VINTON COUNTY, Ohio—People from all walks of life across 25 states and Canada flocked to the Old School Survival Boot Camp for a three-day event over May 12–14 in the Appalachian foothills of southern Ohio, where they gathered to learn skills that teach self-reliance.
More than 140 classes taught by instructors from around the country included butchering, canning, herbalism, emergency medicine techniques, food preservation, blacksmithing, beekeeping, and gardening.
Tara Dodrill and her husband, Bobby, are the boot camp’s founders. They live on a 60-acre farm in Vinton County, not far from the fairgrounds, where the event is held. The closest community is McArthur, a one-stoplight village a few miles away.
“There is a misconception that self-reliance is synonymous with fully living off-grid,” Tara Dodrill said.
“At a time when food prices are high and supply chain issues impact availability, there are questions about ingredients and chemicals in food. Leading a self-sufficient lifestyle is being embraced by everyone from city dwellers with no land and suburbanites with quarter-acre lots to farmers and homesteaders with an abundance of space.”
‘We’ve Lost Our Way’
“We are far too dependent on modern luxuries,” she said. “We’ve lost our way as a society because it is less common to know how to provide your own resources than it was even 75 or 100 years ago.“The boot camp is a hands-on, interactive event. You learn better from hands-on experiences, and the more you do something, the more comfortable you get.”
Most attendees have conservative beliefs, Dodrill noted, but that isn’t the case for everyone.
“A vegetarian went to the butchering class because her doctor said she needed to introduce meat protein into her diet,” she said. “She attended classes all three days, and by the third day, she learned to butcher by herself. This is a woman in her 20s who is a city-based liberal with her beliefs but recognized the importance of learning a skill to make her better prepared and improve her health.”
Beth Levering lives with her husband and three children in a southwest Ohio neighborhood. She was raised on a farm and has experience with planting and growing. She brought her kids to the boot camp in 2021 “when there was not a lot happening in person because of COVID shutdowns.”
“I’m a constitutional conservative and believe in freedom causes, but I’m not a prepper,” Levering said. “I think the COVID pandemic brought more attention to the possibility of supply shortages and mandates where you can’t go where you want. It is important to be prepared.”
Judi Phelps and her husband, Scott, live on a 32-acre property a few miles from the Vinton County Fairgrounds. They have a firearms training company called On Guard Defense and a shooting range, they grow their own vegetables and fruits, and they raise chickens for eggs and meat. They also have freeze driers that operate around the clock, she said, for dehydrating foods that have a 25-year shelf life.
Self-Sufficiency Is ‘Empowering’
“We get our beef from a local farmer who does not use hormones, and it’s all grass-fed. We acquire raw milk through a local dairy farmer. And so we make our own yogurt, butter, and cream cheese. Knowing how to safely and effectively use firearms is critical for self-sufficiency, for hunting and self-defense, and that is empowering.“When you know how to grow and raise your own food, that minimizes your dependency on grocery stores, and you know what is actually in your food. That is empowering, too.”
Michelle and Leah Svensson, who are sisters, co-host a podcast called “The Resistance Chicks” and homestead on just a little over an acre in a small town outside of Cincinnati. They started with a garden and expanded to chickens, pigs, and bees.
They teach multiple classes at the boot camp, including suburban homesteading.
“You don’t have to live on 5 or 50 acres to learn how to provide for yourself and your family,” Michelle Svensson said. “Homesteading is being as self-sufficient as you can with the space God has given you in that time.”
With shutdowns, mandates, and supply chain issues during the COVID-19 pandemic, concerns about food shortages, and uncertainty about the ingredients and chemicals found in grocery store foods, more Americans are showing an interest in homesteading or, at the least, introducing self-sufficient principles,” Leah Svensson said.
“Every day we wake up, it seems like another right is being taken away. The only way to fight back is to get out of the system as much as you can so you are not reliant on supply chains.”
“A lot of people say they will start as soon as they get their land,” Michelle Svensson added. “You don’t have to wait for that. You can start even if you live in an apartment or live in the city.”
Preserving food for long-term use is one of the skills taught at the boot camp.
Changing Chicken Regulations
The Svenssons teach a class on how to get “no chicken” regulations repealed in communities.“Many cities thought chickens were dirty, so they stopped allowing them,” Michelle Svensson said. “There is a growing movement to repeal chicken laws, and our class empowers them to do so.”
A previous year’s class inspired Levering to take action about raising chickens. For several years, she said, her family kept chickens in the backyard of the home within city limits.
“I thought I was permitted to have them until the city code officer showed up at my door and said I couldn’t keep these chickens here,” Levering said. “I formed a citizens committee to get the ordinance changed, and now we are allowed to have chickens in our backyard.”
Her chickens not only provide eggs but also offer firsthand animal care lessons for her home-schooled children, she said.
“It’s a lot about going back to the ways that our parents or grandparents or great-grandparents lived,” she said. “It helps them know where their food comes from and gives them another skill to provide their own food in the future.”
Ryan Lehman, who lives in the Hocking Hills region of Ohio, teaches beekeeping and cast-iron preservation classes. He was introduced to beekeeping about 10 years ago when a friend told him that an abandoned church nearby his house that was built in the 1800s had colonies of bees in the walls. The church was starting to crumble, and the county bee inspector joined him to remove the colonies.
“He gave me a colony of bees and mentored me, and now I mentor others who want to learn,” Lehman said.
The population of bees is in decline due to factors such as pesticides and urbanization. Bees provide multiple benefits to people leading a self-sufficient lifestyle; honey has medicinal properties, and bees’ role as pollinators makes them essential for crop and plant growth.
“Every spring, honeybees swarm, and if you understand how to put out traps, you can collect honeybees for your hive,” Lehman said.
An Air Force police officer for 14 years, Lehman now works in law enforcement at the VA Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio.
Event Creates Eco-Tourism
The Old School Survival Boot Camp bolsters eco-tourism in a region rich with natural treasures such as Ash Cave and Cantwell Cliffs, Dodrill said. Hocking Hills State Park and Wayne National Forest cover more than half of Vinton County.Phelps points to a family-operated lodging destination featuring energy-efficient, hobbit-themed cottages built into the side of a hill as an example of how the area embraces eco-tourism and self-sustained living that fit into the boot camp’s mission.
Karina Elschwarby and her children, Mervat and Ron Elschwarby, own Magical Earth Retreat off a remote narrow road about 10 miles from the fairgrounds. The accommodations include six cottages, four of which are hobbit-themed and two that are inspired by Morocco.
The Elschwarbys are from New York, live in South Florida, and refurbish and build homes around the world. The idea to construct hobbit-themed cottages as vacation rentals originated during a trip to New Zealand. They initially considered a Western state such as Montana or Wyoming as the location, and they were a day away from moving forward on a contract in Asheville, North Carolina, but they saw an 11-acre property in Hocking Hills and felt that it was “perfect” for what they wanted to do, Karina Elschwarby said.
The temperature doesn’t dip below 58 degrees Fahrenheit in any of the cottages, which is vital for their ongoing commitment to energy efficiency, Mervat Elschwarby said.
“We incorporated recycled materials into our design in each cottage, and we used reclaimed wood for an entire wall and whiskey barrels to create our bathroom sinks,” she said. “We have a green space where we grow organic fruits.”
Future plans include more cottages, a lake, and a wedding venue. They added a cedar sauna that offers a view of the rolling hills.
“People who go to the boot camp stay here because it reflects the self-sustaining theme,” Ron Elschwarby said.
Dodrill said that some attendees stay on-site at the campground, while others make cabins and cottages their home base during the boot camp. Many people develop camaraderie amid the classes, events, and entertainment.
“We also see people from all experience levels, including homesteaders who have lived in rural areas for years, city dwellers who want to learn how to become self-sufficient, and people who are ready to make a change and get property and learn how to lead a self-sustaining lifestyle,” Dodrill said. “We get people from all walks of life who, for a day or a weekend, are like-minded and have a shared purpose that could one day save their lives and the lives of their families.”
