Homesteading as a moral commitment

“I’d love to do what you’re doing,” we sometimes hear, followed by the inevitable “but.” There are people who say they would love to live a more self-sufficient life, to be off-the-grid, to homestead out in the country, growing their own food and living a more intentional life. Many of these individuals are sincere and do wish to break free of their enslavement to a social and economic system that holds them tightly in its grasp, but how many of them will ever move on their desires?

It was very encouraging recently to come into contact with a man and his family who earnestly desire to become modern day homesteaders. I will do anything and everything I can to help them realize their dreams (and whomever else). This family’s desire is not just a passing fancy; they are serious and are doing things now to make it a reality. Unfortunately, most of the people I’ve heard express affinity for what my family and I are doing are most likely never going to do it. They have a romantic notion of “the simple life” (which ain’t so simple) but they value some things too highly to give them up to see their notions become reality.

Recently, in passing I mentioned that living a homesteading life requires a moral commitment, but I didn’t elaborate on that point. Basically, the morality of the situation resides in believing it is good/better to pursuing this particular way of living, an intentional life, as I like to call it. For us it is better to live without debt than to borrow money in order to have things which we may want but don’t need, realizing the difference between wants and needs. It is right to invest our energy and labor in providing as much as we can for ourselves rather than relying on industrial mechanisms to make things available for us via an exchange of my labor in the form of dollar bills. Being together and working together as a family is more highly valued than having enough money to provide a bigger home and more things at the expense of family. These are all moral choices that guide our way of life.

You can examine anyone’s life and begin to see what they value. You can do that with my life and find things that reveal moral commitments I should change (I need to be examining my life for this purpose, actually). For instance, if one values things over relationships, this is evident. Granted, some do not see any other way to live than the usual, standard way of living that is all around us; they’ve been conditioned and trained to accept life on terms that they did not create. Intentionally changing the terms upon which we live our lives requires discernment, seeing how we live in its bare, naked form, for what it is.

Western culture and economics dictate a certain way of life, one that I find morally problematic in many ways. Until I had opportunity and reason to question the context of modern life, I didn’t see this. As my eyes opened to the problems of our socio-economic system, I was challenged with the responsibility of making a choice about what to do. Should I go along with what I understand is wrong but which is difficult to disentangle myself from (the easier path)? Or, should I act upon my understanding and choose to change the circumstances of my life, living in opposition to much of the socio-economic order surrounding me? That’s a tough place to be, but one in which everyone makes a choice. Even choosing not to decide is still to make a choice.

We are surrounded by romantic notions of rural/farm life and the good old days. Most of these notions are not in sync with the reality of rural/farm life as it exists today. Examine the packaging in the grocery store to see the images that are sold to us, images that draw upon our romantic notions. These are a part of our social psyche, but they are not based upon current reality. These are powerful images that when we buy things from the grocery store may help us feel good about what we’re buying and eating and keep us from seriously considering the real conditions of production. They are evidence, though, of the power of our notions and their very real existence.

I think it is these same kinds of romantic notions which lead people to say they would love to live a self-sufficient life but to never make changes in their lives to realize at least part of that desire. Being a homesteader doesn’t always mean owning a chunk of rural property with enough room to raise a large garden and a menagerie of animals. However, it does mean making choices and decisions in our lives that separate us from the hegemony of the socio-economic system in which we are all enslaved. It means frugality. It means doing as much for yourself and your family as you can. It means taking increasing responsibility for your life in meaningful ways within the current sphere of your existence. It’s a process, not a destination.

I wish to encourage all who want to homestead to take steps right now to realize their desires. However small the steps may be, start taking some now. Limit your consumption of industrially produced products by making do with what you have or making for yourself. Focus on and prioritize those things which are more meaningful, like time together as a family playing and working. Grow a tomato plant in a pot. Preserve some of your own food. Make your choices more intentional with a goal of realizing your dreams/desires one step at a time.

There’s nothing wrong with romantic notions. They can guide and motivate us. We need to take responsibility for our our actions, for the moral choices we make every day, with an end in view, not because it is a romantic notion, but because it is a better way to live. Our moral commitments are revealed in what we do. What does what we’re each doing say about us and our values?

A homestead update: what’s going on

Since I don’t have a post prepared on a specific topic, I thought I’d do a general update about what’s going on on the homestead.

It’s been cold here for the last week like it has been for much of the country. We haven’t been above freezing during this time, which is unusual for this area. It’s been getting down into the teens and single digits every night. This pattern will continue until maybe Monday when the forecast says we might make it up to the freezing mark. The children are excited about the possibility of snow tomorrow.

We’ve been keeping the wood stove going and staying warm. No pipes have frozen, thankfully. I generally don’t like really cold weather, but this hasn’t been too bad, actually. I got out yesterday and today with Dad and Danny and cut some firewood. We brought two truck loads back from a neighbor’s farm. He had 40 acres logged about three years ago. We can drive right up to the tops to cut them. We cut, split, loaded, and dumped the four loads all together in about 1.5 hours each. The total amount was about 3 cords of firewood.

The animals are doing fine with the cold weather. I have no running water at the barn. Usually, I pump water into five gallon buckets from a shallow well near the barn which I then have to carry to their water troughs. When the temperature drops into the twenties, the water in the pump freezes, rendering it useless. I have to drain the water out of the pump or it will break when it freezes. It’s done that two or three times in the past. We’re on our second pump because I can only repair it once or twice with the welder if it breaks. So, since the pump is inoperable during this freezing weather,

I’ve been dipping water out of what we call the

spring pond,

a small pool about the same distance away from the barn as the well

.

There is a spring that flows during wet weather at the base of the hill near the barn. There was a small area dug out near it to hold water when we moved here. I dug it out more two years ago. It’s still small, but it holds several hundred gallons of water. Because the spring is still flowing right now, this little pond hasn’t frozen. I’m very thankful that it’s there. If it wasn’t, I would have to make other arrangements for getting water to the cows (about 40 gallons a day).

Our new calf is doing fine. She loves to run around and jump in the stall. I’ve decided to name her Cleopatra, Cleo for short. She and mama will have to stay in for a few more days. I’m glad to have a relatively warm, enclosed space for them during her first week of life.

Our new pond is frozen over. It has 3+ inches of ice on it now. I’ve played with the children a little bit on the ice at the shallow end. They’ve enjoyed that. We would do more, and may later, but I want to be sure that it is thick enough so that no one might break through – the water under the ice is cold!

On this coming Sunday, a friend was going to bring his Woodmizer saw mill over to Gill’s house to saw beech logs for me. We’re rescheduling the day for sawing since the logs are frozen and it’s supposed to be 2 degrees (or thereabouts) Sunday morning, and that would be hard on his blades. When we do get to it (maybe later next week), his LT-40 Super Hydraulic mill should be able to cut all the logs within the day. We’ll load them on my trailer to bring back over here. We’ll cut the slabs into firewood for Gill which he’ll use for making maple syrup. The sap ought to start flowing soon. It often starts in the middle of January and continues into March. We’ll see how the cold weather affects that. I may tap a few trees here, and we’ll gladly accept sap from Gill’s trees (he usually lets us collect after he’s made as much syrup as he wants).

I should receive more of the items for our solar power system this week or early next week. It would be nice to have it all set up by the end of the month. That’s doable if I have everything here, and if it isn’t too cold outside. There have been a couple delays in getting some things shipped, but I hope that’s resolved now.

Classes for the Spring 2010 semester begin next Monday. I have a few things to do to be ready for it. That won’t take too much time. I’m glad to have at least one class to teach. Even though the income amount is small, it’s enough (at least theoretically) for us to meet our monthly expenses.

We’ll keep plugging along.

A springtime walk (video)

Late this afternoon, the clouds moved out for a while and the sun shone. So, before doing my evening chores, I took a walk (accompanied by two younguns) and shot some video.

Homestead objectives (part IV)

In my other blog (cedar-ridge-farm), I detail our house-building project. In moving to Kentucky, building our own home was -- and continues to be -- one of our homesteading objectives.

We lived in a nice, two-story, brick house we bought with Bank of America’s loaned money. It had a full basement, a large living room, and spacious bedrooms. There was a 2/3 acre lot that we bought with the house. This provided gardening area. We loved our red brick house, but we wanted to live in the country, not in the city with a busy interstate a stone’s throw away.

Somehow, several years ago I came across a book about building with straw bales. I don’t remember the title of the book, but I enjoyed reading it and began considering building a homestead house using straw bales someday. I also read The $50 Underground House and considered that option.

In looking for property, it wasn’t imperative for us to build a house on our homestead; it would’ve been fine if there was an existing house. But, we liked the idea of building, and not requiring a house on the property provided more options when looking for homestead property. We even thought it would be alright to live in a tent while building our house. I’m glad it didn’t work out that way. We’ve been living in “temporary” quarters for almost six years, thankfully, not a tent, just an old mobile home.

When we bought this property, there was an unfinished, one-bedroom cabin. We gave that to my parents, and they were quite glad to seize the opportunity to have it, remodel it, finish it, and live here with us. There was also an old log cabin constructed of hand-hewn poplar logs. I don’t know how long it had been standing there, but it was not in salvageable shape, although it was lived in sometime in the last 20 years or so. We pulled this cabin down in early spring 2007.

We selected a site for our new home that overlooks our garden area down in the bottom. It’s a great location with a southern exposure and pleasant shade in the afternoons. It also will afford a nice view toward one of our hay fields and wonderful views of our ridge on the other side of the garden. It’s near the location where the old cabin used to sit.

I thought we would build the house with load-bearing straw bale walls, but we changed that plan after doing some more reading. We settled on a timber frame house wrapped with straw bale walls. This would allow the frame to hold the roof, making any future repairs to the walls much easier (the aim is for repairs to never be necessary). We developed our own floor plans which changed several times, but we finally reached a plan that suits of well. It will have three bedrooms, two baths, a mudroom, a large great room, and a wrap around porch.

After purchasing 8x8s and 6x8s from a local saw mill, I began chiseling the joints for the frame. I decided to be a purist and use no metal joinery. It took about two and a half years to get the frame ready to be raised. On Labor Day weekend 2007, several friends assisted us in raising the frame. That was an awesome experience. Since then, we’ve gotten the roof on and have begun working on the root cellar. We hope to complete a lot more work on it this year with the aim of being able to move in by Thanksgiving. God willing, I will be able to add a lot more to my blog on this house project.

Homestead objectives (part I)

New Kentucky Homestead blog is only a little more than two weeks old. There is still a lot of information I would like to share in order to provide a background for understanding some of our activities and pursuits. I imagine that doing so will be an ongoing process; this is a dynamic enterprise. Hopefully, I will be able to continue posting regularly. My goal is five times a week with photos accompanying the posts.

So, today, I thought it might be beneficial to begin to describe some of our objectives here on our homestead, why we are here and what we intend to be doing.

The first objective (the only one for today) is to grow and harvest good food.

There are several ways in which we seek to meet this objective. The first one is with our garden. Most of the tillable land on our homestead has been used for growing tobacco in the past. Tobacco is a heavy feeder, and the growing of it in this area involves the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides to some degree. We don’t know what chemicals were used on our ground before we moved here, although neighbors have told me that the weeds in the fields the summer prior to our move here outgrew the tobacco. The man growing on the property didn’t live here and didn’t spend the necessary time and money on the crop to keep the weeds under control. This is probably a good thing because it means he didn’t spray them as much as he might have otherwise.

We selected one of these tobacco patches as our main garden area. It measures approximately 300 feet by 80 feet and slopes slightly toward the south, along which side runs a small creek branch. There is a drive to other fields and areas between the garden and the creek branch. Across the branch our small ridge rises, and trees grow along it. These trees cast some early morning shade on the lower side of the garden.

As we’ve been using this area for our garden, the soil has improved. We’ve added compost, manure, and mulch in different quantities at various times and have also incorporated some green manures. Overall, the soil still needs amended, especially on the upper side where it has a higher percentage of clay.

The main garden crops we grow are tomatoes, potatoes (white and sweet), beans, onions, greens, okra, squash, cucumbers, peppers, and some herbs. There are other things and also several different varieties of each thing. We grow non-hybrids from which we are able to save seed as much as possible. For instance, this year we grew the following types of tomatoes: Amish Paste, Heidi (paste), Roma, Brandywine, Rutgers, Oregon Spring, Jubilee, and Marglobe. We saved seeds to start this coming spring from most of these and a couple of others that were given to us. I also would like to try some new varieties from Sand Hill Preservation Center (you should check them out if you’re unfamiliar with them – they are preserving so many different varieties of plants).

We planted 100 pounds of Kennebec seed potatoes last year. Fifty pounds we planted in April and fifty pounds in July. The later crop did not produce as well as the early one. We planted the later one hoping that they would keep better because they were harvested later (the ones planted in  April were harvested in July). However, both crops seem to be keeping equally well. So, we’ll probably plant them mostly in the spring, hoping for a bigger harvest. After digging them this last summer, they spent about two and a half months spread out in the barn. This was probably the coolest place to keep them, and they seemed quite happy. They are now living in “the bus.” The bus is the storm shelter the previous owner built by burying the back end of a school bus into the hillside. We’re using it as a root cellar.

Besides green beans, we also grew Pinto, White Northern, and Horticulture beans this last summer. We’ve experienced difficulty growing dried beans in the past because they would begin to mold and/or sprout if left on the plants in the garden. Probably because of the humidity we have. This year when the beans were mature and had started to dry, I pulled up the plants and tied them into bundles, one bundle on each end of a short length of string. I hung these over four foot long tobacco sticks and suspended the sticks on some of the tier poles in the barn. Our barn is an old tobacco barn – it’s purpose was for holding tobacco to dry. This method worked very well, and we hope to grow more dried beans this coming year. The previous summer, we grew Horticulture beans also, but we picked them when they were mature but not dry, shelled them, and then canned them. Drying them in the barn and then threshing out the beans seems like less work than shelling the beans, plus, storing them dried will require less energy and processing time.

There is more to describe about our gardening, but I think I’ll save that for later. As we work on the process this spring and summer, it will make good sense to discuss it. Of course, time will be more limited then than now, but hopefully, I’ll be able to post enough detail to my blog.

There are other means by which we seek to grow and harvest good food. We also raise some grains, although this is an area still in development. I’ve already posted about growing corn in the previous post. Another grain we have grown in the past and are trying to grow again this year is wheat. I planted about an acre of wheat in the fall of 2005. We harvested it in the summer of 2006 and put the shocks in the barn. I wanted to thresh it later in the year, but the mice had ruined it for human consumption by then. So, I fed it to the goats and turkeys. They loved it, and I didn’t have to thresh it for them.

At the beginning of October this year, I worked up an area, about 1/2 acre, and seeded 100 pounds of hard, white winter wheat. I’d like to acquire a small grain drill for seeding it because my hand-cranked broadcast seeder doesn’t produce a consistent stand. We’ll see how it does this summer, and if it does well, we will try not to wait too long before threshing it. I did try some spring wheat, seeding it last spring. It did not do well at all, and we got nothing out of it. I would like to try some hull-less oats, too. I need to find some seed for that.

We set out several small fruit trees about three years ago. Some have died, and some are doing okay. We had our 17 year locusts this last year. These cicadas bore into small diameter branches to lay their eggs, and they seemed to find our young apple trees to their liking. They were pruned quite severely by these noisy pests, but I think they’ll survive. However, we have so many cedar trees around that I’m not sure how well apple trees will do here because of cedar apple rust.

We can grow blueberries quite well in our climate. Our soil is generally acidic enough for them, too.  We have a few plants that are now old enough that we should get several berries from this coming summer. We pick quite a few gallons of wild blackberries in July each year. This last year I picked over 20 gallons of them. The biggest problem with picking wild blackberries, apart from the scratches the briars so generously endow, are chiggers. I had over 50 on each leg after one picking last summer. I use a citronella-based bug spray usually that helps a great deal, but I forgot to put it on that time.

Another source of good food is animals which we raise. We’ve had chickens for most of the time we’ve lived here, but this last summer we sold all of the. Feed prices were going up and the chickens did not recognize a fence as a barrier. They went over it or through it and scratched all over the neighborhood. This was actually a good thing except for their desire to dig in my mom’s flower beds. So, our nearest neighbors didn’t appreciate our chickens running around free range. The chickens were good for eggs, when they laid them. We also usually had enough hatched out to have several to eat, put in the freezer, and/or can.

We raise a few turkeys, although not a very large breed. We’ve been able to have our own thanksgiving turkey for the last few years plus a few others. Canned turkey and broth is wonderful in soups. We’ve also eaten turkey eggs, because they were laying so well and we weren’t hatching out any more poults.

Until last summer, we had goats. The goats were good for milk and sometimes for meat, although t hey seem to take a lot to grow them to an acceptable size for meat. We had three or four goats that we milked during the last four years, none of them being anything more than average milkers. When comparing the time spent taking care of them and milking them compared to what we were getting out of it, it just didn’t make sense to keep raising them. We bought a cow and were getting milk from her, so we sold the goats last summer.

 

Our cow is a full Guernsey we named Josephine, but we usually call her Josey. She had a bull calf last May, which is now a steer, who we named Chucky Joe. He’s staying at a friend’s place right now, simplifying weaning. Josey provides us with about 2.5 gallons of milk each day. We only keep about a gallon of it each day for ourselves, giving the rest to my parents and to Danny for his mom. Chucky is slated to be converted into beef next winter. We grow all of the hay needed to feed Josey and Chucky and my Dad’s goats. We also have enough to feed our goats, if we still had some.

Most of the red meat we eat during the year is venison. Besides the deer I, Dad, and Danny are able to harvest, people in the neighborhood generally give us several. We process them all ourselves and preserve them, usually by freezing and canning. This year I tried drying some. I also cured some in a salt brine and then cold smoked it in a homemade smoker. We’ve only eaten one of the smoked roasts so far, and it was quite good.

What food we aren’t able to grow or harvest ourselves, we buy, mostly through the local food co-op. We order from the co-op every four weeks. Right now, that’s where most of our grains are purchased. What we do buy, we endeavor to buy certified organic. That doesn’t guarantee its wholesomeness, but it is generally a lot better than conventional.

I’ll write about more or our homesteading objectives in subsequent posts.

How we came to live in Kentucky

Our homesteading adventure began in the spring of 2003. We had been looking for properties for several months while working our plan to pay off debts and pay down on the house we were buying in Bloomington, Illinois. I was working for the university there teaching graduate-level qualitative research classes. We desired to live in the country and to homestead. We planned a trip for the beginning of spring break in order to look at some properties in South-Central Kentucky. I'd found some interesting properties listed online by a realtor in Burkesville, KY. We made arrangements to view some of their listed properties on the Monday of spring break in March.

On Friday, prior to leaving for our short trip to Kentucky, I found another 54.5 acre property listed by another realtor in the area. I called to talk to the listing agent about the property, mentioning that we were going to be in the area at the beginning of the week and if we had time we might be interested in seeing the property.

We made our trip, and on that Monday morning, we looked at three properties. Two of them were not acceptable and one held promise with some limitations. When we went back to our rented house, I called the other realtor. He was sitting by the phone waiting for me to call. We made arrangements to meet him at his office and to see the property that afternoon.

After meeting him, we followed his vehicle along the curvy ridge roads to the place, about six miles outside of town. The entry to the property wasn't too promising, consisting of a 24' x 40' garage with a dirt floor and a 1972 vintage mobile home. I was hoping to look at the mobile home last because I anticipated the reaction of my wife, Anne, to it. But, Ramiah, our son who was 20 months old at the time, was sleeping. So, in order to not disturb his nap, we looked at the home first. It was dirty and smelled of mothballs. It had the effect I expected it would on Anne, and she was ready to leave. I encouraged her to see the property before making up her mind.

Anne rode in the agent's car down the hill to the bottom land. Down the hill was a tobacco barn in much better shape than the ones we'd seen earlier, although it was quite full of junk. However, there were nice fields, creeks, a small pond, trees on hills, and a nice ridge running through the middle of the bottom. It was secluded, private, and beautiful. It didn't take long to realize that this was the place for us.

We went back to the realtor's office and made an offer of $60,000 for the property. The listed price of $69,000 was out of our price range by a few thousand dollars. The seller counter offered $66,500 that night. We accepted the offer and signed the papers to buy the next day, trying to figure out how we would pay for it since it was still beyond what we had figured on, but trusting what we felt was God's lead in the matter. We spent a couple hours that day walking around the place before heading back to Illinois. We were excited, to say the least.

After we got home, we spent the next week getting our house in Bloomington ready to sell. We did some painting and cleaning. The next week I placed a For Sale by Owner ad in the newspaper and a sign in the front yard. By the end of that week, we had a buyer. Then, the buyer backed out, but God provided another buyer immediately. We were not attempting to make a big profit on the house, just to get our equity out of it (we'd payed a lot extra on the principle during the four years we lived there). We actually took a small loss on the sale, but we sold it quickly, and it was a blessing to the new buyers.

One of the complications we had was the usual escrow times in each place. In Kentucky, escrow usually takes 30 days. In Illinois, the common time is 60 days. We were able to set the closing on the Kentucky property for May 1, a 45 day escrow. We had to rush the escrow period in Illinois to make it 30 days, closing on April 30.

We packed and moved our things into storage in preparation for the closing date on our sale in Bloomington. The semester didn't end until May 15, and we couldn't move before then. My parents were gracious enough to let us live with them for two weeks after our house sold and before we moved.

On April 30, we signed our names dozens of times and concluded the sale of our house. We took a certified cashiers check from the sale and another one from what we had saved in the amount required for buying the property in Kentucky, and we drove overnight in order to be at the realtors first thing in the morning. So, we were technically homeless for only a few hours. We spent two days at our new property, cleaning the mobile home in order to make it fit for moving in to in two weeks. We slept in our van during that time rather than in the home.

We made the move on May 16, 2003. We rented a large moving van and drove it loaded with our possessions. My brother Mark drove his truck pulling my trailer with my 1950 John Deere MT on it (this tractor was bought new by my grandfather). My dad drove our newly acquired 1987 Ford F350 crew cab in our small caravan. Dad and Mark stayed for a couple days to help us move in and begin to get settled. Then, they headed back to Illinois, and we were on our own on our new homestead.