The Wisdom and Beauty of Frugal Living

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Enthusiastic foragers, goats embody “waste not, want not.”
Enthusiastic foragers, goats embody “waste not, want not.”
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While designer coops may be easy on the eye, chickens thrive equally well in a much less fashionable environment.
While designer coops may be easy on the eye, chickens thrive equally well in a much less fashionable environment.
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Prolific reproducers, rabbits have provided meat, fertilizer and fur to generations of farmers.
Prolific reproducers, rabbits have provided meat, fertilizer and fur to generations of farmers.
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Those with an eye for wonder can find awe in the lowly watermelon, which transforms sand into succulence.
Those with an eye for wonder can find awe in the lowly watermelon, which transforms sand into succulence.
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Surrounded by scrub and sand, author Bryan Welch had been herding goats for more than a year prior to his 10th birthday.
Surrounded by scrub and sand, author Bryan Welch had been herding goats for more than a year prior to his 10th birthday.

My mentor was a sunburned, 60-year-old, 300-pound Jehovah’s Witness in dark glasses. Tim Posey didn’t look like a tree-hugger. He didn’t talk about self-reliance, loving nature or saving the environment. But in many ways, he was the truest and best conservationist I’ve ever known.

I grew up in an enclave of Army surplus barracks and mobile homes on the Mexican border, a few miles from El Paso, Texas. Technically we lived in the village of Anapra, in southern New Mexico. But our community — and our culture — didn’t really belong to either state or either country. In many ways, the border is its own nation, a country that attracts self-reliant misfits, independent thinkers and many people who are simply stranded on the margins of the North American economy.

Mr. Posey bought 10 acres in that economic — and literal — desert in the 1950s. He drilled a well and buried a network of shallow waterlines, dividing the land into a grid of lots where renters could park their trailers. He dug simple septic tanks with standpipes rising out of the sand. He planted poles and strung power lines.

If you rented a lot in the Posey Trailer Park, you could pull your trailer in, hook up the sewer, electricity and water, and within an hour or so be ready to settle in and watch Gunsmoke.

The great thing about owning a trailer park, Mr. Posey would tell me, was that after you had the water, sewer and power set up, you could pretty much “set back and collect the rent.” But Mr. Posey didn’t rest on his laurels. After the trailer park was operational, Tim Posey built himself an oasis.

  • Published on Jul 19, 2012
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