I canceled cable first, just to see if I could do it, how long I could go. Next came the TV. To say goodbye to her I ate macaroni and cheese for 3 nights straight and watched Seinfeld re-runs on DVD. The next day she was in someone’s car bound for their daughter’s dorm room- the beauty of craigslist.

I started thinking about what else I could do without. Naturally, I did what any upper-middle-class post college rebel would do in my situation. I spent $5 on a copy a Walden, grew my hair long, and practiced the acoustic guitar. I dreamed about living simple and “getting back to the country”. It didn’t really matter that I’d never actually lived in the country before. I’d played in the woods, gone on a hike, been to a petting zoo, and shopped at a farmer’s market- how different could it possibly be?

I mulled it around for a bit and decided I need to do this for real. Buying local, living green, and every other fancy marketing term was no longer enough. I wanted to be a mountain man, a pioneer! I wanted to carve out a homestead where there was only woods. And if I could do all this without stealing land from the Indians that would be a nice bonus… After several weeks of looking I found a cabin situated in the woods of an 80-acre working sheep farm and class was in session.