Wanna Be Home steader

I intended to post a reply but this thread got kicked down to the second page so quickly I forgot about it. WIHH sent me a message and gave me a little nudge. Thanks.

So far you have got mostly good advice. I would start out slow. You are already ahead of me because you have a mobile, well, and outhouse. Have the well water tested. Usually there is a place in the county that will do cheap tests on well water. Basic are tests for nitrates and (fecal) bacteria. Also arsenic is a good thing to test for in MN.

Visit your land throughout the year to find out what the various parts are like at certain times of the year. Do some places flood in the spring? What spot gets good sunshine year around? Are there places that are sheltered from the wind (usually out of the W or NW)? Where do the snowdrifts form?

You may wind up needing all the equipment FBB suggests but I would slowly expand and buy it a piece at a time. We are here to try to help each other. Being snarky is unproductive.

There are so many different kinds of soil in MN it's hard to reccommend something for you. Northern MN is canadian shield country where the last glacier scraped off all the soil and exposed bedrock. You may have to bring in soil to have a garden. The Red River Valley has some of the best topsoil in the world and the prairies of SW MN are not far behind. These soils will grow anything the climate will allow. SE MN never got covered by the last glacier so it has valleys and hills. Sort of what I imagine appalachia is like. They have square watermellons so they don't roll downhill into the valley.

You may have a varity of microclimates on your land. Some crops will thrive if planted in the right microclimate. I plan to put the orchard on a hillside. It won't get the wind like it would at the top of the hill and it won't be at the bottom where the cold air pools. Gardens are eaiser if they are on a level piece of ground. Locating them close to the house may keep the deer out of them. You may have to fertalise extensivly to grow crops.

MN has several different growing zones. I am in zone 3. My current orchard has Ure pears, Golden Spice pears, Toka plumbs, Pipestone plumbs, Evans Bali cherry, Harroldson apples, Harroldred apples, Wealthy apples, Sweet Sixteen apples, and I am trying to grow Honeycrisp apples because I love them so much even thiugh they are rated for zone 4. I don't know of any peaches or appricots that can survive here. The University of MN Extension has lots of good info and an active program developing plants for this climate. The University of Saskatchewan also has good info but I think you would have to smuggle the plants in.

I have gardened here for the last two years. I have had good lock with Cherokee Purple, Amana Orange, Bloody Butcher, Roma, and Warner's Yellow tomatoes. Minnesota Midget cantalope, Fordhook watermellon, a yellow watermellon someone gave me, beans, corn, potatoes, and summer squash have all done well. I try to buy seed with 90 days or less to harvest.

I too have some low land that is wet. There is no open water, just lots of rushes. I would like to wait until the ice is safe enough to walk on, drill a hole about 15 feet deep, drop about 6 sticks of dynamite down it, and set it off. The result would be a nice pond of open water but there would probably be Loon poop all over eveything and the DNR would have a conniption fit. Oh well, I can dream.

It is possible to be totally self sufficient but it's too much work. I will continue to buy some groceries and stuff with the knowledge that I could provide for myself in a TEOTWAWKI situation.

You can do like me and my wife are... Figure out what you have to have there and working as a minimum for you to want to live there... get those in place, then make the jump...

Dump your job, move your stuff, then look for a new job... It will be a LONG time before the land can support you, if it ever does...

OH.. be sure you have piles of cash, because we've found even doing what you describe on a shoestring turns out to be one huge bootstring... and lots of them... It's not a cheap endeavor even if you are scrimping and saving and doing everything as cheap as possible.

__________________
Never let your fear decide your fate!
Kein Mitleid für die Mehrheit

As Nimrod says, Every piece of tools/equipment I have, I bought one piece at a time.

When I was working, so many times over 45yrs, I saw old men, my age now, retireing. Id ask them what they were going to do with there selves now that they had the time to do it. Some didnt know, which really ment they hadnt saved up enough money to do anything, AND< If they had, they were now too afraid to spend it cause they might need it for hospital/doctor/medicine bills. It also ment, that they were so into their jobs, that they never gave retirement a thought. Some thought that they were so important that the company would keep them on forever.
Some said, that they had thought, at one time, that theyed like to do , this or that. BUT, again, what they were truly saying was, yes, theyed like to do that, but they hadnt saved up any money to do it with, or, again, were afraid to spend the money on tools/equipment to do whatever, then have a medical issue that would cause them not to be able to do it.
After hearing that so much, and knowing that all I wanted to do all my life was farm, but not knowing for sure what type of farming I would eventually want, or be able to do when I got old, I started buying all the things I thought I would ever need to do any kind of farming I might feel I wanted, or was able to do. I didnt want to have to kiss somebody to get something done cause I couldnt do it physically myself. I made myself to be as mechanically efficent as I could afford to be.
Now, I dont worry about haveing to buy something, cause Ive already got it bought. No money, for the most part comes outa my SS check because I HAVE to buy an implement.
I dont have to put off doing something cause I havnt got the tools to do it with.
People come to me to see if they can get me to do this or that for them, NOT the other way around.