I don’t have anything against living off the land. Some of the hippies tried to do that, and that’s fine. But hippie to me always meant dope-smoking, lazy leftists who thought they knew how the world turned but actually didn’t have a clue. However, your dad was no hippie. Just someone trying to live off the land like the trappers and mountain men of the old west.
More than that actually. His (our) farm was a sort of proving ground for his ideas. We had electric lights, hot and cold running water, radio & sometimes TV, refrigeration, central heat, washing machine & etc. and four season gardening too. And he believed the direction the world was headed with industrialization & urban development was troublesome. There would be a fine line between him and today's eco-nuts (more for wise use than non use, but he was all about sustainability). I don't think he would have advocated massive wind farms to power a city, rather everyone would produce their own energy using whatever resources they had, and waste nothing.