Could you last in the past?

My view from the tiny home out onto our farm

The answer to this question is something I ponder a lot, especially right now. As I type this I’m in my newly installed tiny home on my Christmas tree farm. We have never had a home on our farm. It is unimproved land meaning there are no utility hookups whatsoever, so this will be an adventure in off-grid living. And it is already proving to be a learning curve.

How much “off-grid”? Well, we now rely on 10 solar panels, two batteries, and a back-up gas-powered generator for power. We have a “gray water” line from the house that drains out to water our Christmas trees, as well as a sunken “black water” line that drains into a 300-gallon tank that will need to be pumped out periodically like our porta potties. We also have a 250-gallon stainless steel tank for potable water that we can fill up when we are at our home back in town.

Now, as a historian who specializes in the Viking Age I’ve spent many years imagining what it was like to live back then. My thought experiments usually start with what happens in my daily life now. It goes something like this…

• I get out of bed and the house is already warm.

• I flip a switch and light magically appears through an intricate system I had no hand in creating and don’t have to understand.

• I turn on a faucet and instantly get running water, including hot water that has been heated by the same force that gave me the light.

• I don’t have to go outside to relieve myself, and I flush the waste away where it goes somewhere I don’t know to be dealt with by someone else.

• I put on clothes I did not make.

• I open a box in my kitchen that keeps my food fresh and eat something I did not grow.

• I drink coffee made from beans that come from nowhere near where I live.

And that’s just the first hour of my day. Then I ponder all the ways it would be different if I lived centuries ago.

I think I’m now getting just the tiniest taste of it and realizing how much we simply take for granted in the modern era. So far in the tiny home we are having issues with getting the solar panels to generate enough power — we are approaching the winter solstice in the Pacific Northwest after all, and the angle of the sun matters — so the house is cold unless we turn on the back-up generator. We also have yet to get the water hooked up, so I’m finding myself glad I can escape to our house in town at a moment’s notice where I can be warm and use the toilet.

How on earth did people in the past do this every day, year in and year out? And how did we become so incredibly disconnected from where things come from or how to make and repair them, or just the basics of food, shelter, and heat? In all our cleverness that has created the plenty we enjoy today — including inventing the means to instantly access almost all the knowledge there ever was — how did we get so dumb and helpless?

The chores involved in a year of medieval living

This also makes me think of a conversation I’ve had with my students over the years and their thoughts about people who lived in the past. The assumption goes something like this….medieval peasants lived a long time ago and were rubes, uneducated and backward. Fast forward to us and through the magical powers of “progress” and time, voila! we are unquestionably smarter and better. Full stop. But then I ask them to think about getting plunked down in the Middle Ages and challenge them to survive. Most of them would be dead within a week.

Why? Because we don’t know how to do anything anymore. Unless you’re a hardcore prepper or survivalist, we have simply lost touch with what it means to have to do most everything by yourself and for yourself. We have also lost the patience it takes due to our addiction to instant gratification — something unheard of for essentially all humans who have ever existed until you get to the late-20th century. For example, my husband recently wore out some old work pants, and I’d noticed he’d put them in the trash (another subject to think about…where does all that trash go?). I ordered him a new pair online and they were delivered to my doorstep a few hours later within the same day. I literally had to do almost NOTHING. How absurd is that?

Now think about how I’d replace those pants if I lived 1,000 years ago. Let’s just say they’re wool pants for the sake of argument. First, I need farm land and sheep. I need to know how to raise sheep. When the time is right (when is that?), I need to shear the sheep. Then I need to treat the raw wool to clean it and get it ready to be spun. Then I need to know how to spin it into yarn. Once I have yarn, I need to know how to weave it into cloth. Once I have cloth, I can cut and stitch it into a pair of pants. And none of this says anything about the tools I’d need to have at every step of the way. In the meantime, I hope I have an alternate pair of pants, otherwise my legs are probably getting mighty cold.

When was the last time you thought about such things? How would your life change if you lost access to everything that creates convenience and ease for you? Could you last in the past?

And there’s also this to think about…

We are in a peculiar time in history where we have more abundance and creature comforts than ever before, and yet ironically it’s coming at a cost to the health of both ourselves and the natural world. The “disposable” lifestyle that most of us in the west — and increasingly all over the globe — have embraced in the past 75 years or so is making us sick and quite probably creating a world where we might not have a choice of whether to retreat back to simpler ways of being.

Two possible upsides to the past……community and ale.

I’m not suggesting we retreat to the past by jumping in with both feet. We are creatures of the now, and everyone has to live within the context of their own time. I’m not even certain you could if you wanted to because the past is, well, past. But there are things we can do to be a little bit medieval and, in my opinion, live a little bit better. You don’t have to go completely off grid like I am doing — which I’m only doing about half the time, I should add. Even small things matter and add up. You can learn how to make what you need like baking or growing or sewing something instead of buying it. Use what you have longer instead of getting new things all the time, and when something breaks, learn how to repair it. Many U.S. States now have Right to Repair laws, which give consumers the right to fix their own stuff without voiding warranties. Let that sink in for just a moment. YOU have the right to fix YOUR stuff. The fact that we even need such laws is crazy and speaks volumes about the helpless state we’ve gotten ourselves into.

So, to answer my own question, could I last in the past? I’d like to think so. I grew up on a farm and now have a farm, so I’ve never been afraid to get my hands dirty. And I actually enjoy the creative process of things like making my own skyr or bread. I’m not suggesting it wouldn’t be an adjustment, but it’s one I know I could make. The tiny home is helping to prove that, and there is the fact that I’m also married to a farmer. I like to joke that he’s one of the last people in the world who knows how to do everything because that’s what farmers do, though I’m only partly joking. If a dystopic future arrives, with him at our farm is definitely where I’ll want to be.

Luckily for us, though the headlines may not make it seem so, we live in the absolute best time to be alive in the entire course of human history — a time when we can choose comforts that would have been unimaginable to someone a millennia ago. But that comfort comes at a cost we also need to be mindful of, not only to the environment but to our own wellbeing and intelligence. There’s no reason we should discard the lessons and skills of the past, and certainly no reason we should be proud of not knowing how to do even the most basic things that it takes to survive.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I gotta go look into buying some sheep.