Anyone else 'going at it alone'?

[Beekissed]

Headlamps...they are your friend. I have two right now that I alternate. The ones they make nowadays are quite bright and sure do make for lovely hands free working.

 

[Lazy Gardener]

Add to the head lamp: a couple good sets of clamps, and some ratchet straps. Yeah... any job that hubby and I do together would take me at least 4 times as long to do alone. It would be great if you folks who didn't have a helper could devise a "work co-op" Trade hours and work together with folks in your area who have similar needs.

 

[Beekissed]

I don't have any women...or men, for that matter...who do "work" in my area. They just exist in their homes with no aspirations towards improving them or doing any kind of homesteading. I don't have a good neighborhood community....it's all crooks, thieves, drunks and child molesters around here. The older generation who are decent, law abiding folks don't actually do any work outside, just existing in their homes as is.

It's a nice thought and I've seen communities like that, but mostly that's from a bygone era.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Guess I'm lucky where I live. I live on a dead-end road and over the years we've gotten to know some of the folks pretty well. We do trade work and help each other when we can. My good neighbor does a lot for us...I sometimes insist on giving him cash - and other times they get milk/eggs/pork/produce. It works for us.

There are some other folks that live further down the street from me and we work out arrangements frequently. We are about to butcher some chickens together when we get a decent day. I've got the plucker and the other lady has 9 roos she needs to do. I'll pull some of my older birds and do them at the same time. DH and I have a pretty good routine when we butcher - but it'll be nice to have another set of hands too.

There are definitely other neighbors who prefer to keep to themselves - that's their business and not my place to judge what's right or wrong for them. (And, then there's the one that I prefer keeps to himself and far away from me!)

All-in-all I think those "good neighbor" relationships need to be fostered and grown. It takes time to earn folks trust these days - but it certainly can be done and I like knowing that someone has my back if needed.

 

[NH Homesteader]

One of our neighbors has a much bigger tractor than us, so we often trade DH's mechanic skills for tractor work. The rest of our immediate neighbors are yuppie folks who prefer to buy organic food rather than grow it, but they're nice enough. Then there's the meth dealers up the road... I live in a weird place lol.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Then there's the meth dealers up the road... I live in a weird place lol.

There's one in every crowd, lol! We have a man who lives on our road who molested his own daughter. He is NOT included in any neighborhood activities.

He is a very strange man...and armed to the teeth. The ammo he goes through on a weekend blows my mind - but then I guess he feels the need to protect himself - because he's not exactly popular.

 

[NH Homesteader]

Oh geeze, that would bother me knowing he was around!

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Strangest thing is that his wife is still with him. Thankfully all of their children are out of the house and some of them totally estranged. (can't say I blame them) After he was 'outed' and convicted - he was never allowed to be alone with any of his children. Thank goodness!

I can't tell you the amount of times that I watched their kids when the wife was out of town - or even just gone for the day. (this was decades ago when I was a stay at home mom) They spent many days and nights at my house because most of her friends/family disowned her for staying with her husband.

She never gave me details - but her kids talked to mine so I knew what was going on. The most she ever said was that she couldn't leave her kids at home if she was going somewhere. I never understood how she could look at him much less stay married to him, but she was/is a very meek woman who had a bunch of children and no source of her own income.

 

[NH Homesteader]

Yikes that's so horrible! Those poor kids!

 

[Lazy Gardener]

Bee, I hear you loud and clear. We used to have a great community, back in the granola years. Hubby and I were on the fringes of that crowd, but there was a lot of community back and forth, give and take. The property directly across the front end of our little dead end road was about a 100 acre parcel. 4 families joined to buy it communally. Each family had a few acres for their personal property, and shared ownership of the remaining acreage. I don't know if the community acreage has "been dissolved", but all initial owners have moved on. We had a little co-op store on that community parcel. DH and I raised layers and meat birds, splitting the labor and birds with one neighbor in that group, then doing the same thing with a neighbor up the street. One of the "up the street" neighbors does a great job looking after the needs of the folks around them. He has a tractor, and chain saw, but they do no farming. During the last major wind storm, he went and cleared a huge downed tree from a neighbor's yard.

For the most part, it's very difficult to develop those kinds of relationships. I do see it happening within my church community, and DH and I have been on the receiving and giving end of that a multitude of times. Groups of men/families will gather to cut and split wood, do yard work, put on new roofs, help someone move, winterize... One guy has a Kubota, and he does some volunteer work with that. We even have small groups that function on common interests. There is even an ice fishing group.