Is this for me?!

Tmama.. a lot of the skills you will need. may also help your financial conundrum.. the one of your job not being profitable... such as, learn water bath and pressure canning.. in the right neighborhood, ppl will pay a pretty penny for jam,jellies,presserves.ect.. you wont make it rich that way, but every penny helps. make your garden 2 times as big as you think you would need, set up a roadside, or flea market booth selling tomatoes, pumpkins, ect... I know ppl who pay TOP dollar for fresh honey(from beekeeping). selling extra chicken, duck, quail, eggs in the right area can make back some of the feeding cost..lean how to sew, can make little beanies,sockhats,afgains ect to sell aswell(online or your booth, lots of ways to make a little money, you will never get rich doing it.. but every penny helps.. and worst case scenario, you atlest offset some of the money that you would already be out off...

How I would love to live in the forest, surrounded by the trees. Natural wind blocks, soil erosion so much less ,etc.

I would of cried too, but this probably is the college AG. major in me....Naw,I just love the natural habit with trees. I see this all of the time and I wonder if these people know how long it takes for these large trees to get that size and what their really loosing to try to make their yard or acreage look more "manicured". If you live in the country,your yard shouldn't look like you live in a subdivision.

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www.arkansasdeltarabbitry.com
"The good you do today will often be forgotten,Do good anyway"-Mother Teresa

Tmama..read your above post.

Don't be fearful, be fierce.

My uncle whom is 90(and made a killing in flipping{buying and fixing then selling} rental properties in the 60's to present) said to me "Risk nothing, gain nothing".

As long as you assess your risks and no what possible outcomes can happen, life will not change for you unless you change it.

Good luck and I hope you try for your dream. I always think I could live with myself if I tried and failed vs. never trying

Btw, you can plan forever but nothing is guaranteed except that life is everchanging and life is unpredictable no matter how much you plan.

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www.arkansasdeltarabbitry.com
"The good you do today will often be forgotten,Do good anyway"-Mother Teresa

Tmama, it is always good to hear of someone wanting to get back to the land. My husband grew up on a dairy farm and I grew up in country just outside of Toledo Ohio. My Dad had a garden and chickens and a goat to mow the lawn or part of it. I dreamed all my life of living on a farm. My husband long ago left the big dairy farm where he grew up and 28 years ago we bought an old run down house and barn and ten acres.

We had a loan to pay the bank and he worked off the farm gardening for others and I groomed dogs and opened a second hand store. We struggled and brought the land back into production organically. We had hand tools , a horse/pony and refurbished 19th horse drawn machienry. We worked like the pioneer ancestors and eventually this place became productive. It took three years to get a garden that would sustain a family.
My advice to anyone starting out is to learn all the skills you can before you buy a place and save up as much money as possible. Also get rid of debt like credit cards before you move.
Then start small whether a garden or keeping animals and prepare for animals before bringing them home. Living off the land without an outside source of income is very difficult and it takes time to reach that point.Be frugal and don't waste money on things you don't need. Living off the land starting out is harder now than 30 yrs ago because everything is more expensive now and all municipalities or counties have building regulations and many places have restrictions on what the land can be used for or what animals can be kept. There is much to investigate before buying a place.

What we have learned is starting small and paying as you progress left us debt free except for the ten years paying back the bank. After 35 yrs of marriage and being 67 and 68 yrs now we are learning health changes requires again going smaller when it comes to keeping animals and gardens. So to sum it up start small; end small and in between only take on what you can afford to do without debt except for the initial investment to buy the place. It is surprising how much a person does not need in this life to live successfully. Good luck and never give up on reaching your goals.

I have thought about that for sure. I'm sure it varies greatly by state or city but I am wondering if ere are certain licenses that someone would need to do that?! Also, depending on how "far out" we end up, there might not be much of a neighborhood to do that in. Something to think about though for sure!! =)

That is pretty much my way of thinking! When I went to college, I went for massage therapy. Before I even went to school, I had (have) some physical issues that cause me some pain. It would have been much easier for me to choose something else less physical but I thought to myself, "would I be happier with myself if I did what I have a passion for, and failed? Or would I be happier if I turned my back because of some bumps in the road and went another way?" The answer for me is to always try!

Now, me bringing up physical pains may make some of you think I should not do this whole land/farm/homestead thing, but that is why I didn't bring it up before. My pains stop me from nothing! I have very much mental control over how I allow that to affect my life, so please don't think of me as having a handicap =) haha.

1. Get out of debt. Make that the MAIN focus right now.

1. Make sure your husband feels the same way as you do.

1. Rome was not built in a day!! Baby steps...

And that's what you need to do now, in your apartment.
You and the kids go to the local library.
YOU check out books that will educate you and get 'farm' type books for the kids to read.
You can plant small things in pots, heck, you could even do your own compost on a small scale.

It took me 14 years of being "young-dumb then working my guts out" to get to the place where we could buy a house with acreage.

I started small. A few tomato, cuke, pepper plants.
I went to the library A LOT
I asked a MILLION ZILLION questions here.
I do one thing at a time....
1. Gardening
2. Water bath canning.
3. Overhauling my family's diet and going to a 90% fresh/organic diet -VS- pre-packaged, processed junk.
4.Food Storage...

And on and on.

Slowly, and bit by bit, with cash.
Hence, the slowly.
170,000 house and land.(and that was a repo home)
Money for garden fence, seeds, plants, seed started pots, seed starting soil, transplant cups, growing lights, electric blanket, reflective board, stakes, dehydrator, canning pot, canning jars, canning kit.......

THAT is just my garden.....

Bit by bit, a little at a time.
Never on a credit card.

It will ONLY be worth it if your husband is on the same page as you.
IF he does not share your desires for 'large scale old fashioned ways' you WILL be doing it alone, with kids, and working full time.......

Knowing where my food comes from makes this worth it to me.
Having food on hand in case we lose power, lose jobs, etc....worth it.
Not being part of the rat race / trying to match the jones? Totally worth it.

Don't frustrate yourself by comparing what you want with what you have.
You will be miserable, and make everyone around you miserable.
Find a way to incorporate your desires into every day life, right where you are.

This is a great place to ask questions.
You will get a lot of answers, and some will be 'edgy' honest.
Don't let that get under your skin.....there are a lot of folks out there that have been doing this since the day they were born, and are very knowledgeable!!

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I am sure of two things: There is a God, and I am not Him.
The movie Rudy

This is what I noticed:

The garden needed some start up costs. I really did spend too much at first, but a novice is a novice is a novice.

The garden the next year did help with the grocery costs, but I used the savings to buy fruit trees.

That was pretty much how things went: Each homesteading project did save me money but then I turned around and I spent the savings on something else! There were the bee hives, the Christmas trees, the materials for the home made greenhouse, the hen house, and so on.

Is it for you? Very likely: I grew up in a city and I absolutely love the homesteading life! Just keep in mind that every homesteading project has its start up costs, and each homesteading project will need much of your attention because you will also be a novice! Don't try to do everything at once because there are not enough hours in the day: instead focus on one project at a time. Otherwise you might get overwhelmed and execute a couple of hundred dollars worth of trees, as I did!

Also, one way to find land is to look at your job and see if there is a major road that leads out of town. If there is land a reasonable commute out, then you or your husband will have a quickly cleared road for your commute, and you can live a bit farther out without being inconvenienced by a long drive. We are only 1 mile off of a major road but we were across from a field of grain and it had a lovely rural feel, as well as a bit of land for me to work.

About the money: Spend just what you need for a while, and keep close attention to what goes where. This will give you the minimum amount that your family needs to live on, once you adjust for the change in rent/mortgage costs.

First of all WELCOME to the site, tons of great info here. I totally agree with everyone else on here, get out of debt BEFORE you buy property. Next, start honing your skills while you're doing this, start sewing, baking your own bread, noodles, etc., start learning to can, start re-purposing everything, (butter, yogurt & sour cream tubs make great seed starting containers), old teeshirts make great dust & cleaning rags. Shop at thrift stores, yard sales, etc for a lot of your clothes & household items. Adopt the Wear It Out, Use It Up, Make Do or Do With Out attitude. Go slowly, don't get overwhelmed with trying to do it all at once, get proficient at one thing before adding another. Good luck.

I agree with what everyone else has said - use your time now to read and prepare, practise the baking, preserving etc If you could find a farm or a animal rescue centre to learn about keeping animals, that would be useful too.
Everything always cost much more than you expect, it's a hard, sometimes lonely life but if it's in you, you just have to do it and it has rewards more than you can imagine.
Go for it and good luck!
Kaitlin.

I would think massage therapy might be a great skill to barter with down the road.

Thank you!! Lonely because land is usually further away from neighborhoods or what do you mean?!

It might be, I guess I don't know or won't know until/if the day ever comes =) I would think that a lot of farmer types would have sore muscles, but then again, I might by that time too haha.

Those are all great ideas! I would love to do all that, I worry about space because be have very little room to store things in the apartment. We do have a small garage/storage locker that we pay for each month so I could probably toss some stuff down there! I guess I need to be a little more of a creative thinker because I never thought of that stuff.

I think earlier someone mentioned old prescription bottles..I toss those out all the time! Ooops...

You would be surprised at the amount of "extra" space you have, even in a tiny apt. You can store a lot of things UNDER BEDS, in a closet, etc. Before you toss anything in the trash, ask yourself, "can this be reused for anything?", you'll be very surprised, just use your imagination.

May I offer another suggestion, eliminate that storage unit you're PAYING for, that's another expense that is slowing down your dream of moving to land, also, if you have cable/satellite tv, drop it down to smallest package, you'd be surprised at how much you can save (even $10.00/mo = $120.00/yr), also same with cell phones & eliminate landline if possible. Just suggestions to help get you out of dept & make it easier on you, especially, if you're going to be relying on only 1 income. Lot's of LITTLE things you can do to simplify your life & get out of debt. As others have said, check out the Frugal thread under Countrside Families on this site, Tons of great ideas. Good luck on your journey. PM me if I can be of anymore help.

Lonely because you would spend a lot of the day on your own coping with all the animals/growing side of things, particularly if your husband has to keep the day job. Also because, yes, land can be in the middle of nowhere!

That's ok, I have my babies =) lol

I don't have anything to add, since I'm a total newbie here too. But I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed reading through this thread. A lot of my own questions have been answered here already. And I am SO glad to find so many like minded people here. Thanks for asking things I wasn't sure how to ask (or didn't think of!)

DW and I feel a lot like you do...we really yearn to live a more rural life. However, moving to the country is just not in the cards for us right now. We both have really good jobs in the city, our kids are in a great private school that is 2 miles from our home. We each commute 15 minutes, max, to work. We have seriously considered moving but the increased commutes would take away so much time from our family and little homestead.

We are fortunate to live on a double lot that is just at 1.75 acres. We're really lucky to have such a property in the city. We planted two apple, a cherry, and peach tree. We have blueberry bushes and hundreds of strawberry plants on about 1/8-1/4 of an acre. We have a fairly nice size garden that produces plenty to can through the year. We have about 15 laying hens for eggs and do several batches of meat birds (about 75) per year. I skin and cut about half into parts and keep the others whole for roasting. we have bee hives that produce enough honey for us to keep, some to sell, and plenty to give away to friends/neighbors. We have three mini-nubian dairy goats that keep us in fresh milk all year. We make soap and most of our dairy products from the excess milk. We tap our maple trees each year for syrup.

We certainly don't have room for a steer but I met a local farmer who was willing to board for us. I recently purchased a steer that was only a few months away from slaughter weight. For $2.25 per day, the farmer feeds and cares for the animal. It is being processed December 5th and we hope to come away with about 400lbs of meat. Same with hogs. I can't have them here but the farmer raises the feeder pigs that I buy and we have them processed. We're looking to get some lambs in the spring that the farmer can keep for us until they are big enough to process. This is just to say that while you may not find the property that meets all your needs right away, there are creative ways to be more self-sufficient and help out local farmers.

We have plans to add grape vines next year and a small tilapia operation. It can be done and on relatively smaller parcels of land. While we would love to move, it just does not make practical sense when we can do so much with what we have. Be creative and have fun!

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1.5 acres in the city