Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Creating a Homestead - again!

When my husband and I married, we both wanted to move out of the city to the country!  Having a homestead was our goal.  I read "Mother Earth News" (the original) and lots of homesteading books, but what I really wanted was to live in the woods like at Girl Scout Camp!!  Fourteen years later, we found our dream property - heavily wooded.  After we moved onto the property, I cleared a little garden - 4 ft. square.

Fast forward 20 years or so, and I'm trying again to turn my property into a homestead.  My goals are somewhat different and my challenges are much greater!  The greatest challenge is that I'm no longer in my 20s or even 40s and I'm trying to do most of this on my own.  This means I'm hiring a lot of folks to help.

The first set of goals are:

  • Stabilize my house - it's on a slope, and there are animals living beneath it.  Annual leveling is very expensive and needs to be corrected.
  • Clear as much bamboo (planted by a former neighbor) as possible and find a way to remove it.
  • Obtain an agricultural exemption
The second set of goals are:
  • Put in a fenced garden with raised beds
  • Raise Chickens
Other than the Ag exemption which takes 5 years, I'm hoping to get as many of these things done for this season as possible.

Over the weekend, I had my landscape guy clear out a lot of the bamboo, a "back yard" behind my house and some brush in various places.  I have a huge oak at one part of my property that I particularly wanted to save.  I think this weekend's work has accomplished that!!

 

I also now have a back yard.  I'm hoping to use it to plant shade loving plants.





I hope to keep this on a twice weekly schedule as before, but as I'm having to hire work done, I may not be able to keep that pace.

Until next time,

Stormy

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's looking so good!!!

Anonymous said...

Looks great.

Anonymous said...

I love it! So proud of you. I thing an agg exemption you need to get a couple of goats, or another type of animal, not exactly sure, but I work in the Title business and I see ag, exemptions, and they have some type of cow or goat on the property and I don't know that it takes five years I may be wrong

Stormy said...

Thanks everyone! On the ag exemption, I got the information from the Tax office directly and contacted a Bee person in the area. I may get some goats later. I really need something that I can handle long term and leasing to a beekeeper solves that issue.