tell me about your homestead

dianaofthedunes · #1 09/09/08, 04:22 PM

Hello,

I am new here, and this is my first post. I live in northern Indiana and have just recently become more seriously interested in homesteading. I started canning and freezing food this year, with plans to start a bigger garden next year. We live on half an acre in a somewhat rural area. I want to expand to chickens, but hubby's not too keen on that yet since we don't have a lot pf property... We eventually want to move to a bigger lot, 3 acres minimum. I don't have any plans to try to become completely self-sufficient, but I'd love to grow my own veggies, have goats for dairy, and a few chickens for meat/eggs.

I was hoping the rest of you could tell me a little about your homesteads; how much property, what kind of animals you have, the housing arrangements for the animals, and what type of home. Pictures would be great...! Since we're just getting started, were trying to gather ideas of what real people have going on their homesteads.

Thanks in advance!

RiverPines · #2 09/09/08, 04:45 PM

I think you will find a lot of variety here.

Us, we have 3 acres on a river.
We have a house thats small and a pit, an old trailer on a basement. But it keeps the weather off us.

We have goats, Boers, Angoras and Pygmy crosses. All our animals are in various large pens with several shelters built in each.

We have sheep with a big pen and shelters and a separate ram pen.

We have chickens and Muscovies. They have a large area with a big coop and there are small pens for young ones with solid dog kennels for shelter.

We also have a rabbitry for Angora rabbits in the enclosed porch thats attached to the house.

Our goats and sheep are tethered out in paster everyday. We tether to control the sexes and so we can control what everyone eats as we dont want them stripped the land bare. We like natural fence rows between the farm fields and our land.
And we dont want the animals going in the flood plain and eating all that keeps the erosion under control.

We are simple, no barns or big garage. No bob cats or log slitters. We do all our work with hand tools and our backs. It all works fine for us and we are lower income here.

English Oliver · #3 09/09/08, 05:10 PM

We just bought our place in the country, I've been working the fields, but we can't move in the house until the 16th of September. We bought 59 acres with a small pole barn, tool shed, chicken house, a two year old rustic style home, and a 1/2 acre pond. There are about 35 acres open and the rest is wooded. We plan on keeping chickens, a few ducks, and later on goats. I want to plant a small orchard and start an apiary. That is about it.

Oliver

CountryWannabe · #4 09/09/08, 05:20 PM

Hi! I live on 3.5 acres in a double wide with front and back large decks. We have a hoophouse that we uncover in summer, and that is really all I grow stuff in. It got badly neglected this year because after three attempts to start it, and losing everything I put in there each time - unseasonal ice storms and then a major wind storm that broke everything - I wussed out and gave up. I need to get my body out there and get it cleaned up so that I can get fall planting done...

The bottom (south) 2 acres are field fenced and have a large barn/shed/building where I keep about 8 or so Katahdin sheep for meat and several free ranging chickens for eggs. I also have a couple of goats in there right now. I have a 1 acre area fenced with a small shed for the goats. I have four Boers for meat and (currently) five Nubians for milk, cheese, kefir, etc - dry right now - plus two bucks, though one is a G6S carrier, so he will probably end up as dog food or at least not be used with the Nubian girls... I also have some ducklings just about ready to go into the south area. Each year I raise several Cornish Cross chickens for the freezer. They didn't do so well this year for some reason. Probably because the hatchery were late getting them to me so they got here after it started getting hot. I am toying with the idea of letting a few of the cornish cross hens get old enough to lay, and see if I can get a faster growing, larger breasted "homestead chicken" if I let them mate with my dark cornish rooster or a cochin roo.

The one thing I would do different would be to get more land. My daughter has twelve and a half acres and that is a really nice amount - much easier to rotate pasture for parasite control and also allows her animals to forage or graze much more than mine most years. This year was cooler and wetter than most, so my animals are still grazing, but usually by now the grass has been brown for a long time and I am forced to pay for feed...

Most years I can raise all our meat and most of our veggies. I only keep enough animals to keep my freezer full and tend to grow enough veggies for home use only. That keeps my work manageable. DH works full time off the homestead. I work full time and then some on it. If I were younger, I am 62, I would have a larger garden and raise more meat chickens so I would have some for sale. I may do that when DH retires. We'll see how things go...

Mary

Mary

katlupe · #5 09/09/08, 06:11 PM

My husband and I live on 4.5 acres, mostly wooded in the state forest in upstate NY. We have 3 horses, 3 cats and 1 dog. We do not raise animals for food and do not plan to do so. We grow most of our vegetables and what we don't or can't, I try to buy in bulk in season and can for the winter.

Our horses are in a barn that my husband built with his chainsaw for cutting the wood and all hand tools. He has cleared our land by hand, which was heavily wooded and we have given our horses more and more area as he did so.

Our house was a hunting camp when we purchased it nine years ago and had never had any plumbing or electrical wiring in it since it was built in 1850. We have been remodeling it little by little as we can afford it. We generate our power with a small solar system and use that to operate my home based online business.

In the beginning I did want more land. But when we found this, we figured here we are in the middle of the state forest with no neighbors and lots of horseback riding trails. Our taxes are low here as it is considered a camp even though everyone knows we live here full time and always have. So we are quite contented with this amount of land. We don't use much more than an acre as the rest is all woods, though we enjoy it all.

Welcome to our homesteading community here!

katlupe

HTWannabee · #6 09/09/08, 06:24 PM

We have 2/3 acre and have a garden, 11 chickens, 2 turkeys and 7 himalyan rabbits we raise as a family/4-H project for my 7 yr old dd. We planted 2 apple trees, blueberry bushes, perennial herbs, strawberries (these are mostly for the chipmunks!) and tap our maple trees for syrup in Feb/March. You can do quite a lot once you get started but just a step at a time. We are in a fairly urban area not far from Boston and bought our house because it had a large yard and was a real fixer-upper! (Read CHEAP house) It can be done on a small lot! So far I have put up 7 gallons of tomatoes, many quarts of beans, rutabagas and 25 squashes on the vine almost ready and sugar pumpkins. This is all in raised beds. We just put the beds where the sun shines since we have a lot of large trees to and a lot of shade. I filled our pick up truck bed with cow manure last April and it made a difference in our garden production this year I can tell you!! Just get started and find out what grows well and plant that. We want to move to a larger homestead but are not quite ready. DH is still in the military and we need a bit more time here so I am doing whatever I can in the meantime. Good luck! My DH was sceptical about the chickens at first but he is hooked now.

Kelly · #7 09/09/08, 06:38 PM

Welcome Diana! Interesting threat to start...I'll especially enjoy seeing the pictures (someday I might figure out how to add pics myself!)

We live on just over three acres. Lots of fruit trees (pear, apple, peach, plum, cherry and fig), and we recently planted quite a few blueberry and raspberry bushes (our "edible" fence next to a gravel driveway that gets lots of traffic due to a horse farm down the road). Oh, and we have a muscadine grape bush too.

We have a decent size garden that keeps us busy. This year I planted various tall plants and bushes by the fence of the garden (like huckleberry and gooseberry bushes...like to try out new plants). We have blackberry bushes that line our horse pasture (end up getting GALLONS of blackberries and dozens of splinters!). We water all our plants with the saved rainwater (three 300 gallon tanks), one 50 gallon tank.

We have a nice barn with two large stalls, hay storage area and a tack room. It holds our blind old horse and a sassy miniature donkey (and the chickens when they wonder in to eat the leftover feed). The chickens actually have their own cabin-looking coop complete with a porch! Hubby built it last year using old lumber from a tobacco barn we tore down that we found on Craigslist.

Hubby just recently finished another chicken coop that he built for our new chicks. He built that one on the side of the horse barn. We have 24 chicks, 14 chickens, and two roosters. We added to our chicken collection because everyone wanted to buy our eggs and our 14 ladies could only produce but so many!

Our newest adventure is beekeeping. We kinda fell into this adventure after a bee stung my husband last year and he was painfree in his leg for the first time in three years. Painfree for three days. After that he purposely had a bee sting him and sure enough, it helped again. Googled bee stings and found lots of people did it for pain relief. We attended a three day conference with many speakers (over half who were doctors) and learned a lot.

Another endeavor of ours is worm farming (very small scale...maybe someday we'll make a small business out of it, but for now we are still learning and are grateful the worms are still alive and reproducing!) Learned all about worm farming via Youtube.com.

Live in an older type farm house that is always needing updates (windows, floors, roofing, etc.) Always trying to figure out ways to save a buck and our environment. Sure can be expensive trying to save our money! I think the cheapest thing we've bought was the clothesline! (less tacky than hanging our clothes over the dog fence like we did for the first seven years of owning our home!).

I love our little homestead, the animals (should mention our dog and two cats), the wholesome food that it provides. Our little piece of paradise...