I have a dream....but little to no money

[homestead wanna be]

I too want to own my own land and homestead, but like you, because of finances we can't just yet. We have recently found a rental that fits our needs. It's on a quarter of an acre which is a good size for learning all the ins and outs of organic gardening. The home owner doesn't care what we do to the backyard, so we can garden the whole thing.
Keep dreaming and make small steps each day to turn it into a reality. Even if it's paying just $5 of debt a day or looking for a rental you can farm.
From a fellow dreamer!

 

[Smart Red]

We made our first batch of laundry detergent last year. The recipe calls for Borax and Washing Soda, and a few other ingredients.

Just a side bar here: I recently heard that Borax (the Boron in it) will build up in septic runs to toxic levels that can affect even the trees growing nearby. Not a problem in city systems. I was using the same recipe until I read about the Borax problem.

Love, Smart Red (aka Linn Bee) Gardening zone 5a - 4b in south-est, central-est Wisconsin

 

[Nonesuch Farm]

I finally have my husband on board with wanting to live in the country and have a farm. My dream is to own a farm and grow/raise/hunt my own food and try to live as simply as possible. Electricty would be a must though, but only to keep the house warm enough to keep my snakes and run their enclosures. I breed snakes as a hobby and plan on starting a feeder animal business, breeding mice, rats, insects, rabbits, etc and selling them for other people to use as food for their exotic snake/lizard collections. In addition to this, I also want to plant and grow a lot of my own produce as well as raise several different kinds of livestock including goats, chickens, cows, turkeys, etc. This will require quite a bit of land, but I don't expect to go out and get a crap ton of land right off the bat. I want to start small with my first house with a little land and maybe do chickens and goats to start off with, then save money to get the BIG farm.

Here's the problem. My husband and I make about $3,000 a month together. This gives us about $700 extra after all bills are paid. We have quite a bit of debt. I have a credit card that was maxed out at $3000 (I was not responsible. I learned my lesson) and a medical bill of around $3000. My husband also has credit card debt and a medical bill. The credit card debt is from having to put a medical procedure on credit cards because we didn't have health insurance at the time. That's around $3000 and he also has about $1500 on a medical bill. We also have our car loan but that is being paid off diligently every month. We never miss a payment. So other than the car, we have a little over 10k in debt and no savings in the bank.

We have never bought a house before and we have no idea how to go about getting a loan or how much we'd be able to afford. With debt like ours, would we even be able to get a loan? We need to get out of our current apartment as soon as the lease is up (7 months) because living there is horrible. We have roach problems, our neighbors are horrible, and we just don't have enough space. So we are either going to rent a house (so our dog can finally have a backyard) or we are going to try and buy a house. But with no savings as of right now, 10k in debt (and that doesn't include the car loan), and only 7 months left of our lease. I'm wondering how this is all going to work. We will probably end up staying in our apartment month to month after the lease is up just so we can figure out how to get some of this debt paid off and save up some money for a down payment.

With $700 to split between debt and savings, what would you do?

Pay debt down with half, buy a piece of land with the other half. Buy the time you get the land paid off your credit will be fixed and you can use the equity of the land to build a house.

 

[hqueen13]

We made our first batch of laundry detergent last year. The recipe calls for Borax and Washing Soda, and a few other ingredients.

Just a side bar here: I recently heard that Borax (the Boron in it) will build up in septic runs to toxic levels that can affect even the trees growing nearby. Not a problem in city systems. I was using the same recipe until I read about the Borax problem.

Love, Smart Red (aka Linn Bee) Gardening zone 5a - 4b in south-est, central-est Wisconsin

Interesting.... there are actually some trees I'd like to kill around here They're an invasive species from asia and they are far too prolific to do any good.
Can you send me your recipe for laundry detergent? I am curious now!