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Dispatches from the farm upstate


A middle-aged computer expert opts to escape civilization, offers dubious life advice.

I’m a one-time computer whiz who ditched Silicon Valley for a rural parcel in the Pacific Northwest, but I figured no one wanted to hear about that; an earlier article that touched on the subject is one of my least-read posts. The much-politicized Sackett v. EPA decision involved a family who bought an unassuming rural plot to build a single-family home — and ended up getting pulled into a decade-long fight with the federal government. The added costs are still nowhere near the price tag of living SF Bay Area, but they are nothing to sneeze at — and are a far cry from the fantasy peddled by all the “homesteading” influencers on YouTube and Instagram.

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