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  • From: Bill Jones <billj AT harborside.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Intro
  • Date: Mon, 03 Apr 2006 09:51:05 -0700

I'm a snowbird. I spend my winters writing software and tutoring students in math and physics, and the summer preparing raised beds and keeping livestock. Buying bottle babies or weaners in springtime really works for us, with no baby-birthing involved.

Our operation is 99% non-fossil fuel, but we don't pretend to be able to produce more than what we personally will use. We live on the edge of the wild, so the flood of voles (root crops), rats (peas), and raccoons (tomatoes) about did us in. So now the focus has been on creating raised beds tall enough to discourage them.

It's hard to know what the future will bring. As long as I can bring home a bale and a bag of something once a week from the (now more distant) feed store, we could go on almost indefinitely on very little outside input, and even have a milk cow. There's no one delivering feed out here now at a reasonable price. But when the day comes when we can't drive, it becomes more complicated. At that point we would probably spend the fortune that would have gone to car insurance on twice-yearly deliveries and cab rides to town. So I guess I'm preparing more for adversity in our golden years, than for the end of the world.

Self-sufficiency doesn't seem that hard to us, as a team effort. If a person just can't stand the idea of packing home-grown cucumbers into jars for pickling, or feeding a bottle to a calf, or composting manure, then he or she won't like our lifestyle. But since those things are fun to us, we've got it made, as long as we've got one toehold on the feed delivery scheme (and a small income to support it).

Bill
S. Oregon coast




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