https://www.sltrib.com/news/2024/03/04/dont-call-them-preppers-meet/

This is a "premium" story, so I assume guaranteed paywalled, but that doesn't matter much. The general outline of the story is pretty straightforward.

The Riverbed Ranch is part of a 1,250 acre "agricultural cooperative" in the Utah west desert, about 2/3rds of the way between Nephi, in southern Utah County, and the Nevada state line. Talk about middle of nowhere.

Riverbed Ranch has been divided into 250 2 acre shares that can be purchased for $35,000, which includes water rights. Currently 130 shares have been sold, and about 120 people live in the cooperative.

The article presents a rather long list of what they say they are not - they are not tax protestors, or making a religious statement, or anti-government, or preppers. What they are doing is living a self-reliant lifestyle. The ranch owner has suggested that residents have a 7 year supply of cooking fuel, which sounds kind of "prepper" to me.

For some reason rabbits seem to figure prominently in their food supply. I have a personal friend who is also living a "self-reliant lifestyle" in the Midwest, and raising rabbits and goats for meat. Braised Thumper for dinner. Yum.

While it may not be a religious statement, by coincidence, 70% of the residents are LDS. Funny how the works. One family is quoted as saying the Spirit™ convinced them to move there. A fair number work in Delta or Nephi, both an hour drive away, each way.


I get a real kick out of people claiming they are living a self-reliant lifestyle. I used to hear farmers in the Midwest brag about how self-reliant they were, when in fact they couldn't change a flat tire on a tractor if their life depended on it, without the help of a second person with a flatbed truck to deliver the tire and wheel, and a forklift on the truck, to get the tire off the truck, and then to jack up the tractor. Self-reliant, my ass (a small farm animal common in the Middle East).

What they mean by self-reliant is not being connected to utilities. OK, fine, they have gardens and rabbit warrens and solar panels and wells, and they know how to can stuff in glass jars they can't make.

One of the interviewees was wearing a North Face jacket. That jacket sits on the top of a dizzyingly high industrial pyramid that they would have no hope at all of reproducing locally. They don't even have the right animals for making wool, not that I expect any of them would know how to take a sheared fleece and turn it into wool cloth. So, they can't even make a decent jacket.

Other things where they are not self-reliant - insulin supply for diabetics, or most any other pharmaceutical. Satellite phones. They can't make cell phones either, but I am sure there is no cell service out there. Computers. Car and truck brake pads. Eyeglasses. Sheet metal. Shoes. A/C refrigerant. There aren't many trees in the west desert either.

And on and on and on. Their little self-contained oasis would grind to a halt in a few months without the vast industrial infrastucture of the wider world to keep them afloat.

The one thing I found comical in the Mad Max movies was the total collapse of society, except that oil refineries, arguably the second most complex industrial thing we do, after computer chip manufacture, seem to still be functioning. How does that happen?

People who think they can live for years completely cut off from the larger society are delusional. They have no idea how much they depend on the Costco-Industrial Complex. I'd love to see them try to go for a month without a trip to the hardware store.

I have (proudly) not been to a hardware store in well over a month!!!!

Hell not even the native Americans were self sufficient. They traded. If you wanted decent obsidian to Knapp out some arrow heads worth a damn and it wasn’t in your area well you hooked up with someone who had some and started negotiating.

Reminds me of the hippie communes. Most ended in disaster. A few ended up being successful farms.

These are latter-day hippies. Joseph Smith also sold parcels of land to his followers. They should have Mormon Woodstock. Call it "Burning in the Bosom, Man".

Nobody wanted to wash the dishes.

It sounds a lot like one more self-indulgence for rich people.

Plus, small scale farming is bloody hard work. You spend all day working your farm just to eat. You sell some of it to provide for your other needs (and as you point out, a number of these farmers need to hold down outside jobs.) It's a hard living.

No we can't be 100% self-reliant, but we certainly can avoid waste, recycle items, and we can avoid importing as many items long distance as we can.

We should also discuss food miles. That's the distance travelled before an item reaches your plate. Many "plant based" and luxury items may have crossed oceans or even been flown in. That isn't very green.

And driving an hour each way to work IS green? I would love to know how many electric cars they are driving and using solar to do so. It sounds like just another "Vanity Farm" but with an organizer at the top. I wonder about the long term water situation.

Susan I/S Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> And driving an hour each way to work IS green? I
> would love to know how many electric cars they are
> driving and using solar to do so. It sounds like
> just another "Vanity Farm" but with an organizer
> at the top. I wonder about the long term water
> situation.

I agree with all of what you say there, but I'm not opposed to the general idea. I wouldn't go off to a desert to do it, but that's maybe why the land is cheap.

There is always a dominant personality on any committee/council etc in my experience.

I admire them for trying to do what they can I suppose, even if they really aren't doing what they think they are.

Heck, I feel a tiny bit better when I manage to find something packaged in paper instead of plastic to buy. I'm reusing and conserving some stuff, just because I want to pretend it helps. It's impossible to do or buy anything that doesn't include some kind of bad issue upstream.

They can grow their own food, but nearly totally dependent on fossil water to do so. Wells are not cheap to drill or maintain. The west desert can barely support tumbleweed without irrigation.

For everything other than food, it has to be trucked in at great expense in terms of time, gasoline, and wear and tear on vehicles. Routine two hour drives (or more) on dirt roads is very tough on both vehicles (oil filter, air filter, paint, tires) and passenger's lungs.

And all outside services, in particular, medical services, will be hard to reach and expensive in terms of time and fuel. There are some retired doctors/nurses, so professional-level first aid is available, but you have a stroke or cut off a finger or two, you are probably not going to get proper medical treatment fast enough.

And "retired doctors" does make me think "vanity hobby farm." They will only be able to make this work with significant deprivation and/or large infusions of cash.