Homestead mailing list

[The Studebakers <thestudebakers AT earthlink.net>]

Thank you for all the encouragement. I feel like more of a homesteader now!  
We have been dreaming about this for so long,  the closer it gets, the more 
REAL it becomes.  Most of the time I am excited and ready to jump in...I am 
glad to hear I'm not alone in my occasional self-doubting.

So here's my to-do list :)  After fixing up the house, we want to get a water 
harvesting system going,(I don't want to be dependent on the shared well )  
then a garden, then chickens.  I am thinking the garden may have to be in 
raised beds.  After that, rabbits, bees, quilting, and stained glass.  

I am trying to draw out what I want to finished product to be like (well, at 
least resemble) so that we don't put in the beds or coop, and then me realize 
that for some other reason it should have been: closer, further, above, 
below, etc. some other structure.  

The girls and I are going up to stay in GA next week, then back to FL again 
until the house sells.  I am holding 2 open houses, one Saturday, then Sunday 
afternoon.  I do SO want it to sell.  This double mortage thing stinks!!! 

Beag is Beag,
Amy

>------------------------------
>
>Message: 9
>Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 19:28:54 -0700 (PDT)
>From: sanrico AT highdesert.com
>Subject: Re: [Homestead] A direction
>To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
>Message-ID: <20060715022855.25502.fh050.wm AT smtp.sc0.cp.net>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
>
>Thank you. And a sincere happy anniversary to you both. You have many 
>blessings -
>the greatest of which is each other. Those of us who worry about what 'place'
>we're in need to hear, and often, that place is a relative thing, and exists 
>on
>many levels. I can now feel better about where I'm going, knowing that the
>getting there is a matter of baby steps and not leaps and bounds. Well, 
>shoot.
>You used all the good words. Celebrate!
>Sandy
>
>On Fri, 14 Jul 2006 22:06:37 EDT, Clansgian AT wmconnect.com wrote:
>
>> 
>> Several thread headings contain musings about where people are in their 
>> homesteading and I wanted to inject the opinion here that homesteading 
>> isn't a 
>> place or a status but more like a direction, which way you are pointed and
>> whether 
>> you are moving there .... maybe slowly, maybe inperceptably, but moving 
>> none 
>> the less.
>> 
>> We've owned this particular homestead for seventeen years and we've lived 
>> here for fifteen.  Incidently, tomorrow is also our 17th anniversary.  We 
>> never 
>> had any debt on it and that has meant that it has always been a work in 
>> progress (read: lived primitively for some time).
>> 
>> Today I was putting the seeds from this springs mizuma and tsa-tsoi plants 
>> in 
>> bottles against fall and spring planting and thought about how far we'd 
>> come. 
>>  We got a gig working at a hotel where we can bring the kids and put them 
>> around the pool and herself works the desk and I am maintenance man ("If I
>can't 
>> fix it, it ain't broke!")  We make the local actual minimum wage which is 
>> a 
>> little over $7 an hour and we pay all our running cash expenses by working 
>> two 
>> (ten hour) days a month.  We have other money making things going on, but 
>> that 
>> money gets stashed or is used for indulgences.  We're in a good place.
>> 
>> Getting here has been like tying a knot in your rope of days and saying to 
>> yourself that you will not slip back beyond that.  Like a barb working its 
>> way 
>> in, each small advance is safeguarded against going back.  And the 
>> inevitable 
>> result is that you get somewhere.
>> 
>> Another thing that put us on our way was adopting the mode of, as they say 
>> in 
>> Gaelic "beag is beag" (little by little).  The road needs a well defined 
>> drainage ditch on one side where the road is steep.  I put a shovel and 
>> mattock 
>> there and every time I pass, I dig two more feet, then quit and go about 
>> what I 
>> was going to do.  A great many "big" projects around here are like that.  
>> Weed 
>> out ten hills of corn on the way to check the mail every day, put one rock 
>> in 
>> the rut in the road each time you pass, drop $2 in the 401-Cow fund when 
>> you 
>> return from the store.  Some things are urgent, but in practice it turns 
>> out 
>> that not so much really is.
>> 
>> What I'd offer is to never look on any homestead operation, present or 
>> dreamed, as a done deal.  It is always dynamic and ongoing.  When our long 
>> time
>> cash 
>> gig petered out and gas got to be expensive, we found that we passed those 
>> milestones with hardly a shrug.  Yet I wonder were else we will go, so 
>> many 
>> things left unexplored.  So if you are moving toward the self-sufficient 
>> life,
>> you 
>> are a homesteader now.  It's a process now and it always will be a process.
>> _______________________________________________