I live in a log home on 2 acres in NH. 1.5 acres of that is woods. I have 2 sheds and a 250' driveway uphill (have to keep up with snow removal!). Married to an absolutely wonderful woman, have 2 shih tsus, a reasonable size fish tank, and 3 house rabbits. My DW is interested in the yard stuff that I do, and saves scraps for compost etc., but is a mall-goer of sorts.

Well - gardening (of course), but I should really preserve more of what I grow as much goes to waste.

Cut and split firewood from my own property to heat the house (with oil for domestic hot water and backup heat).

I have house rabbits- trying to grow all their food, and they provide all the fertilizer for the garden.

Seed saving is pretty fun- just need to whittle down my tomato varieties to avoid cross pollinating and getting weird fruit. (same goes for peppers)

I compost a lot of stuff. Lately the worms have started helping me quite a bit (thanks gals!).

Other than that, I'm a scientist and go off and live like people (unfortunately) during the day. Like many- homesteading is an ideal for me that I'm not yet ready to jump into (any other chickens out there? Raise your wings).

I hope to one day start a pottery business (need to build a wood fired kiln etc.) so that I can work from home- using wood ash and local materials as glaze. I have this dream of being one of those folks that sends an invite for a "kiln opening"- where people show up to see what the flames have done when I un-brick the door of the kiln- buying wares right there on the spot (and maybe doing some more functional pottery stuff for the steady part of the income).

Pablo, thank you.
Very interesting.
You seem to have alot of homesteading skills.
I understand that fear of taking the plunge.
It has been a dream in my head for a long time but when I think about the reality I am used to, yes, it can feel scary.
My husband has a corporate job and I can't imagine how some people are brave enough to leave that.
Thanks so much....interesting reading!

I've got nothing to brag about, since I've seen some homesteads that I admire a great deal. My wife and I live on nine acres on the toe of a mountain ridge. Good sun exposure on much of our land. Pretty poor mineral soil (sand/silt basically) that we and the previous homesteaders on this land have been building, organically, for decades. With care and attention (weeding, aerating, mulching, compost) we get reasonably good crops of things most years.

We have three main food-growing areas, each devoted to a variety of things. We're in zone 6, climate-wise, but can have either too much cloud or blistering mid-summer heat, depending on the year. Sufficient water has been an issue, as regards the potential of the full nine acres. We have a few apple, pear, cherry, and hazelnut trees. Wide variety of veggies. On the "hot" end of the veggie/fruit spectrum, we can grow corn, tomatoes, tomatillos, bell and hot peppers, and cool-climate grapes (Steuben).

We've had chickens, but don't have them right now. These days we buy eggs from the neighbor and chicken, salmon, and cheese from the market. (There are organic food stores and farmer's markets in our region.)

We tried for a couple years growing garlic commercially on our place (market-access was undeveloped at that point). We have both worked off the place for money, sometimes at longer-term jobs (part-time or full-time). Aside from that necessity, I developed into a carpenter, building-wirer electrician, concrete worker, and fix-it & maintain-it plumber. My wife is a good general handy person, gardener (especially likes ornamentals), and landscaper.

We want to try catfish as a protein food, in the pond we're in the process of finishing. Have to find out where in Canada to get live fry.

We have our home heating-fuel consumption down to about three to four cords of firewood per year (usually larch and a bit of birch, sometimes some pine). We drive four-cylinder vehicles - a Rav and a 17-year-old Toyota pick-up truck.

It's a good life. Raised a daughter in this valley. It hasn't always been easy, by any means, but living with nature is wonderful (except for too many deer, who are hard to fence out completely). As solar (p.v.) becomes more efficient and affordable, we might get into using it - but would not unhook from the grid (would use grid power to fill in our needs during the night, and maybe sell excess - or "negawatts" - into the grid).

Well that's it in a hazelnut shell...

Joel

Joel, thank you very much for your reply.
I think you have quite a bit to brag about!
There are always hardships in life of one sort or another but it all sounds wonderful to me.

We own 45 acres in the Maine woods. I work as a market farmer and writer. My husband is a forester. We have just goats, turkeys, chickens and ducks now. Until recently we had rare breeds of pigs and cattle along with regular breeds of each. I owned a small commercial rabbitry (up to 1000 rabbits) until a two year drought forced me to close. It was my second favorite thing on the farm.

My heart is in the garden. I run a farmstand and have done farmers market, Senior FarmShare and WIC FMNP (this is the poorest county in my state). The garden season starts in the greenhouse and three hoop houses, expands out to the garden, and ends in December in the hoops. We grow all of our vegetables. I do a lot of canning, freezing, dehydrating and storing in the cold cellar. I've cut back to an acre so that I have time to do other things.

We either raise our pork and beef or buy it from other local small farmers. We raise Bourbon Red turkeys, have a flock of dual purpose chickens and 18 ducks (15 runners in three colors and three old mallards). The ducks are for eggs and pest patrol.

We cook from scratch and have become happy food snobs. If it's made in a lab instead of a kitchen it's not served here. Being able to look over all of the food we have when I'm making meal choices is incredibly satisfying. At one time I was raising a tomato plant, a pepper plant and salad greens in a sidewalk garden in a housing project. You don't have to have a lot of land to provide some of your own food.

We heat with wood. We could provide most of our wood but usually barter for it instead. It comes to use in 16' logs. My husband cuts the dead/dying larch to burn.

Our pond is stocked with rainbow trout and brown bullhead. We're able to pick mushrooms, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, blueberries and gooseberries, and wild apples on our property. The wild trees will be pruned this winter to see if the harvest can be improved. I make a gallon or two of maple syrup each spring.

We have two working farmcollies and one big dumb loveable mutt to keep coyotes, bobcats and smaller predators and pests away from our birds and animals. They also keep the deer and moose out of the garden.

From November 1 into mid December I make Christmas wreaths from balsam harvested here and from a neighbor's overgrown Christmas tree farm.

It's a good life. We left the city 16 years ago and have never regretted the move. Anything can be intimidating at first. I recommend starting small and adding something new when you're comfortable with what you're doing. Ruin the garden? Turn it over and claim it was a cover crop. Decide you don't like livestock or poultry? Eat it. There are so many different things you can do, and absolutely no need to think you have to do everything. Life's too short to not love what you're doing.

Here is a link that might be useful: My Farm

Robin, your place sounds great. How far are you from a population center or rail/truck depot to sell your livestock? Do you butcher your own or send them off? And with your veggie/fruit produce, do you have town/city people coming out to your stand?

Joel

We sell everything locally. I live in a very rural area. The nearest city is 90 miles away. We can butcher our poultry but we send the livestock out. When the last of the goats are gone we're done with livestock. It's not profitable for us. I can make a few hundred dollars profit per acre with livestock but thousands with vegetables.

I have a farmstand on the farm and that's all I did last year. Three years prior to that were spent increasing my customer base at farmers market. This year I'll have more pumpkins than edible vegetables while I take time to finish a book. I expect to earn as much money with pumpkins and sweet corn as 100+ varieties of vegetables. I'm not sure what I'll do next year.

Farm education helped build our customer base. We invited area schools and clubs to the farm so that people could see what we're doing and how food is raised. It was good for all of us.

Hubby and I both had corporate jobs for a while, he did that longer than I did, as I went off and was a teacher for 4 years. That paid so poorly compared to my previous computer career, and was so stressful (high school students today, ay!) that I quit when I was 38 and instead just do volunteer work of my own choosing. Hubby quit working 2 years after I did. We were very thrifty while being well paid, so now we expect to be 'bums' for the rest of our lives. Along with our savings and investments as income, we have a couple rental properties we own, a duplex and a house. Sometimes we just cash checks from that, sometimes we are very busy fixing things up for weeks or months at a time.

I garden a lot in the warm parts of the year. We own a totally neglected organic orchard, mostly pear and apple trees. We could do a lot to improve/increase our home grown fruit, but to be honest we have more than we need so most of it just fertilizes itself. The only thing I try to pick all of is the black raspberry and red currant crop, since I love berries. Am trying to prune the trees growing around the red currants (planted by birds, the original plants are dead) so they get more light, and planted yellow raspberries and a black currant last year. Lots of gooseberries as well.

We grow a large number of vegetables, just for our own consumption. To make things more busy, we get free leftover produce from a local market. That is another reason we don't pursue our own fruit as much as we could. We do a lot of preserving. We freeze some fruit and vegies, but mostly we can things, over 200 jars last year. Emphasis on roasted salsa, tomato+ sauces, jam, and fruit sauces, including my famous cinnamon pear topping. Sell a little bit of canned goods to friends and acquaintances, enough to keep me in lids, sugar, and the occasional half-pint jars I buy. I have a lifetime supply of quart jars from various relatives.

I used to distribute the free produce to friends and drive it around, now I try to mostly give extras away to neighbors and via freecycle, saves me driving. We have a hybrid car that gets 50 mpg and a smallish pickup. The truck is used to haul manure, OPL, and firewood firewood firewood! I split wood for our wood stove, feel very powerful when I do it, and like I am really accomplishing something. I never felt that way in my corporate job, sending bits from one computer to another.

I grow a lot of flowers, mostly by planting something once in a while, I am lazy so most keen on perennials. I sell a few organic flower seeds on ebay, although I am so disgusted with paypal these days that I haven't listed anything this year.

We are thinking that someday we will raise chickens. My family did when I was a teenager. We don't eat a lot of meat normally, but last year I hit a deer with my car, so we have a fair amount of venison in the freezer. We buy a big turkey from a friend for Thanksgiving, happily and locally raised. We buy eggs from a neighbor and sometimes get them free from others with egg connections.

We live near large cities but sort of out in the country. Just found a new traffic light 3.3 miles from my house yesterday, really shook me up! At a good location actually (a place it was hard to turn left) but still, for most of my life it wasn't there and it is the closest traffic light to my house. I bought my mother's house, so I live where I grew up. Lived in another state and a few other countries in between, plus on a sailboat in the Caribbean on and off for a few years. We like to travel, I have been to 30 countries at least.

I guess that is more than you wanted to know, I am not known for being a woman of few words. :-) I am really keen on freecycle and craigslist, which is where we find most of our firewood, although we have our own dead trees that we are just starting to cut up for firewood. So we are not self-sufficient, but we hardly buy anything. Bake our own bread, cook from scratch for almost everything, etc.

Marcia

Kimmie, it sounds like you're eager to spread your wings a little. The security of steady paychecks and city life is a hard one to leave. but there are all degrees of homesteading, or self-sufficiency, or whatever you're aiming for, like Robin said.

My DH was a cop, not known for huge paychecks, and I learned real early that I could stay at home (mostly), garden and cook from scratch, and "bottom-line" at just about the same as other mom's who were working and buying convenience foods and paying sitters. Thus we established a lifestyle, and it's held us well for nearly 40 years. DH is now retired, and he raises our own organic beef. We sell off to a list of acquaintances (word spreads) that are eager for fresh organic beef at market on-the-hoof-prices, and there's always one left for us. It isn't a moneymaker, just a provider.

We garden, have many fruit trees and soft fruits, and can enough for an army with much left over. We contribute excess to the food pantry, any friends who can use it (what goes around, comes around) and freecycle, then compost the rest.

DH retired at age 51, and I think our "sparse" lifestyle had a lot to do with that. Cops' pensions aren't that generous either, and they don't get social security, so we're kinda committed to it forever, which is fine because I simply don't know any other way to do it now. Life is good. We've been very blessed. Our grandkids take delight (and me too) riding in the wagon behind the mower and plucking berries and asparagus and cherry tomatoes for snacks as we pass.

Hi All,
This is my first post on this forum. I used to visit Farm Life a lot but found it mostly about chickens (which I have) and not much about the lifestyle. It was suggested recently that folks visit here for more general conversation on farm life.

This post was interesting and looked like a good place to start. I liked reading all about how others are "homesteading". Sounds like many of us are in a familiar boat. So here goes.......

We live on about 50 acres in rural NB, only 15 min. from a city (Fredericton). The area is rapidly becoming developed with lots of former farm land being converted to "subdivision". In fact, our neighbourhood IS a subdivision - big lots 1+ acres - but we live on one end and have more land. We've got about 11 acres of yard/brush/scrub, 1.5 acres pasture and 40 acres of woodlot (new to us last year).

I managed to stay home and raise 3 kids to school age (miss that now!), but went back to work shortly thereafter. DH and I both hold full-time jobs and not likely to give them up soon, what with college tuitions looming, etc. Actually, I just finished a BSc (Dec.) and will pursue a Masters - but while working. Oldest DS graduates from high school this year, too.

I've been gardening at our current site for 15 years. Lots of veggies, herbs, flowers and lots of canning and freezing most years. I used to own a seed company, as well, and grew all the seed. Now I am contract grower for the same company (taken over by a friend when I went back to school). So there's lots of gardening, but that's my gig.

DH is into woodworking and firewood and "salvage construction", for want of a better term. He can build anything from "junk" - so can his dad who lives next door. We have a normal bungalow house, but a huge garage/woodshop (2 storey barn type) he built from logs he cut and had sawn and mostly salvaged materials. I think the only thing new was the cement floor and one window! Also built me a greenhouse from rough timber (14'x28') which is plastic covered and a chicken house. DH plans to cut all our our firewood from our land now. We used to buy some, salvage some.

A few years ago the groceries got really expensive so we started raising our own pork. Did two or three pigs with partners for a couple of years, but outdoor penning is risky when piglets are young and ground water contamination became an issue for us. Now we buy a side from our butcher. For the past three years we've raised beef, again with partners to share the cost, but we do the work. We raised 3 last year - 2 Charolais and a Belted Galloway. Pasture fed from May to October, with a "little grain to keep 'em tame", then hay for a month or so. Great beef! We're really happy with the results. First time, DH and partners slaughtered and skinned beef, then took to butcher. That was a lot of work. Now we ship them live to a really great butcher not too far away.

I got involved in a meat bird partnership with a friend. He looks after the birds, I help slaughter and pay half the costs. Works well and we typically get a dozen birds in the freezer by Sept. I'd like to try my hand at a multi-purpose breed. I also have 6 layers (Barred Rocks, Silkie, crosses) and will expand soon with new chicks, I hope.

Our future plans include a barn (land cleared this past winter) for horses and other livestock. DH wants drafts for hauling logs and kids and I want saddle horses. We also plan to convert a "scrub" area to new pasture this year.

That's about it. We'd love to just live off the land, but it's not feasible right now. Maybe when the kids are grown and gone...........but I'm not rushing that, either!

I'm new here. Most people call me Sprite. We have a small farm in Waller, Texas. 8.6 acres. I'm female and have a good husband, 2 children (boy 19, girl 7), and my Mom lives with us. She sold her home in Houston to move out here to the farm and since she has more than 30 years experience in the nursery business, she's contributes hugely to the homesteading.
We were pretty much forced by circumstance into homesteading, though I've always wanted to lead the farm life anyway. My hubby did the commute to downtown Houston, working, and I did the commute to TAMU after going back to school. We've been homesteading off and on for years, but I'm getting more serious about it as the prices of everything rise.
We have several areas cultivated for food plants. We love roses and have a couple hundred rose bushes which are all getting into the swing of things with tons of color now. We have about 50 chickens, numbers go up and down as they have babies and we eat some of them. They lay very well and we have lots of eggs all the time.
My latest project is goats. I really would love to start a dairy. I read on one of the other posts that someone else might want to start one too. I found a great website for instructions in cheese making and goat milk handling with instructions. Here's a link in case anyone is curious. http://biology.clc.uc.edu/Fankhauser/Cheese/Cheese.html
We plan to raise the goats both for milk and meat. I've only had them a couple of weeks, but I did a good bit of reading before I bought them, and they seem to fit right in around here.
I bought 4 does and 1 billy (a registered 100% Boer). The does are 2 nubian crossbreds and 2 boers. We named them Frannie, Petunia, Stargazer, and Snowflake. The billy is named Abe.
I am just terribly excited about them having babies and milking them. So excited about not having to spend $4.00 a day for milk and the diesel to go get it! Plus cheese and butter, etc. I know it will take a few months, but I can already visualize the goats multiplying.
We've been here for 17 years now and we're practiced at raising most of what we eat. The goats really should put us over the top at not having to buy anything but dry goods (coffee, sugar, and the like). We also added some apple, peach, apricot, and pear trees to the farm this year. The apple and pear trees are already blooming up a storm.
We blanch and freeze much of what we produce, but this year it looks like our wild grape vines will yield enough to can grape jelly, make wine, and I'm thinking about trying my hand at making vinegar for pickling.
We work everyday, but not like our neighbors work. Most of the people out here drive more than 40 miles to work and get home after what amounts to a 14 hour day, and with the price of gas, hardly have a nickel left to spend. Our income is small, mainly from doing projects on line and growing veggies. The biggest problem with our lifestyle is not having many friends. All the people I know are working all the time and are never at home.
I am always amazed at how much time we have for our pursuits here. I think that is the best part of homesteading. Having time to smell the roses.

We live on a 14 acres orchard we purchased 2 years ago. This is our 3rd growing season. We grow apples, peaches, blackberries, asparagus, rhubarb; we sell tomatoes, cukes/squash from our greenhouses and wave petunias and geraniums. We would like to expand into roses and ornamental grasses, and next year we plan to start strawberries. My husband has a full-time job, and I run the market here at the homeplace. We sell all our produce from a small stone building behind our home; we would like to put in a small pond to fish from. I would personally like an expanded garden other than the one we now have, and would like to raise our own wheat and hulless oats. We have an alfalfa acreage we are trying to get started, have fed and butchered hogs and intend to get bucket calves for our meat. Rabbits would be welcome; we have little time for lifestock. This is a satisfying lifestyle WHEN the weather cooperates. Unfortunately, we have yet to have a decent peach crop; it runs in cycles, supposedly. Our first year was a hard one as we had not one peach and a $750 apple crop. Last year was much, much better, but still the peach crop was hit by late frosts. The same will happen this year. Apple crop is our money maker, and we have school tours once a week during the fall; this was a great success for us. Such a pleasure to see those big busses pull up and the excitement on the children's faces at seeing 'all those apples up those trees'!

Shawnee,
So sorry to hear about your peaches. Late frosts are not as great a concern here, but they can happen. We didn't quite get down to freezing over Easter weekend and because we covered everything that needed it, even the watermelons, cucumbers, and cantalopes survived just fine. If it had been a frost, probably we would have lost all of them. I am hoping that was winter's last gasp.
It sounds like you have a going concern there with your market. I hope eventually to have an orchard, but for now, it's just a few fruit trees for the family.
Roses are so wonderful. We keep mostly repeat bloomers, so we have blooms all through the spring, summer, fall, and sometimes even in the dead of winter. One of my biggest, showiest bushes is actually just a simple, wild McCartney rose, a spring bloomer that I planted around an electrical pole. It has climbed up about ten feet in a big ball and in the spring it is solid white with small flowers. We have to maintain strict pruning, or it would take over the place. The thorns are a menace too.
I hope you can get some roses growing on your place. They are really wonderful. I don't know what climate you're in, but I highly recommend the Queen Elizabeth rose, the Climbing Peace, the Martha Gonzales, and Maggie, for your first varieties. These will give you so much satisfaction, inner peace, and they are not easy to kill. Just make sure you don't bury the bud union of grafted roses when you plant them. Also, overwatering causes root rot, so that's something not to do.
Good luck with everything. Hope you get a good crop of peaches this year!

I live on 2.8 acres on the family estate and am divorced. My hours were severely cut at my last job and it was a 30 mile trip one way - not worth the trip for the cost of gas.

I have chickens so I'll have eggs and meat, I've planted a good sized garden for canning & freezing, and I'm now looking for rabbits to raise to sell and to put in the freezer. I'm also looking for angora rabbits to raise for wool to make blankets & sweaters. I would like to get a couple of milk goats for fresh milk, cheese, and goat's milk soap. The neighbor next door raises goats so I'll talk to him about using his billy for stud service for my goats.

I live 3 miles from a busy interstate exit and I'll be able to sell vegetables at the local convenience store. I make jewelry to sell at the local antique mall and online. I also make knitted hats, scarves, and quilts to sell during winter months. I'll also be planting flowers to make dried wreaths and I just discovered grape vines on the back part of my property, so grape vine wreaths are on the list of "things to make & sell!" LOL

Fortunately, I am almost debt free, so will be working this year towards paying that last one off.

I grew up on a farm, and getting back into it is just what I've always wanted to do. I am starting small, and working my way up. I dream of the day when I can buy a 20 acre farm!

Babs, it sounds great! Good for you, and good luck!

Have others noticed that financial liquidity (or as nearly as possible) is the key to lots of options of lifestyle? I can read it between the lines of many of these posts, I think.

That's a profoud observation, gran2. I've seen a lot of idealists who don't understand finances go through a lot of suffering. Spend less than you earn. Don't ignore the numbers.

I've enjoyed reading all the lifestyle stories. Here's mine:

We are 4 here: DH, me, DS and DD. Another DD is married and lives 3 and a half hours away. DS and DD are adults, college graduates, not married yet. They and I are partners in a daylily nursery. We sell to walk-in customers and through our web site. DH is on disablility, having been injured on the job about 10 years ago. He likes to stay busy and does what he can manage.

We spent 15 years planting trees and traveling from MS to ME, and have planted in most of the states in between. We spent 9 summers in ME working in the forestry arena. I noticed that Robin lives in ME. We were in the Jackman area. Also spent one summer in Ashland. Worked a lot in the Rangeley area too and in NH.

Now, what we are doing now. After DH's injury we came home to live. I was happy to get off the road! Since 2001, we have been building a house and we are still not finished! We have been living in it for 3 years though. We used to live here before we went on the road but we lived in a mobile home. So we have mature apple trees, blueberries, grapes, and a pear tree. Since we've been back home, we've planted 2 cherries, 6 plums, another pear, gooseberries, currants,hardy kiwis,kousa dogwood, cornus mas, and more grapevines. We planted strawberries but the deer mowed them right to the ground. Now that we have a dog, we want to try them again.

Shawnee, we have the problem of living in a frost pocket so we rarely get plums or cherries. Our peach tree finally just gave up and died. It seems that as our kiwis get older, they are becoming more hardy. We've had fruit from them the past two years and it is delicious!! They normally bloom in mid-April when we still have freezes and we've covered them and run a kerosene heater under the cover. This spring, it turned really cold just before they started putting out buds and they just stopped growing for two weeks. Hopefully our last frost has come. The kiwis are just ready to bloom now, a month later.

We have one rooster and one hen. We have them for pest control. we are all vegan and don't use the eggs. We had four guineas but have recently lost two of them. We'd like to get more guineas. We have a golden retriever/mountain fiest mix.

We grow lots of vegetables. We can hundreds of jars of veggies and fruits every summer. We also freeze and dry a lot. We burn wood as our primary heat source. We do have a gas furnace to use in case we have to leave in cold weather. We are fortunate to have gravity water from a spring with awesome water pressure.

Balsam, I can relate to your comments about your DH and FIL. DH and DS can build anything too. Lots of our home building materials were salvaged but you'd never guess to see it.

We live 25 miles from even a small town. I go once a month and get a few groceries. DH has to go once a week for physical therapy. We cook from scratch, never buy convenience foods jor junk food. We are committed to a healthy lifestyle as much as is in our power. Since we don't eat meat, we don't have to worry about raising animals :-)

I love growing plants from seeds and cuttings. DS and I built a small greenhouse and he set up a mist system for cuttings. I'm having the most fun with that!1 i also enjoy birds and try to attract them to our property. We have two nice streams by the house. Forgot to mention that we ahve about 20 acres.

I've probably left out lots I would like to say but will stop here.

My wife and I are both retired and live on 16 acres that is 8 miles from the nearest small town (1,500). We live at the end of a dirt road. I do gardening and we can lots of food in jars each summer. I also give away lots of produce. I have 9 chickens and 6 guinea fowls, two dogs, and several cats. When we had children at home I also had a milk cow, some pigs in a pen, turkeys and sheep. The milk cow was the most profitable animal I had although I never sold a penny's worth of anything from her. She provided milk, cream, butter, cottage cheese, and a calf to butcher every year. All for a few dollars worth of dairy feed. We home butchered pigs and made smoked meat and sausage. For money we have Social Security and we also go to garage sales, estate auctions, etc. and buy items that I sell on ebay, usually at a profit.
Stan

gran2,

I have to agree with your post. I am a 21 year old senior in college and I have been buying and selling stocks to get me through college. Many people thought I should have been an electrical engineer or economics major due to my understanding of how things work but instead I chose Macro Social Work (more idealism). The stock market has allowed me to live comfortably in a house and focus on full time school without any need for daily work.

My family recently purchased land in the Texas hill country. I grew up in the big city so seeing my parents retire and become ranchers is very new to me. They recently slaughtered a few Angus for 46 cents a pound and have been enjoying the Texas BBQ :) My brother has also gone from city-boy to geneticist. He brings home great meat and food all of the time.

The land is very fertile because it used to be a valley/river bed and they are learning new things about the property every day. It can produce the best fruits and vegetables.

The deer have learned to use the land as a safe haven. We only shoot the injured/lame and we don't miss. They do a great job of keeping the property trimmed and clean.

My favorite thing other than the creek has got to be the thousands of fireflies. Last week when my mother signed the contract for the new house, she made sure to include a no pesticides clause because we have not seen so many fireflies in years. They are very sensitive to environmental changes and we do not wish to disturb them.

I am sure that once my parents move in permanently they will really enjoy living off the land.

We are a family of 5: me, my husband, our 9-year-old son, 7-year-old daughter and 3-year-old daughter. We live on a regular sized city lot in Dallas, Texas. I can see downtown clearly from the corner of our street :-)

We're certainly not doing anywhere near what we could do with a little land, lower housing costs and lower taxes. We have 7 raised bed gardens that run the length of the house and produce all of our herbs, salad greens and seasonal squash, melons, beans, cucumbers, asparagus and peppers. I'm a designer (no longer working out of the home), and I've begun working out ways to landscape with edibles. By next year we'll be producing almost all our own onions, beets, carrots and potatoes, and I'm planning to add a white asparagus border to one of the front yard beds in the next 6 months. We've started several grapevines, but only one is producing. The caterpillars got a lot of them before we could this year, but I'm going to get that figured out shortly. We have 5 hens, 3 of them are laying and the other 2 should start in another month. They've been happily bumping around the gardens and front yard since last fall, but 2 of the bored old lady neighbors are starting to freak out about that. Not sure what the problem is, but they're nutty and noisy enough that we've decided to fence off a portion of the backyard this weekend to keep them out of our hair. I've also planned a privacy fence to block their view (one of them sits and watches our backyard all day long), which will give us a lot more vertical growing surface for more food. We're debt-free save the mortgage and one car, but we're planning to sell this car and buy an old vw just to use in town. My husband works full-time at a local university which will get my kids free tuition there when the time comes. We would love to take off to the country right away, but our oldest child is autistic and we really need to be near the medical centers for him at this point. Our future plans for this house include rain collection barrels in strategic locations so I can keep all the food alive, solar power for the most important things in the house (ceiling fans, oven and stove), a backup heat source for winter (probably a wood-burning stove) and an outdoor oven. I've landscaped strategically so we get more sun on the house in winter and less in summer, but I'm always looking for more ways to reduce our energy consumption.

For us, it will be key to be debt-free when we do eventually make the big move. Our house here is increasing in value rapidly, so we're hoping that we'll be able to move to a less expensive area in another 10-12 years and pay cash for a house with some land.

I lived in a major metropolitan area in California for many years. It was one of the most expensive places to live in the US. I longed to live in a less expensive, more quiet environment. I am originally from the Boston area, which is now also high-priced. I wanted to find a less pricey place to live.

I was a long-term employee of a university. I bided my time until I could take early retirement, which gave me the funds to make a move. I did a lot of Internet research over a period of five years, trying to decide where my new home would be.

I chose New Mexico. My first trip to NM was a quest to buy a home. I found one on a mesa, outside of a small town, in a rural area. I have two acres, and an 18,000 sq. ft. home. People tell me I got a good deal at $76,000.

The seller told me that people from town come out here and dump unwanted dogs and cats. He told me he hoped I would look out for such animals, rather than to ignore them or take them to the pound (a very sad place). I assured the man I would not take animals to the pound, and would do my best to help out the abandoned animals.

I arrived here with two dogs and four hedgehogs. Four and a half years later, I have seven dogs, two cats, and two hedgehogs. (Hedgehogs don't live long lives.)

I was a skilled gardener in California. Got a big thump upside the head in starting new gardens in a new climate. I found I had much to learn! I lost quite a bit of money through loss of plants the first couple of years, as I learned varioius lessons regarding this sandy soil and this climate. I discovered a lot of things, such as dogs love melons. They got nearly my entire watermelon crop last year! I had to put up a much more serious garden fence this year.

I am an organic gardener. I had hoped to grow much of my own produce with all of this land I have. It is a LOT of work, and I don't always have success. However, gardening is excellent exercise. :-) There are fierce winds blowing across this mesa. They often take the blossoms from the fruit trees, which results in no fruit. My next plan of action is to put evergreens around the fruit trees, hopefully to create a decent windbreak. I have flocks of birds living on the property. They will eat the fruit, if I don't get it before they do. One can pick fruit before it is quite ripe, and ripen it in buckets covered with plastic.

There is some sort of beetle which decimates squash plants. A local woman warned me that there is nothing to be done about this pest. Master Gardener Jerry Baker's website said to put metal collars around young squash plants to prevent infestation. That did not work. It seems the best I can do is to plant more squash than I need, to keep ahead of the beetles.

Sometimes the hot summers stunt plant growth. My corn is only about four feet tall this year. The cosmos and sunflowers are stunted this year, too. One has to provide wind breaks for young seedlings, as well as extra water to mitigate the drying effect of the wind. Many people around here use bales of hay as wind breaks for young plants.

I am constantly adding bales of peat moss to my soil, to make it more friable (more able to retain water). I also add lots of compost. I bought a batch of earth worms to aid my soil amendment program. Worms need good soil to survive, so I started them off in my compost bin.

I make seaweed tea for fertilizer. I tried an experiment on the corn this year. I used seaweed tea on half of the crop. That half definitely benefitted from the tea. (Seaweed should not be added directly, only tea made from seaweed. One can buy seaweed in the Asian section of the grocery store. Even toasted seaweed works.) I also use Epsom salt as a fertilizer--good mineral value.

One should not use water which has been treated with softeners on plants and trees. It will kill them. I put a magnet system on the pipes from my well because the water is hard, rather than a salt softening system. The magnet system is supposed to help break up the minerals. I have less water spots on my glassware since I installed the system, so I believe it works.

I am happy that I made the move. Life in New Mexico is different. It was a bit of a cultural shock to me, when I first arrived. It was like taking a step back in time. For instance, I now have well water rather than city water. If the electricity goes out, I have no water because the well has an electric pump! One of my goals is to put in a solar panel and a windmill.

The laws are different here, and people are different. Strangers often strike up conversations in grocery stores. I like that. Luckily I do speak Spanish. I am not fluent, but I get by pretty well. I am working on fluency.

There has been much to learn all the way round, which is generally a good thing. Sometimes the learning experience proves to be difficult, or costly. I now work part-time, which gives me four days a week to concentrate upon my home, land/garden and animals.

I now know that I need to provide shade trees for my produce garden. I need serious fencing to keep my dogs from eating the produce plants. The dogs also, by the way, trashed my asparagus plants--dug them up and ate them. I have to collect tumbleweeds which blow onto my property and burn them. There are tons of weeds to deal with, and there are also loads of pretty wildflowers growing on my land.

As we often hear, life is too short. It is good to make changes in lifestyle, to experience more of what life does have to offer. If you are thinking of making changes, do some research and go for it!

I dunno about homesteading, we just try to get along and make do with what's around. Town is about thirty miles away and it is usually too much bother to go there real often. There's enough stuff around home to keep us busy or if we get lazy, there's a hammock under the pine tree overlooking the gulch next to the back yard.

Today while I was out "harvesting" a wild pig which had been caught in a trap at my friend's place the dog (who had been left at home since guns and dead pigs don't need busy border collies around) pushed the garden gate open and let the chickens into the garden which had just been seeded two days before. Dratted dog! Darn chooks! Oh well, the seeds not eaten by chickens will probably still sprout, but I doubt they are going to still be in neat and tidy rows. Now I have to go find a recipe for pork sausage since the freezer was already full before this pig showed up. Avocados have been falling for about a month now so it is a nice fat pig. Wonder if sausages can be canned?

We live in a small house in a small village on a rock in the middle of the big puddle. The house was built about a hundred years ago for sugar workers to live in so it isn't a very fancy house, but the back yard is big and the ocean views are great. Loads of food falls from trees and wild pigs wander through yards so things are pretty good. Still gotta go find a sausage recipe, which is why I was online but got distracted.

A hui hou!

So many interesting lives!

I found this site with many sauage recipes. Might work for you. Cheers!

Here is a link that might be useful: Various Sauage Recipes