Marquette Kansas offered free land if folks would put houses on it to save their elementary school. 250 families took em up. Not sure how big the lots, but with internet employment now, an I.T based worker could afford to take the land offer I guess. Watch the video at http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/videos500251.shtml# select the video at about mid page titled "Land for Free" Maybe real homesteading is making a comeback.
Opportunity number 1,465,382 LOL! That would be cool! Can we all line up on horses and race off to stake our claims for old times. did they really ever do this or is this just another made up movie moment?
i saw this on news last night> nothing new other small dieing midwest towns have tried it> just a way to increase taxbase> did you notice you dont get to put up your sixteen by sixteen log cabin> you have to build to their minimum standards which requires same money as building anywhere else> you just get free potato patch to park it on> hardly call it homesteading> sorry about punctuation and capitalization< my keyboard has apparently went goofy>
I think small time farmers going back to the land would be awesome. Especially for all of those farmers who have been forced to declare bankruptcy due to being talked into investing too heavily on expensive machinery which caused payments overdue in the first place. I don't think there will be too many takers though - farming is a lot of hard work. Rewarding, but still - manual labor. And it really seems to me that the education system seems to have a 'work with your mind - not with your hands' mentality. Manual labor is for the uneducated, is general wisdom I've heard spouted off by public education. :no: If only they got a chance to meet some farmers who really knew their stuff. I'm speaking of the farmers who weren't trapped growing one single huge crop and no other interests. I'm speaking of the farmer who raised small fields of diversified crops. They had cattle and poultry on their farm, and bar a few staples, were pretty much self sufficient within their community. If the implement broke, they hauled into the workshop and fixed it right there on the spot. If they couldn't build or grow it, they bartered with their neighbors for it. The small time, independent farmer. Those families are in short supply.
When we looked at this place it originally had 350 acres.Many years ago. when we bought it they were selling 2 parts we bought all. Im glad we did.I always said Id never be a farmer now...we raise Registered Texas Longhorns,horses,mini donkeys,chickens. Love to garden.
Well, Shrek; if ya gotta pay school taxes, I guess getting the land for free helps? (HA.... wonder how high and often the tax rate hikes will be?)
Shrek, I posted that some months back. There are a couple of other areas too that are givng away land for bulding on. The general concensus of the folks here was that living in Kansas would be just about like losing ones soul and living in Hell. Why it's the most God awful place that ever exsisted, just ask or look at the original post. Marquette is a wonderful quaint little town. The city park has a swimming pool and really goes all out to honor the veterans of the area. Salina, a town of about 50,000, is not far away as commutes go. Car pooling would probably work as several will be working there according to the newspapers. Still, even if you are homeless and living in your car, why oh why would you want to get a foothold to a different life--if it has to be in Kansas? "The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land." Abraham Lincoln "The land! That is where our roots are. There is the basis of our physical life. The farther we get away from the land, the greater our insecurity. From the land comes everything that supports life, everything we use for the service of physical life. The land has not collapsed or shrunk in either extent or productivity. It is there waiting to honor all the labor we are willing to invest in it, and able to tide us across any local dislocation of economic conditions. No unemployment insurance can be compared to an alliance between man and a plot of land." Henry Ford.
If I was living in rented space, I would go to Kansas and free land and ebay like hell or maybe start a webcam with girls looking sexy or something to make income if need be.
A friend of mine works as a telemarketer and sells comic books on ebay. He works out of his house and could pretty much live anywhere. Before this he was homeless living on skid row in los angeles. He got the telemarketing job about 15 years ago (they will hire just about anyone) and just started to save up for an apartment and got off the street. He now lives in a double wide that he owns. He has never had a car (still doesn't) and lives very frugally in southern california. I just saw him about 4 weeks ago and when you talk to him all he keeps talking about is how he is living on easy street and how great life is. I also think he never went passed 8th grade in school.
Hmmm... makes me wonder. I am new to this site, but for a long time I have been wondering about just pulling up the roots (only lived in PA for 4 1/2 years, so they aren't too darn deep anyhow) and heading for open country. In fact, I have a picture posted above my 'puter of a tiny cabin in the middle of a wooded area that I have proclaimed to be my "dream house". Since being laid off from a computer job, I have been toying around with online selling. As your friend who sells comic books, I guess I could do this anywhere. It's just getting up the gumption! You would think the gov't must have land somewhere that folks could stake a claim to and live off the land (with an Ebay or other subsidy) .. Heck, it would save the gov't big bucks in the long run if they would offer land and enable more people to be independent of gov't assistance. But I guess that makes too much sense to ever happen.
