All In!!, What made you finally Quit ????

Well, out of school, after several short-time jobs, I worked for a year as a Plant Guard at a small manufacturing plant. Then a job became available on Production. So I moved up to that. After five years in that job, with no opportunity for advancement. I went looking. Oh, Along the way I had done 6 months in the USAF. And then I stayed in the USAF Reserves for 6 years.

I found a job in the City, at a Sub-assembly Plant for an Auto Company. I was fortunate enough to stay with that Company, for 37 years through all the Lay-offs and Labor Strikes. And I retired at age 63. We sold the House in the suburbs, where I had raised my 5 children and got them all through high-school. A couple of my daughters have even gone through College and got their degrees.
And now, 10 years later we have sold the house in the suburbs. Dear Wife has another year to work, before retirement.And,I am retired on 13 acres of wooded hills, out in the country. I mow a lot of grass and cut a lot of weeds. But it's really very peaceful. out here.

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Be Intense, always. But always take the time to
Smell the Roses, give a Hug, Really Listen, or
Jump to Defend your Friends & What you Believe in.
'Til later, Have Fun,
Old John

Traffic!

That's the easy answer... After a power outage for 4 days in this area, it made me realize just how bad competition in this area is, and why I don't want to be trapped in all the traffic heading to stores with empty shelves..

I had said I would never work in the corp world, but I ended up there anyway after a back injury...

I got caught up in making the money, so I talked my wife into moving to DC to make even more...

Yeah, we had fun with what it afforded us, but in the long run, the traffic and driving a desk all day is killing us quickly... We aren't near as happy as we were before making what we make now..

So we've bought the farm, given a month's notice at work, and we're outta here as soon as we can get everything moved.

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

If he paid in hows it living off the system?

Shoot he can have what I paid in, I wont ever see it... he can also collect what my old man and grandfather paid in cause they never saw it?

Sit back and ask how many people are never going to see the social security they paid for , let alone use the medicaid and medicare ?

That was the biggest chunk out of my check, taxes smaxes...

Sure wish I had the ability to say no I don't need that but uncle says yes you do, but with all the people that croak or come up short of requirements, why oh why is SS bust?

Its not cause of folks like FFB , its the dirty louses in charge!


Opps back on topic, I got tired of the management, knuckle heads the bunch, always passing over the deserving knowledgeable troops on the ground and putting college kids with no seniority ahead, then cutting things back because they make poor decisions because they don't really know anything...

I'm no ones Dog!

We just basically woke up one morning and said ENOUGH! If we waited until we were financially ready to retire it would never happen and we realized that we were both in our early 60s and how much longer could we plan to enjoy good health? So we pulled our belts in and just did it. No regrets. We love the country/homesteader life and the farm keeps us energized and active. Every day is a new adventure worth waking up to without the stress and health hazards of dealing with the public on a daily basis.

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I'm in my own little world, but it's ok. They know me here!

We are half way in. Once the boys got moved out, we bought our 5+ acres. DH quit working off the property and we have a 5 year plan for me to work and together (mostly him ) to bring the house/barn/shop/fences/animals up to our targets. By then, we plan to sell our rental house and I expect to retire after 36 years here. We have 3 years to go on the 5 year plan.

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No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
~Eleanor Roosevelt

Quit??

Well, maybe you could call it quit!

I'm homesteading due to a chain of events that directed my life toward this specific piece of land in this specific county.

It was for the sole purpose of keeping my mother out of a nursing home that this little 6-acre homestead came into existence. At the time I was in my 50's, the job market was terrible and mother was diagnosed as being in the last stages of parkinsons disease. The only way I could think of to be with mother 24/7 was to set us up in such a way that I could grow our own food because her little SS check was going for medication.

So this city girl with the plastic facade became real and bonded spiritually to the earth that was given!

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I am what I am! Acknowledging this is the beginning; and my growth is yet to end. http://motdaugrnds.com/farmsales ~~~~~ http://motdaugrnds.com

This was us. We had a plan. My parents bought 14 acres that my hubby and I wanted. (We couldn't get financing.) The plan was for us to buy it from them and build a house, save some money then retire.

Well...we made a payment on it here and there when we had the money. (which wasn't often) and started building as we had the money. Five years later...house only 1/4 done, DH decides that he doesn't want to live out in the country. If we lived out there he would have to drive in traffic to work two hours a day. (like he didn't know that before) He wants to live in the city where all his tennis buddies are.

Fast forward a year. He tells the kids he's moving in with one of his "tennis buddies". (one with blonde hair and boobs ) Ya, the kids got to tell me my hubby was cheating and dumping me. Oh, and by the way, he wasn't going to pay me a cent for spousal support even though I'm disabled and he's raking in ten thou. a month. We will see about that in court.

So here I am starting over with nothing at 49 years old.
Time for a new plan.

All I can say is as I got older some things became more important and some things became less. Finally took the jump in December and we are at the land for good. I have every intention of dying here. I only wish we had bypassed the last 25 years and gone directly to this.
It would help to have the intensity , focus and physical strength of youth. But with age comes a sort pf patience and that has been helpful. And appreciation. I would advise anyone who has homesteading as a dream to don't get into the having things trap. When you hit your 50's suddenly things become so much less important. Sacrifice a little when you are young..so that you can have the peace of this lifestyle before you get too old to enjoy it.

Buffy in the Big D, I foresee wonderful things for you now that the buffoon is out of your way. May your day in court be satisfying and your future everything you ever dreamed of.

We have 31 acres, but we've been paying down debt since we bought the first 15 acres.
All we owe now is the remainder on the mortgage and my student loan. Until the debt is all paid off, we can't quit our full-time jobs - or, we won't quit because we wouldn't make enough to pay off what we still owe.
I told DH I want to retire in 6 years at 62, that way I'll have enough years in to get a decent retirement check and we'll have all the debt paid off then, because the plan is to have the mortgage and student loans completely paid off within 5 years.
In the past 2-3 years we've paid off 30k in miscellaneous debt by following the Dave Ramsey plan.

At least we have the solitude of our rural acreage to go home to at night and it gives us a good tax break, since we no longer have children at home. I wondered if we should sell and move closer to town a few years ago, but DH refused and honestly, I don't think I want to live close to town again, not right now anyway. We have a good life!

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Vickie

Combination of 2008 market crash and reevaluation over the next 2 years of my personal values and those around me. I just went back to my roots, in the end. I guess that eventually happens if the 30s soul searching thing actually works out.

We had always planned on retiring to the country since I was raised on a large cattle ranch. We just moved up our timeline as I became less patient with people around me and the so called "rat race". Combine all that with the ridiculous housing prices we were paying in the city and here we are.

I had a successful business - selling processed food. What can I say? I was raised by a grocer. Though, to his credit, his mantra was "This stuff is to sell, not to eat."

After Paisley was born and I made it out of the hospital with her virtually unscathed - after dragging her from the arms of zealous pro-vaccine nurses, I made a promise to her I would educate myself on what they wanted to do to my baby before I ever agreed to it. After 9 months of lots of research, seminars, workshops, tears and prayers I decided that we would nourish the children the way Mother Nature intended and put our faith in their bodies and not in man made science. Of course that almost meant walking away from a successful processed food business, too.

But really what happened is the town we lived in told me to either get rid of my goats or move. So we moved.

For me the time to change my lifestyle simply arrived along the lines I had planned for during my lifetime.

From the time I was 22 , I worked, lived below my means, saved, invested and when I chose to buy property stuck to study , small and realistically affordable instead of flimsy overpriced McMansion on 1/8 of an acre.

My plan was a 25 to 30 year path to the sidelines of the rat race.

Of course my plan didn't play out as I expected but the unanticipated factors actually turned out to be positive factors and moved me ahead in my plans by about 7 years with a little tighter initial budget as I had planned but it still worked out well enough to please me.

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"I didn't have time to slay the dragon. It's on my To Do list!"

I am a 57 yo single female. Have longed for a peaceful country life for years. Now the kids are grown up and gone I am afraid that I will not be able to do it on my own and oh yes....I have no money

Is the property still available? Do you still want to live there? Maybe your original plan is still the right one if you down size it a bit and rethink how to go about it.

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You are confined only by the walls you build yourself.

Female 49 disabled living on SSD trying to survive and thrive on a few acres.

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Dorothy Kaye Collins

I'm trying to scale back the homesteading. Was raised on a small farm and we always had chickens, garden, cows. Assumed it was a smart thing to do, and economical.

Spent some years in the military, and in 1996, got out and bought 5 acres. Started developing it to grow garden and fruit, and cows and chickens, etc. Was doing pretty good when something happened I hadn't planned on - my kids grew up and left.

My wife is mostly interested in flowers. Plus she got a job as 5th grade teacher, so that is the center of her life - gets home late daily, and works most of the weekend.

So I'm sitting here alone trying to get fired up to plant a garden that may not be used much. Wife and kids like the convenience of buying stuff at the store. Not worth my time to sell at markets. Can feed a lot to the cows, I guess.

So I'm trying to scale back and choose easier things to grow and maintain. As I get older, and without kids, I'm using more equipment, which means more maintenance and repair, which really isn't my interest.

I ponder occasionally going to town and not having so much land to maintain. Grow a small, more efficient garden. Just takes too much effort to move, and I do like more isolation. in the country, though it takes many acres to avoid problem neighbors. Have had a lot of dog problems - people think with a few acres they can let them run loose or let them bark nonstop and nobody will hear them.

I certainly no longer believe growing your own is in any way more economical, unless done carefully on a small scale without equipment.

My gggfather headed west to the gold fields of Montana and chased gold for a couple years, found a little, than spent some time trading in Montana and Utah, purchase a ranch in Montana went back to the mid-west married and took her back to Montana.

Fast forward I am a rancher and farmer on one of the ranchers he owned, As far back as I can remember I wanted to be a Rancher and praying one day one of our kids or grandkids(someday) would want to be one too.

I see homesteading as separate from living in the country. You can homestead a lot more places and it's a lot more convenient to homestead on the edge of a small town than to live out in the country. We used to live twenty minutes from a small town, forty five minutes from a larger town and with no true cities within driving range. Now, we are on the edge of the small town and we have a much better "homestead" than before. Just small livestock, rabbits and a few hens, but maybe we will get a couple miniature sheep to mow the lawn someday.

I guess we are living a hybrid life now. There's solar PV panels on the roof, but we are connected to the grid now, too. Before, we were completely disconnected from the power grid. This hybrid version is much easier and actually less expensive since no generator or battery bank. The garden here is more productive than the bigger one we had before. Might be because it is raised bed instead of flat on the ground. But for whatever reason, we get more in less space.

The bunnies are doing really well and now the yarn made from their wool (they are angora bunnies) is sold at a nearby shop in town. There is a lot of synergy in being in town yet it is still very homestead like, too.

You can sort of slide into homesteading by just starting to do it where ever you are. Then as circumstances provide, take the next step. If you find you've stepped too far, then take a step back. Much easier and more comfortable than jumping into something completely different.

I agree in that you can homestead anywhere you live, whether its in containers on the balcony or cows on the back 40. I just bought a house and have started my raised bed garden. Each year I plan to expand a little bit more and rely a little less on buying things I need. My next project is bread making and soap making while my garden grows. If the budget allows it, I will try my hand at aquaponics.