How long have you been homesteading?

We've been on the land since late 1999. Off grid with power 9 months of the year, produce roughly 75-80% of our own food. Debt free since April 17, 2008. We love it and wouldn't go back to "life" in the city for anything.

Lowdown3

 

What do you do to have power off-grid or do you just not use electricity?

 

great for you!

 

Seriously at it and working toward sustainability for about 6 years even though we have both been at varying stages of homesteading for 20 or so years . I was also raised on a homestead and lived most my adult life on large dairy farms.. We are at about 90% of our goal of 95 or so percent sustainability. We keep it realistic and dont ever plan on being completely sustaining.

We are on grid with power at the moment but we can do most everything but the internet thing on our own without power. Solar or wind would be sweet but not something we can justify at this time. We have our own on site water supply and our only hook up into babble - on are phone and electric.

 

I'm not an official homesteader, but I've been a country girl all my life. I started gardening way back for 4-h around the age of 8 or 9 and have had gardens most of the time ever since. I've had chickens for eggs, show and meat for almost as long. I've had horses since I was 10 etc. However I still live close enough to society for a job, electricity, and other things. but we are working on things like a methane digestor ( put all that horse manure to work) and solar and wind power to help get off the main electric grid. We also have wood heating and haul our own wood.

 

As self sustainable as possible with a job and hooked to the grid for about 12 years. My fiance' is form inner city MI and had never seen veggies grow in a garden.

We cut the cord 6 months ago. We live without any electric, any form of power and no indoor plumbing, no well and our lovely outhouse. 6 months in and we are loving life! Looking forward to the rest of it as each day passes.

 

We've been working on it since the 1980's. It's not so much total self-sufficiency as sufficiency in the critical things. Extras are luxuries we enjoy but are not dependent on. We produce almost all of our own food, all of our heat from out woods, have breeding livestock and save seeds so year to year we have self-sufficiency in the important stuff.

I do like technology, e.g., computers, LED lights, etc, but I'm not dependent on it. There is balance and appropriate uses.

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
in the mountains of Vermont
Sugar Mountain Farm
Holly's Pencil Portraits
NoNAIS.org

 

Thirty-six years.

 

Wow, some of you guys have been in the loop for a long time! Hell, some of you must have started it! I'm just now going on my 6th or 7th year of being a homesteader.

 

Been doing the survivalist thing since I was 14,I'm 45 now.

 

Since 1971 and still ticking.

 

I have always been half in the woods since my childhood... does that count?

 

I homesteaded to a certain degree with my first husband when my kids were growing up. We had dairy goats, 50+ chickens for eggs (sold some), fed out pigs and a dairy calf each year. Raised some veggies in raised beds. Hubby deer hunted, and we had land on the river and fished. I "came back" to this way of living last year after a back injury that ruined my career as a paramedic. I manage a sr. citizen's center now, so I only work part-time after a diagnosis of diabetic neuropathy (with accompanying 2 surgeries) and firbomyaglia. We have 25 hens and 3 roosters, 2 does and a buck rabbit, getting a pig and a calf this week, have 7 raised beds, wild blackberries grow down the driveway, blueberry bushes and grape vines that don't produce yet, and we just planted apple trees, plum trees, pear trees, and cherry trees. I am able to can anything I have instructions for. I make sourdough and whole wheat bread. DH wants to put in a root cellar and smokehouse in the near future. He also wants to buy a tractor and have a larger garden and raise some animal food. We also have a pond, 12 acres of hay fields, and put in a wood stove that heats our entire house. We live in a small 14 X 50 MH that is paid for with an 18 X 14 screened porch onto it. We have about 6 months of food stored, some health/beauty/toiletry storage, heirloom and polinated seeds, an old well that we can get water from in case SHTF, and the means to protect it if necessary. I just started various berry plants in the greenhouse to add to the current layout.

 

Ok, someone help me out...I haven't quite figured out yet what "DH" stands for.....?

 

DH is your dear heart to my understanding or dear husband. DW means dear wife to some. I call my wife mama.

I was raised without hot water or running water at all and no electricity as a child. Luckily my wife did as well. We keep a garden and use electric only for the computer, tv and lights. Two days each week we go without power altogether. We save 37% on our monthly electric bill and get the benefit of learning to move in the dark.

 

one year this time. I did basic homesteading when the kids were little, but this time we are trying to do it right and because we want to, not because we have to.
We moved to this place last year. It was chosen because it still was in range for my husband to drive to work each day without too much difficulty, but it's remote too. Only one full time neighbor, we are on 37 acres (and hoping to get another 36next door), pretty much on top of a mountain, at the end of a dirt road. It has it's own well (shallow), we've planted apple trees and raspberry and blackberry bushes, built 10 raised bads that harvested a significant portion of our food for the year. We are trying to figure out how and where to build a chicken coop (bears,coyotes and fisher cats an issue) for fresh eggs. Right now, we are building our infrastructure...tractor, shed, etc. Wood heat with propane backup, looking into wind and solar to be more off grid.

 

A really good friend of mine had problems with their chickens being taken by coyotes. What we did was build an outdoor cage and an indoor shack and tie it all together with steel.

First we leveled the ground to about 8" lower than the surrounding area.

The "floor" of the outdoor cage consists of close-tied re-bar and steel-mesh making it very difficult for digging animals to get under the fence. The fence was tossed away at an industrial site and we put it up around the chicken-coop using scrap steel (drilling poles) buried deep into the ground. We strung barb-wire along the top edge of the 8' fence to the 10' mark making it even harder for jumping creatures to get over the top - un-harmed.

Finally - the dirt that was moved out of the way was packed back into the 8" hollow to re-level the ground. Perfect for water drainage and virtually impossible for unwanted creatures to get in without going through the doorway. The doorway is "protected" via cinder blocks buried in the ground to the bottom of the cage-door.

The coop was an old-shed that was being given away - lined it with some insulation and wood shelves and such. It is sufficient for her 40 chickens and it works great for very little outlay of money - just time spent with friends and beers.

 

I've been homesteading for about 7 or 8 years now. I got caught up in the fun for a while in the 90's but shortly after the Y2K scare, I started getting involved with prepping.