"I needed a mobile workshop, one that was large
enough to carry my materials, supplies and tools, but small enough
to maneuver in and out of the mountain rental properties I owned and
repaired. I also needed enough room to move appliances and to be
able to do so by myself. ." by Tony Colella
"Dairy animals have a
saleable by-product: offspring. If you have dairy goats, then you have a
saleable crop each year, but what do you do after those kids are weaned
and you still have more milk than you can drink? You can make a lot of
cheese, or you can use some of it to raise other animals, such as dairy
calves." By Allena Jackson
"While a lot of the world is planning for the future, today slips away,
never to return. A homesteader must be intimately familiar with
the present, or lose everything and be left with no future. And
once your brain is trained to look for details instead of the grand
expanses, your horizons are limitless." by Sheri Dixon.
"Hints for a happy
retirement and tips for financial survival can be found almost everywhere,
although they now frequently include the delaying of full retirement. A closer
look at these suggestions reads much like a “how to” list for successful
homesteading: live with a purpose; simplify; nurture relationships; help
others; and, remember that it’s not all about money… just to name a few.
We should have a built-in advantage. But in these challenging
times, even the most experienced homesteaders can use some reminders.
Here are five ideas to get creative juices flowing." by Zoe Kimmel
"Personally, my acquired education on the subject tells me that the only
amount of land where clearing by hand is worth the time and effort is in
situations where machinery would not have room to work without damaging
buildings or other desirable trees and plants in the process. In
other words, pretty small places. Using machinery, you can go from
dense forest to pasture, if that’s your goal, in about two years time."
By Neil Shelton
"Poor Bob. Although he and his wife live in the country on a few acres,
they have no intention of being farmers.
In fact, Bob had no intention of having animals in his life at all, much
less having intimate relations with the various and odd assortment of
creatures his wife Linda slipped onto the property.
Starting innocently enough with what are clearly pets: bunnies, kitties
and small hook-bill parrots; the real trouble began with a phone call
from Linda’s sister concerning a rescue duck."
"I said, before I
started, that I could drive a Metz "22" 1600 miles, from Boston to
Minneapolis, in four days - or 96 hours. This meant, of course,
that it would have to be a non-stop run. Some of my friends
thought that I was cutting the schedule pretty short, and among the
business enemies of the car there were those who smiled contemptuously."
"You take your weight lifting. In the normal, ho-hum, panty-waist everyday
Olympics, some big bruiser in tights grunts, howls and groans until he
lifts a few hundred pounds over his head. B-I-G deal. Pardon me while I
drop off to sleep. The way I see it, this doesn't take any real skill or
planning, just a good breakfast, and maybe, if you've got a musk-ox
somewhere in your family lineage, that doesn't hurt either."
by Neil Shelton
Finally a good excuse to drink beer. Here's a way to overcome the
high cost of building materials. "This house was made from all the
bottles I could get. I didn't have any other way to make a house, and
this was easy enough to do."
"Rugged,
self-sufficient, fiercely loyal – despite stereotypes to the
contrary, the Appalachian mountaineers were, and are, an
admirable people who developed a rich culture while learning to
survive in the isolated coves and valleys of some of the oldest
mountains on Earth." By
Karen Sweet
