Leaving the US took us almost ten years. I had wanted to leave since the George W. Bush administration but just couldn’t quite pull it off. Collapsing empires aren’t the best places to raise families.
Yet dropping everything you know and starting over again isn’t a choice most people would make and we almost didn’t make it ourselves. We left a paid-off homestead, a profitable little plant nursery, a circle of friends and a good church, family, and the comforts of the first world.
And I would do it all again.
I never tasted freedom until we walked away from “the land of the free.” Freedom to build what you like, freedom to plant corn in your front yard, freedom to live without a million regulations.
It’s a strange feeling. Sure, things don’t always run smoothly and getting a washing machine repaired might take three weeks – but who cares? I can tear out the plumbing and install composting toilets and no one will inspect the place or fine us.
Weird, right?
But beyond that perk, I am finally getting to work with tropical crops seriously. I have helped many people learn to garden in Florida and the US, but the research I am doing now could help in some of the poorest nations on earth. I hope the Lord uses some of my ideas to bless others.
Right now I’m still learning and making lots of mistakes, but over time I will collect data, try new ideas, and use low-tech solutions that could be applied in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and elsewhere in South America.
And we’re having a lot of fun. Losing a car or a few tendons is no big deal, right?
Thank you all for sticking with us even though we’re gardening outside the experience of many of you faithful readers. I appreciate your comments and thoughts and ideas.
Today we’re going to have a little family holiday and enjoy nature. The gas is off so we’re cooking outside on an open fire, as you can see in the video I posted last night… but we have lots of fruit to pick and a beautiful creek running out back where we can go swimming.
I still remember how much fun I had making my announcement after arriving:
I hope you all have a wonderful day. I’m still trying to get back on track after the car accident, but I will be posting some great stuff this week.
All the best.
-David
You can have greener thumbs by this weekend!
10 comments
Just want to say you have been a huge inspiration to me. I , like you, have been gardening since I was a kid. I have been doing it wrong for a long time. I would claim to be an “organic” gardener but I was always having to spray my crops with soap and neem and a few times a season I was using lots of fertilizer.
I rarely composted and I knew nothing of planting a diverse ecosystem. Truth be told I had never even heard the term “Food Forest” until I began following your work. I found you by searching amazon for florida gardening books. Now, I am building 2 FF on my 1/4 acre lot and I have my eyes on my in laws 14 acres out in Myakka city.
I could go on and on about some of the cool stuff I have going on based on what I have learned from you and others you have introduced me like Geoff Lawton. Basically I just wanted to say… Thank you.
God Bless and Mulch Respect
All the best to you and your family. You are a blessing to many people. I hope you are feeling better and healing from the crash. I hope Rachel came through it fine.
It was a bold move to move (ha). Your location looks very delightful. I am a sucker for the ocean and it seems as though it is close enough to visit often. How is your Spanish coming along? May you have God’s rest everyday.
Keith
Well, done, David, and, I’ve enjoyed getting familiar with you over the years via VD’s blog, the vids, the FB page and other avenues. It feels like I’ve known you for a long time. Perhaps one day we will meet in person, but if not, I hope to see you in the glory of God’s kingdom.
Blessings.
Born on a mountain top in Tennessee
Greenest state in the land of the free
Raised in the woods so he knew ev’ry tree
Kilt him a be ‘are when he was only three
Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier!
Man alive… I used to love that series as a kid.
I shared your post about the accident with Pastor Chad and they are praying for you at tonight’s men’s prayer meeting and praising God that you all are ok.
Lifting you and your family in prayer tonite. It is difficult to keep the homestead going after an accident. I avidly follow your posts since I saw your superb presentation at Grow Gainesville. I have been visiting Costa Rica frequently with the intent of purchasing land and finally leaving home. Spent some time in New Brunswick, and loved it. I am sick of the sh!t here in the US. I compost everything possible and ask God to bless you abundantly every time I she’d the junk mail for my compost piles.
David,,,Is it okay to ‘guess’, You are now in Costa Rica ?
;)
Wow, this post came up as a “related post” on a more recent one I was reading, and I thought I’d check it out as I was not yet reading your blog regularly in 2017 (although I have watched all the YouTube videos from that period). It’s interesting to read about your feelings and expectations about living in the tropics from when you were just arriving, compared to how you describe it in retrospect.
I have to say, while I know things didn’t work out in the long term, it was such a thrill to watch all your gardening experiments over 4 years in Grenada, and to hear about your experiences living as an ex-pat. I’ve often thought about someday leaving the US – for some of the same reasons you did – but have always been reluctant to make the transition because of how hard I thought it must be to live as a cultural outsider. And especially now that many of the worst aspects of the American way of life have, for the most part, been exported around the world, the benefits of leaving have probably diminished.
So in addition to being able to live vicariously in the tropics through your channel, I also feel a lot better now about deciding to stay in this country (for the moment, anyway), so I just wanted to thank you for taking the time to document your experiences for posterity. And hopefully there will be enough of us like-minded folks sticking it out here in the US to resist a total takeover of individual freedoms by an encroaching paternalistic pseudo-socialist centralized government.
Just kidding about that last part, of course! Our current government is awesome!
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