Saturday, April 29, 2017

A Safe Harbor for Uncertain Times

 

Why you should consider building a retreat or bug out location on your own Panama land.


Like the Bob Dylan song from the 60's, the times they are a changing!

It seems with the advent of the personal computer, time has begun to exponentially speed up. Change happens so rapidly now, that before one tech product becomes popular, another one rises to take it's place, rendering the original product useless, often before the original investment is returned to the people who funded it's development. Even the term "state of the art" has become outdated.

Technology surely has had the widest impact on society as a whole, but it's certainly not the only field in which vast changes have taken place in just the last few years.

There is one place change is not coming fast enough, for economists and statisticians, especially. Our consumption based economy, which has fueled our GDP growth over the past 60 or more years, seems to have come to a screeching halt.

Eight years into a recession and we're still trillions of dollars in debt and nobody seems to be able to find a solution to the problem that we are not spending enough. Not driving the kind of growth needed to continually enrich stockholders and the others at the top of the food chain, without pumping in federal tax dollars in alarming amounts. We're spending tax dollars like there's no tomorrow, and it's not helping the economy much.

And monumental events like this are becoming commonplace all over the "free" world. What will happen if France or Italy leave the EU?

There's even been talk about completely doing away with cash, of all things, and replacing it with "digital" money. And now, several countries are requiring banks to charge their customers for the privilege of keeping their money on deposit. Forget earning interest on your checking or savings account. You'll have to pay the bank if you want to keep your money in their "virtual" vaults. And if there's no cash being used, how will you be able to prevent it from being hacked into oblivion?

What about cars that drive themselves? Huh? Seriously? I get it that we're too lazy to look at a map, but do we need that level of simplicity in our lives? Are we that incompetent? Have you made your travel plans for Mars?

The bottom line is change is coming, for better or for worse.

For the sake of the American people, who one could almost say are "innocent bystanders" in the future plans for the world, I can only hope the nightmare scenarios that any number of analysts are predicting don't unfold all at once.

Not to mention what would happen if the electrical grid went down because of a solar storm, like it did in the mid 1800's.

I can only hope that my loved ones and friends all are able and willing to take the necessary steps to prepare a place for them and their loved ones to go if (or when) the stuff hits the fan, figuratively speaking.


That was pretty much the thought process we went through when our own personal situation forced us to decide how to market the organic property here.

We certainly could have taken the "gated community" route, and divided this amazingly revitalized land up into really small pieces (lots) and had what quite a few westerners seem to have been looking for in the past. A place to go where you didn't have to learn the language, and you could live an isolated life with other westerners, without having to really alter your lifestyle that much.

There are a lot of those gated communities out there, and for a price you can live that way. But most of those places have serious drawbacks that become obvious once you think about what could happen in a crisis. Most of them are close to major metropolitan areas, or are known expat establishments which have already become targets for theft and other criminal behavior. Many are in the lower elevations, and would be unbearable without air conditioning.

Or, we could have chosen to just split up the land without going to the expense (twelve years and countless dollars spent) of reversing multiple decades of nutrient-killing pesticide and chemical fertilizer use, and sold it to anyone willing to buy it. We could have sold the land without improving it with a 140 foot well, and a 12,000 gallon holding tank, gravity fed, and electricity from the neighboring town.

But, we wanted to create something special here.

Something not available anywhere in Central America. A community of like minded people living in harmony with the land, so it will continue to provide a rich growing environment, without the use of petroleum based or other dangerous chemical additives, for generations to come.

Something sustainable and lasting.

If you are looking for a unique special place to call home full or part time, "pre-crisis" or no-crisis, where you can easily grow delicious fruits and vegetables without using any chemicals, you have found the place and we welcome you.

Give us a call or email us for more information, pricing and farm configuration details.


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