Question. Would you recommend living with someone

Are they sitting on their behind playing video games while you work? Or do you walk into a clean house, fresh laundry, and dinner on the table?

I think as long as they are working too and you know going into it ahead of time that they have no desire to work outside it can work.

Personally. I would love to have a "wife" to come home to, just not one that I share a bed with. On the other hand a handsome "stable boy".....

Kathie

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That someone does not want to take care of animals and gardens, okay.
What does she do instead?
Does she bring in money, do something constructive with her time, (artistic,crafty, knitting socks, cooking). Or is she ornamental and costs money?

If she does the inside work and you do the outside work, you might have a deal. But all in all, I would shy away from it.
My DH helps, but he is not exited about it, does not learn, and often has this woe is me look about him. It distracts from the happiness of having your place.

was married 34 years to a guy who wanted nothing to do with my little farm and considered it simply a money pit, not seeing the benefits of healthy food, etc etc etc....yes I had too many animals but I cared for them all by myself....he has passed away now....almost been six months.....but my advice to you would be "no"

Both of us wanted for SO long to be back in the country and when we finally got the chance, we took it.

I guess if I had to point to anything in particular where we part ways, so to speak, it would be that I have to constantly tell him what needs to be done or it doesn't get done.

For example, we BOTH want to get the woods behind the house cleared out (remove the brush, vines, and small trees/saplings), leaving only the larger hardwoods. He KNOWS it needs to be done and he can be working on that alone while I'm in the garden, but unless I walk back there and get started on it, it won't get done...DRIVES ME BATCRAP CRAZY! Don't get me wrong...he'll work until he drops, but I just wish I didn't have to "hand hold" him, KWIM?

I still consider myself lucky, though...at least he WILL do the work.

As you were...

There is a big difference between being "allowed" to follow your interests and someone that joins into your interests. Not good enough for one to work inside and one to work outside and share a dog and a couple kids. You are just both short changing yourselves. Two people in the garden laughing and joking, two people in the barn pitching manure is the way it is meant to be or it is a lonely life. You spend your time talking about what the kids did--when the kids are gone you can just stare at each other as there is no longer anything in common except alot of wasted years.

Kathie, what you was saying ws like my mom. She tended the garden till we came along, then she just showed us how to do it. She tended the chickens til;l we was old enough, than she told us to do it. She didnt know a thing about what went on on the farm, and didnt want to. It nearly mortified us when, she was talking on the phone, and somebody asked where dad was. Well, he was plowing with the 48 H Farmall across the creek. We had just got 2 tractors at the time, and had a 38 A JD. We heard mom tell whoever that dad was across the creek plowing with the RED tractor. When she got off tyhe phone We made sure she knew WHICH tractor was WHICH, and What their names were, tho I dont think she ever learned what model they were.

cvk, Besides being out in the garden together, and scooping out the barn together, Theres other things, lioke helping do the canning together, Picking chickens together, doing the wash together. heck, washing and drying dishes together.

AS I GET OLDER, I realize there aint gonna be enough together times, unless a couple makes a concious effort to make sure there is. The other may get underfoot, But, IF they just are close to what your doing, and talk, and listen, and go get a wrench, or carry out the baskets of laundry to the line and help hang, try to learn about machines, or just wash jars, There close, there handy, and thatll make memories to be remembered by both, if one forgets, or just by one, if thats all there is left in their life.


When she hung up, and we were around 6/

If they have no interst in living the homestead life, may I ask why they would want to live out in the sticks with someone who is?

Because they thought they were ortimental candy. They thought all they had to do was cook meals, clean house, and sit on the portch and watch the sun rise and sit with a coffe in their hands. They thought a garden was at the most like my little one 18 X 30, and that he tended to it. They thought, and im speaking of women as to my experience, that if they looked sexey, cooked and cleaned, both on a LOW par with each other, that should be enough.

I guess men think that if the women cooksa and cleans, AND wants to dop her farm stuff, as long as hes fed and inb clean clothes, and has all the sex he can handle, he can live with her whacky garden ideas, tho he likely HATES any money deverted to the farm/garden/homestead.

Why? A meal ticket and a place to live. My aunt was a city gal and married a dairy farmer. Forty years later my mother asked her what kind of cows they had and she said "I dunno, they are big and black and white" She didn't have a clue. Never left the house. They had 6 kids and didn't know diddly squat about each other. Total strangers that spent their lives together. What kind of a life is that!!!! Yes, FarmBoy it should be everything that you mentioned! It is not enough to occupy the same space if two people don't share their lives and interests and do things together and I don't mean going to a movie! Allowing someone to do their own thing while you do yours is not sharing a life.

Bill, you are looking for a partner, not a roommate. Don't settle for someone who you have little or nothing in common with....you will regret it.

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Don't.

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I could live with that.
Sexy, cooked, and cleaned would be a step up from my wives.

Homesteading/farming is too big of a time and money committment. I'd never suggest getting romantically involved with someone who has zero interest...

Every time you blow a couple hundred on hay to feed the stock, or spend money on a new animal or piece of equipment it would become "competition" for your (shared) money, not to mention time with the SO and a brand new argument waiting to happen.

Naw. There has to be some common ground there. At least pick someone who likes animals or plants, or woods/nature, or organic cooking fresh/local/organic or something! A romantic partner needs to see your time and money invested as "worth it" somehow.

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Shan, what in the world made you thik I was looking for somebody,. whether a partner OR a roomate??? I A I N T

My marriage lasted 20 years, the last 4 being in the country. (my dream, not his). Being in the country, with lots of worked always needing done, it just escalates things. I would not reccommend this to anyone, and will never do it again myself!

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FarmboyBill, you know that isn't the worst place to start in the division of household/homestead duties. If you put canning and freezing along with cooking and she would be carrying a good share of the load. Around here my wife doesn't tend to carry much of the garden and livestock duties. In a pinch, if I get hurt, she will feed the animals and stuff. Bear in mind that the garden is seasonal, and this time of year isn't taking a whole lot of attention, beyond PMing the tiller and stuff, so for year round work if I manage the animals and the homestead, and she cooks and cleans, (though I do help a lot with cooking etc.) the work is divided evenly relatively. My wife and I are also just about to be empty nesters. Her duties included a larger share of child raising, including homeschooling and I did the bread winning. If your woman is willing when needed to pitch in if needed cooking and cleaning isn't a bad load, especially if cooking includes canning and freezing.

And how many wives do you have up at your homestead/compound, anyway?

I can't imagine trying to homestead or even live out in the country with someone who simply wasn't interested. DH and I got really lucky in each other, I think . . . though we've had some disagreements about actual geographic location (he prefers cooler climes than I do), we both did want to move back out to the country and start doing homesteading things. Half the things I want to do would not be possible without his help, at least not without my having to pay someone to do them for me (ever seen a 5' tall, not too heavy woman trying to sink fence posts by herself? Yes, it's as funny and sad as you would think) or taking twice as long (he'll let me dig my garden beds, but eventually feels sorry for me and does them twice as fast). Luckily he's on board, and I've got someone who actually wants to help with the garden, the chickens, clearing the brush . . . he thinks it's too hot here in Virginia, but at least we're doing things we both enjoy and want to do. And, even better, we actually like each other, which is something that seems to be missing from many marriages that I here about in various forums (usually not here on HT, thankfully) and see on TV . . .

You know, in twenty years, my husband mowed the yard ONCE...and not even ALL the yard, just part of it....I'd just had surgery and couldn't do it. Was the only time in 20 years I asked him to do it. He would sit on the front porch and drink iced tea while he watched ME mow the yard, and then tell me how nice it looked.

Sometimes, I'd be too tired to cook, so he'd fix the meal. He was a good cook. He also liked the way HE did laundry, better than the way *I* did it, so he did most of the laundry.

All I'm saying is, you don't have to walk in lockstep doing EVERYTHING together. All the two of you have to do is compliment each others abilities, respect each other, and work as a team, FOR the team.

Mon

16 years is a long time to spend being miserable.

That was how long my ex and I were married. Oh, we were happy enough together....what made us miserable was the other's preferred environment.

He was perfectly content in a high rise condo downtown with every entertainment and distraction close at hand. I was, of course, attempting to grow herbs in pots on the patio and failing....and hating every moment of city life.

I was perfectly content out in the middle of nowhere with nothing but critters to talk to and the antics of dung beetles to entertain me. That poor man was miserable and bored to death.

It's one thing if your preferred lifestyle can be done in the environment of the other, then you can each do your own thing and chat about your day over dinner, or cuddle together in front of the g-dam-noisybox. It is another thing is your preferred environments are mutually exclusive, as ours were.

We came to the decision that love does NOT conquer all, and that we should follow our own dreams...rather than dragging the other down paths that they did not wish to go. It was a very amicable divorce.

I then met a blue collar guy who quoted 5th century Greek philosophers at me...and had to reply by quoting 3rd century Persian philosophers back at him. He still works off-farm, but he comes home and greets all of the goats and horses first. His idea of "relaxation time" is sitting in the garden and communing with the squash and tomatoes.

In other words, even though he doesn't *participate* a lot, my environment makes him happy.

I think that is the big thing. A couple could make it work even if they had vastly different interests, as long as they were content in the same environment. But get two people whose interests are environmentally dependent (homesteading is environmentally dependent, as is a passion for the Opera), and those environments are mutually exclusive....and it is not going to turn out well.

~smiles~ I nearly committed to an author, and it would have likely worked, as his environmental demands consisted of me occasionally taking the time to un-bury his desk from under the piles of old manuscript drafts. (See honey? You DO have a desk! Your computer is NOT held up by boxes of copy paper containing second re-writes!) And while that would have worked, I don't think it would have worked as well.

Like many things in life....the answer to such a question is "It depends."

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Peace,
Caliann

"First, Show me in the Bible where it says you can save someone's soul by annoying the hell out of them." -- Chuck