passion has become more pressing and urgent in my mind. It could be the stage in my life or the age of my kids or the God has actually put it on my heart to pursue. Whatever the reason, I've evaluated countless systems to sustain an off-grid life for my family. I've inadvertently trained my oldest 2 kids (22 and 16yrs) to actually look forward to some kind of apocalypse that would force us to live off the land. While it's fun to imagine, the actual practice of it will be more dangerous and grueling than we can imagine. We, myself included, are used to a secure and comfortable life and it's hard to imagine how brave and crazy the pioneers were to venture out and settle the land we live in today.

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That being said, to become a homesteader or survivalist requires extensive training, and you would really need to leave your current life and start now to have a good chance of success. I think of myself as a capable guy and think I would have a decent chance of protecting and providing for my family in a disaster, but when I start to think about what would actually be required to survive, the list is immense. Under ideal circumstances, it would be fairly easy to survive on a stockpile of food with a long shelf life for awhile, then try to start learning farming and growing techniques as I lived off my reserves, add seeds to my stockpile, antibiotics, build a fallout bunker, get books on medical treatment and herbal medicine, but long term if I got sick or hurt, our survival chances would decrease substantially. Depending on the scenario I imagine, I might be able, with the help of my family, to defend against a few assailants, but not in a sustained way or against many more than a handful. If I had $10 million to devote to the enterprise, I may be able to passive system and vast food supply where we could survive for many years, but unfortunately I do not.

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Recently, I came to the realization that there are many others who have a similar mindset to my own. I also realized that a community base approach was the answer to many challenges including limited medical knowledge, limiting farming experience, and defending myself against outside threats. With a community, you introduce all kinds of efficiencies through economies of scale, specialization, safety in numbers and more. By pooling resources, we're able to achieve much more than independently building our own bug out cabins. With a community, you introduce some dangers, the attractiveness of large supply hordes to outside predators, intervention by the government who may think you're some kind of militant threat, or even internal takeover by some kind of fanatical prepper group. Those threats can be mitigated by a staffed security force, policies that support a sustainable subsistence strategy over weapon stockpiling, and passive internal security measures.

 

I worked on multiple models and strategies where a refuge system could work, but to avoid a massive up front financial outlay for members, I've decided to use the subscription approach. This means it will take longer to have a completely viable community, but it means that we have to opportunity to attract a larger community and have a greater chance of success.

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As a Christian, I contemplate the balance between being prepared for a national or global event with having faith that God will provide for us even without preparation. My conclusion is that putting faith in worldly things over my faith in Him is the point of failure and that building a community is productive and fun. If there is never a calamity, then we will have built a family focused community where we can ride horses, ATVs, hunt, fish, camp and vacation to experience some of what our ancestors did when they lived off the land. If disaster does strike, then we will have resources and a like minded community to survive with.