raising home

I really have never thought of myself as a ‘farm girl.’ It never appealed to me before I had lots of tots. Honestly, if the cost of living wasn’t so sky high and the whole economy about to topple over, I probably still wouldn’t want to deal with all of the challenges that come with raising animals and keeping the balance and definately much hard work involved.

But times, they are a-changing!

I was looking for information on what all you could do with one acre. How many animals? Can you fit a house on that size of lot and still keep animals (small ones of course.)? I’ve got 3 classes to do school work for, 13 more dish cloths to crochet for my order, sinkful of dishes, groceries to buy–but I can’t seem to stop reading about this idea of ‘homesteading.’ How awesome it would be to grow e v e r y t h i n g we ate! (or close to it, anyway.)

I’ve been planning it out in my head. Even though, I know I have SO long to wait before we can get started. We definitely want goats. They are so much fun. Great pets, and could we convince ourselves to drink goats milk? I don’t know. . . but we could make cheese and soaps and many other things if we can’t quite get to the drinking part. 🙂 I think I want a pig or two! We have lots of scraps and little bits of food that don’t get finished. Reality states we would have to still feed the pig other things, but I think with just our food scraps, there wouldn’t be much supplementation needed! Chickens are a must. We need eggs, and God only knows we eat our fair share of chicken.

I also would like to delve into the husbandry part of keeping animals. Raise babies to sell and supplement our income. I’ve always thought this could be a good way to add income. It won’t take the place of a real job, but I know it could at least help. We all know every little bit helps.

Eventually, even though I am terrified, I think raising bees would be incredible! We love honey, and using beeswax to make candles, soap, lip balms, all it’s other wonderful uses! We’ll see. Bees require a delicate balance, I don’t know if we can keep that balance or not! Eventually, we will want cows. Probably as soon as we can afford to raise them fairly self-sufficiently.

It’s all about taking the time and effort to work hard. It is definitely worth it. I think as our fragile economy continues to tip, we will all be delving a little bit into the self sufficiency realm. Going back to our roots. I think that’s where we belong. We’ve come so far technologically, medically, genetically. I think people are starting to yearn for the ‘old times’ when we just did the work ourselves and knew that the food we were putting into our bodies is real not modified at the base of life, in the DNA.

My next quest is how much space do we need for housing? I haven’t found much information here on the web, maybe I need to check out the library. Slow down! You have plenty of time to read up on that. I am just very excited. We will never be the no electricity type, but if we can get to the point where that is about all we need to pay for. haha! I’d be ecstatic! 😀

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