Starting from scratch

[miss_thenorth]

One of the many reasons I love my hubby, is that he shares the same ideas as I do. It might take him a bit longer, (it was hard for him to give up the Joneses), but we grow together.

With the Joneses a distant memory, we are looking at our life as it is right now, and thinking about where we want to be in the future. As many of you might know, we bought this house out in the country on my insistance. i wanted out of town, he wanted a nice big house, so if the Joneses ever came over, he would feel validated.

Well, it's been 2 and a half years here, and he really could care less about the Joneses anymore. He has embraced the farm life, raising our own meat, and most of our veggies. The prestige of owning a beautiful home has withered. Instead, he has embraced the same desires that I have, which is being able to do more for ourselves. He has also come around on getting the debt out of our lives.

What this all means is---we are contemplating selling this house, buying a smaller, not as nice home, with about 30 acres. The price tag would be 1/2 of what we could get for this house and that is including the land, barns and home.

(in comparison, we now have a 2100sqft home, plus full basement, 3 full bathrooms, with almost three acres, one 48x64 insulated heated shop, and 20x24 pole barn.--going to a 1200 sqft home with full basement, a huge three story barn, chicken coop and 30 acres)

Obviously the new place will not even be close to how we are living now. We realize that, and are okay with it, so are the kids.

If we buy this farm, we will be debt/mtge free in 5 years or less. Very attractive for me.

Our plans for this new farm would obviously be to be as self sustaining as possible. Chickens, cow for milk and meat, pigs, ducks etc, plus vegetable garden hopefully to provide all our food, and pasture to raise all the animals, (including our two horses), we would also like to grow grain/hay for our critters so that we wouldn't have to buy any for them.

So, if you could start from scratch, with just the house and barn as permament structures, how would you plan your land to maximize land use, as well as regenerating the land. How much of what would you plant. Would you do permanent fencing for rotational grazing or movable fencing. If permanent fencing, how big would you make your paddocks. In what order would you rotate your animals. (horses, cows, pigs, sheep, ducks, chickens) how much would you dedicate to pasture, and how much to crop growth.

Of course this is still a dream. We haven't looked at the farm yet--(still talking), but being the planner, I want a sort of game plan.

My library doesn't have any of joel salatins's books (can you believe that?!?!), so what other books would be a good place to start.

So if you could start form scratch, how would you plan it?

 

[kimnkell]

Wow, sounds like you have the perfect plan Miss north. As for planning out the paddocks for all of your animals ...well, we are still working that out too. We have 75 acres of land , 2 barns, and a shop for Hubby to work in and of course several chicken houses. Right now we are living in a 16 x 80 mobile home while we are finishing up our cabin which will be finished probably by April or May. I can't wait to get moved in. Our little cabin is gonna be just a small 2 story cabin with a small room on the back for laundry and a big pantry. We are gonna eventually turn this little house into my Hubby's shop in a few years because we are building another house back in the holler that is totally gonna be off the grid. No electric,, maybe some gas lights and a few solar panels. We are still gonna make our house in the front as self sufficient as we can but we will still have electric. We will also have a cellar in both places ( I really need that right now)... We already have raise most of our meat and veggies and we get all of our eggs from our chickens. I make a hand made loaf of bread almost every day depends on how much my kids decide to eat. We just bought a milk cow (an early Valentines gift to ourselves) he he... and will start to make butter, sour cream, cheese and all the dairy products that we can make. We used to have goats and make our cheese and such because they were so much cheaper than a cow to buy but now we've decided to splurge and have our Jersey milk cow. She's being delivered to us tomorrow (weather permitting). I can't wait to start milking..
Also, in 15 more months we will be totally debt free. We have everything paid in full that we have owed for except for my Hubby's daughter's child support. She will be 18 next April so we will have to pay until she is out of school which will be in may or June and then we will only owe our utility bills.

Miss North, I know exactly what you mean by the "Jones's" and we don't care what they think about us. We just wanna make ourselves happy and could care less what anyone else thinks.

Good Luck and I hope you get to buy your farm.

 

[TanksHill]

Congratulations on the decision Miss. I think that you and you DH being on the same page must make things so great. I think if I could convince my dh to sell we would be on the same path as you.

I think downsizing is the current trend. People are realizing whats important and whats not.

kimnkell could you pleesssse start a thread about your new cow. Pictures would be great and where your housing it. Then yo will need to fill us in all all the dairy details. You must be so excited.

gina

 

[Ohioann]

There is an interesting book called The Have More Plan by Ed and Carolyn Robinson that is very interesting. It was published in the 1940's and has been republished by Storey Communications Inc. Although it has quite dated pictures the basic ideas are sound and can be adapted to "modern" supplies. I got mine at Lehman's Hardware in Kidron Ohio. By the way Lehman's is a great source for all kinds of homestead stuff. If you can't get there in person they have a website and catalog. There is another book that I thought I had but can't find right now is something like Five Acres and Independence that also had some good ideas.

 

[farmerlor]

I want a dairy cow (whine).
I'm really sick right now because the properties around here are going so very cheap. I can get 40-60 acre places with fencing and outbuildings for about half what I STILL OWE on this place and this place isn't worth what I STILL OWE. (sigh)
If I had more acreage I would definitely have a second well put in with some kind of manual access. I would have one well for the house and garden and another exclusively for the livestock. We didn't think that through very well when we moved here and now we have hoses running all over the property all year long.

 

[The Vail Benton's]

I want a dairy cow (whine).
I'm really sick right now because the properties around here are going so very cheap. I can get 40-60 acre places with fencing and outbuildings for about half what I STILL OWE on this place and this place isn't worth what I STILL OWE. (sigh)
If I had more acreage I would definitely have a second well put in with some kind of manual access. I would have one well for the house and garden and another exclusively for the livestock. We didn't think that through very well when we moved here and now we have hoses running all over the property all year long.

I feel your pain! We are currently on the same sad system, although we do have our pipes run for irrigation now - naturally, they are not hooked up and operational.

 

[xpc]

That is an extremely intelligent decision, getting out of the mindset that a huge house equals status was the first hurdle to jump.

It is still best to construct a new house, even if you find a property with an old house on it build a new super energy efficient one the size you need - you can always use the old one as storage, plus the utilities will be in place as you build the new one.

Having the expense and upkeep of a large house is not fiduciary or practical in your retirement years, look at how much house you actually live in not including all the rooms for junk that you spend heating, cooling, and paying property taxes on.

For me it turns out that I am more than comfortable in 800 square feet, that equals a 12' x 22' living room, a 12' bedroom, a 14' kitchen, and a bathroom and utility room of 10' x 10' each. It will be cheap to condition such a small place plus taxes are minimal. My new place will actually be 600sq.ft. because some of those rooms are too big for me.

Pole barn style out buildings can then be constructed and taxed at less than 10% of your living space (or there about). How often do you visit your junk? is it really worth $100+ a square foot to house it within a few feet of you? I just found many boxes that I haven't opened for 20 years - thems ebay fodder now.

I have a 1200+ square foot house now and 2 bedrooms are closed off filled with junk that I just had to have - I may venture into one of them every few months just to say hi.

Minimize now and your olden years will be golden one.

 

[freemotion]

I'm jealous! And happy for you. I would do temporary fencing for the first couple of years, with more solid permanent paddocks near the barns for keeping the critters safe when not on pasture. My reasoning is that you won't know what the stocking rate of your pasture will be until you are using it. And you will be increasing the fertility of the soil over the first few years you are there.

I can hardly believe how my pasture has improved with the addition of chickens....it is weird and wonderful. And spreading compost by broadcasting what little I had for the first year or so, then putting it down three inches thick thereafter on the areas that were too weedy (nasty, inedible weeds). Then seeing that in one area, the topsoil just won't hold well because of the shape of the area and run-off and the fragile nature of an area that was recently forested....but it is slowly coming along.

You need to get to know your land, too. Which areas have good grass even when it is hot, which areas are under water for a week after a rain and which areas dry out right away. With temporary fencing, you can get this all figured out before spending all the money for more permanent fencing. That is what I would do, anyways. I mean, that is what I am doing! Boy-oh-boy, what I would do with 30 acres!

Jealous!

 

[miss_thenorth]

I'm jealous! And happy for you. I would do temporary fencing for the first couple of years, with more solid permanent paddocks near the barns for keeping the critters safe when not on pasture. My reasoning is that you won't know what the stocking rate of your pasture will be until you are using it. And you will be increasing the fertility of the soil over the first few years you are there.

I can hardly believe how my pasture has improved with the addition of chickens....it is weird and wonderful. And spreading compost by broadcasting what little I had for the first year or so, then putting it down three inches thick thereafter on the areas that were too weedy (nasty, inedible weeds). Then seeing that in one area, the topsoil just won't hold well because of the shape of the area and run-off and the fragile nature of an area that was recently forested....but it is slowly coming along.

You need to get to know your land, too. Which areas have good grass even when it is hot, which areas are under water for a week after a rain and which areas dry out right away. With temporary fencing, you can get this all figured out before spending all the money for more permanent fencing. That is what I would do, anyways. I mean, that is what I am doing! Boy-oh-boy, what I would do with 30 acres!

Jealous!

Well, we haven't looked at it yet. We were thinking of waiting for spring, since we still have some things to finish up here, and also --we really dont' want to look in the winter, spring would be better when the big rains come. You bring up good points--yes, it would be wise to get to know the land first, si i guess temporary woud be best first off. Thank you.

this has been something we have been thinking about for a while now. Whether to buy more land here, or buy somewhere else. I really really hate the mortgage payments we have here, not to mention the taxes are outrageous. we only use half of the house we have, so why have the rest? that, and my barn is way too small, so even if we bought more land, we would need to build a new barn. The logical decision is to move. The only thing that sucks is that we have only been here two and a half years.

And if and when we do move, i want to do it right. i want to have a plan in place to manage the land as best as possible. It might be a year before we do move, maybe longer (hopefully not)We have a starting point--this house that is on the market now, in an area where the farmland is good, and taxes are cheap. The house has good bones, not sure about the barn. but I'm sure this will just be a starting place, we will more than likely look at many farms. The main thing is they will be farms--with more than 25 acres a must.

I am looking forward to this change.

 

[lupinfarm]

Aww you know I'm your best friend on the downsizing to a not-so-awesome house topic We moved from a suburban neighbourhood (Bowmanville, *shudders*) living in a 1750 sq. ft. backsplit, 3+1 bedrooms and 1.5 bathrooms (1 4-piece semi-ensuite upstairs and 1 powder room in the family room). It had a finished "basement" plus an unfinished basement about 4 stairs down from that. It had a fully serviced office, new high quality laminate flooring, a kitchen that needed a little updating, great breakfast nook, and a fully insulated (way past code), drywalled and serviced garage with a door to the house 30 minutes east of Toronto.

To..

A run-down, 150 year old, half double brick half wood framed farmhouse on 8.38 acres 1.5 hours east of Toronto. The living room has badly done plywood floors, the kitchen flooring is ugh.. well we won't even go there LOL the cabinets are good quality but need to be replaced *badly*. A HORRIFYING full bathroom on the lower level, HORRIFYING!! As in a piece of the wall board fell off while I was showering the other night!! An okay unserviced office, a lovely extension that is meant to be a family room but gets used as my parents master with 20 year old propane insert and laundry room, 3 good sized bedrooms upstairs and a half bath upstairs that has been renovated. We also have a large bank barn that needs a good amount of repair, a great goat house, and some lovely pasture.


I wouldn't trade it for the world We love where we live and its just so much simpler than living in the nice house in the city. I'd love to live in a more done-up house but the fact is, we can customize this house to ourselves, like how we're extending the bathroom downstairs into that unused unserviced office to make a huge bathroom.

My parents paid $161,000 for this house and land, the mortgage is something like $121,000