Many people think they need the perfect land for a homestead. Not true. I live on a steep rocky and ledge ridden slope in NE VT. I terraced land for nut and fruit trees as well as annual vegetable gardens. I built up the soil with what was available on 'y own land and what neighbors offered me on their land ( I.e.they let me scythe their fields down and ai collect the hay for mulch and soil building). My water is well water but that is not secure enough for me. I installed a large cistern, enclosed it, and also use that space as a root cellar since water is such a good capacitor. That enclosure is underneath a small room we had added on and both the room and enclosure are fully insulated. We plumbed the cistern to be able to get water out with a hand pump should we need to do that and also,plumbed it to run into the pressurized system and through the filters. We don’t have suitable pasture for large livestock, but we can run pigs, goats, and chickens. We only heat with wood and in winter cook on the wood cook stove. We are developing coppicing stands to make firewood easier especially if we have to some day resort to hand saws only. We built carts that can be easily operated by hand to move heavy things like tree trunks and large rocks, one just has to understand the principals of leverage. We keep it simple, use what we have, make as many hand tools as possible ( a good skill ) and of course can, pressure can, dry food ( in the barn attic on racks, or in the greenhouse,mor on the rack system that fits over the wood stove - all of which we designed and built ourselves; each place takes the same standardized racks 2’x4’ that we built. So we turned hard scrapple land into productive land. The tractor was a big help in the initial stages when we were building terraces. We trade for raw milk and also have 900 tapped maple trees for maple sugar which we can also sell and trade, even though Vermont is now making that business very difficult because they do not want people using their diesel boilers due to “climate change”. Of course they would like the farmers to stop raising cows, beef cows…also due to the religious fervor promulgated by the climate fear mongers….
What an inspiring post! I think you may encourage some folks ( if they have been considering it) to give homesteading a try. There is a lot of good information in this post.
You're delivering Truth! about making compromises with the homestead housing, and reducing debt load. You might be saving lives and marriages with this advice.
Very interesting! I'm happy that you and your father became close before his death. It gives me hope that perhaps my brother will decide he wants a relationship with me at some point, although after twenty plus years of strife, it doesn't seem likely.
Nov 6, 2023·edited Nov 7, 2023Liked by Robert W Malone MD, MS
From those original pictures it’s like night and day. I know you both had to have much foresight when originally choosing that property to restore. I see a certain destiny in your picking that farm. Most people would have shied away from the immense work needed to get it to where you’ve gotten it too. As you had mentioned the positives to the community you have brought, but the physical change to the farm many times sparks neighbors to also fix up their property. I think that farm needed you both as much as you needed that farm, and it shows. One of the nicest things is that a historic property has been saved!!! Great job!!!! J.Goodrich
Farm Farm Farm. My wife and I saved a chickens life yesterday. A beautiful Red Tail Hawk swooped past my head and landed on one of our Easter egg Layers. I was able to scare the hawk off our sweet hen and scoop her up with feathers everywhere. She is ok but traumatized. All the hens as staying much closer to the Rooster "Gandolf" now. Life on the farm is grand. Thank you Robert for the breakdowns and encouragement for people to get back to the Land and take care and work with Creation. Many Blessings.
We are homesteading as best we can on 50 acres in Iowa. I want to see what I can grow in a heated greenhouse in the winter. With daylight hours so short, not sure how well it will work.
Nov 6, 2023·edited Nov 6, 2023Liked by Robert W Malone MD, MS
Reminds me of my maternal grandparents… Grandpa came from traditional German stock born just prior to the Depression. He actually built their home, installed the wiring, plumbing and water cooling system (Southern California)… they did a lot of the things you described except they lived in semi-desert… so lemon trees were all I remember, slightly protected by the clay tile roof. Horses, deep-pit cooking of beef, on premiss auto repair, income earning duplex he built. He had a professional job with the county as well. We lovingly referred to him as a ‘McGyver’. Grandma cooked, sewed everything, knit, etc. My parents were just the opposite… funny how that works.
Great information for those with talent and the drive! Unfortunately, we are becoming a society of dependents on the inefficient government who hands out dole to survive. Education is failing big time.
It was such a pleasure - reading this article. I envy you both your youth! I wish I was young again and just starting out, although I now am living my dream in my retirement years (but without the muscle and stamina to do much with my 11 acres). As a child and into my teen years my parents would pack us four kids in the car and drive 6 hours up 101 hwy from Thousand Oaks to Saratoga every year for Thanksgiving at my dad's sister's place. I would watch the landscape out the car window as we passed sheer openness displaying fields of gold, homesteads with old barns, brick silos, gravel roads, cows, horses, chickens . . . . My father would say as we would near an old weathered-grey barn, "If we didn't have so far to go, I would pull over and take a picture as this is a barn with painting. And later as we pasted another he would say "maybe on the way back". I always wanted to live on one of the farms with all those animals. Watch westerns as a child just to see how people lived back them – it was heaven.
I cannot believe the price on those properties. Places like those would have sold for those amounts outside of Overland Park KS in the late 1980s.
Now back outside to finish cleaning the fly leggings and face masks before packing away for next.year. BTW, I don't do well for about a week after the clock takes away my daylight.
what a lovely story from such a learned couple just showing how being grounded in the country is so important to keep us sane especially in the shambles that is now. your tales of starting out reminded me of my parents when my father after fighting in Burma, persuaded my very English upper lady mother to emigrate to Southern Rhodesia where the government was offering reduced price land to exservice people prepared help develop the Federation. She was brave enough to go with my half brother whose airman father had died in the desert in Libya, and me at 6 weeks old. He had no former farming experience and they developed a mixed farm of 100 acres with dairy, chickens, rabbits and fruit and vegetables which he mostly sold to local schools, lodgings and businesses in the town 10 miles away. My childhood was a paradise, freedom then as never possible now. The most dangerous things around were the Black Mamba snake in the irrigation pipes stack, the baboons in the ' Kopje' , sadly my father shot the only leopard in the farm - as it was taking live stock from us and the farm workers compound, but it made a superb sofa throw in days before we became more aware of options to move the animal on rather than kill it.
we left 10 years later at the breakup of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland and moved to another farm in South Africa but the experience didn't match. Sadly I never matched up with someone to repeat the exercise, living in towns and suburbs in Uk and Europe since then. I see children playing in parks and feel sorry that they will never know the meaning of true Freedom.
thank you for reminding me of my good luck and I agree that opportunities to take an 'alternative ' route in life should not be turned down lightly. I look forward to more anecdotes from the farm and both of your continuing efforts to help enlighten the world to the scandalous experiment the human race has been through since 2020. Best of luck in the Romanian trip, i will e watching the Livestreams ICS 3 has given me so much information to pass on to the blinkered.
Wonderful article! We did this years ago and would like to try it again if our “older bones” can handle the grit I know it takes. We built a “healthy house” with all the particulars of land selection to healthy building materials and processes. We had a few acres and decided to raise Alpacas on the land. That was quite lucrative back in the early 2000’s.
Nov 6, 2023·edited Nov 6, 2023Liked by Robert W Malone MD, MS
All I can say is WOW! Such insight and fortitude. I love reading these kinds of posts from you, You could inspire a nation! And if only a few gain benefit from your lessons, it is well worth the effort. It sounds like many have been enriched by your commitment to community. I remember many of my father and mother's family leave the farm for "greener pastures" that were not so green after all. (The look on the dog's face says it all)
We have 400 year old farmhouses going to ruin here in much of rural Scotland... nobody wants the hassle or cost. But they are lovely.
I hand grow veg and fruit, I have raised hens, but the economics of it are shocking: this is a hobby, not a business.
Many people think they need the perfect land for a homestead. Not true. I live on a steep rocky and ledge ridden slope in NE VT. I terraced land for nut and fruit trees as well as annual vegetable gardens. I built up the soil with what was available on 'y own land and what neighbors offered me on their land ( I.e.they let me scythe their fields down and ai collect the hay for mulch and soil building). My water is well water but that is not secure enough for me. I installed a large cistern, enclosed it, and also use that space as a root cellar since water is such a good capacitor. That enclosure is underneath a small room we had added on and both the room and enclosure are fully insulated. We plumbed the cistern to be able to get water out with a hand pump should we need to do that and also,plumbed it to run into the pressurized system and through the filters. We don’t have suitable pasture for large livestock, but we can run pigs, goats, and chickens. We only heat with wood and in winter cook on the wood cook stove. We are developing coppicing stands to make firewood easier especially if we have to some day resort to hand saws only. We built carts that can be easily operated by hand to move heavy things like tree trunks and large rocks, one just has to understand the principals of leverage. We keep it simple, use what we have, make as many hand tools as possible ( a good skill ) and of course can, pressure can, dry food ( in the barn attic on racks, or in the greenhouse,mor on the rack system that fits over the wood stove - all of which we designed and built ourselves; each place takes the same standardized racks 2’x4’ that we built. So we turned hard scrapple land into productive land. The tractor was a big help in the initial stages when we were building terraces. We trade for raw milk and also have 900 tapped maple trees for maple sugar which we can also sell and trade, even though Vermont is now making that business very difficult because they do not want people using their diesel boilers due to “climate change”. Of course they would like the farmers to stop raising cows, beef cows…also due to the religious fervor promulgated by the climate fear mongers….
What an inspiring post! I think you may encourage some folks ( if they have been considering it) to give homesteading a try. There is a lot of good information in this post.
You're delivering Truth! about making compromises with the homestead housing, and reducing debt load. You might be saving lives and marriages with this advice.
Very interesting! I'm happy that you and your father became close before his death. It gives me hope that perhaps my brother will decide he wants a relationship with me at some point, although after twenty plus years of strife, it doesn't seem likely.
Love everything about this article.
From those original pictures it’s like night and day. I know you both had to have much foresight when originally choosing that property to restore. I see a certain destiny in your picking that farm. Most people would have shied away from the immense work needed to get it to where you’ve gotten it too. As you had mentioned the positives to the community you have brought, but the physical change to the farm many times sparks neighbors to also fix up their property. I think that farm needed you both as much as you needed that farm, and it shows. One of the nicest things is that a historic property has been saved!!! Great job!!!! J.Goodrich
Farm Farm Farm. My wife and I saved a chickens life yesterday. A beautiful Red Tail Hawk swooped past my head and landed on one of our Easter egg Layers. I was able to scare the hawk off our sweet hen and scoop her up with feathers everywhere. She is ok but traumatized. All the hens as staying much closer to the Rooster "Gandolf" now. Life on the farm is grand. Thank you Robert for the breakdowns and encouragement for people to get back to the Land and take care and work with Creation. Many Blessings.
We are homesteading as best we can on 50 acres in Iowa. I want to see what I can grow in a heated greenhouse in the winter. With daylight hours so short, not sure how well it will work.
Reminds me of my maternal grandparents… Grandpa came from traditional German stock born just prior to the Depression. He actually built their home, installed the wiring, plumbing and water cooling system (Southern California)… they did a lot of the things you described except they lived in semi-desert… so lemon trees were all I remember, slightly protected by the clay tile roof. Horses, deep-pit cooking of beef, on premiss auto repair, income earning duplex he built. He had a professional job with the county as well. We lovingly referred to him as a ‘McGyver’. Grandma cooked, sewed everything, knit, etc. My parents were just the opposite… funny how that works.
Great information for those with talent and the drive! Unfortunately, we are becoming a society of dependents on the inefficient government who hands out dole to survive. Education is failing big time.
It was such a pleasure - reading this article. I envy you both your youth! I wish I was young again and just starting out, although I now am living my dream in my retirement years (but without the muscle and stamina to do much with my 11 acres). As a child and into my teen years my parents would pack us four kids in the car and drive 6 hours up 101 hwy from Thousand Oaks to Saratoga every year for Thanksgiving at my dad's sister's place. I would watch the landscape out the car window as we passed sheer openness displaying fields of gold, homesteads with old barns, brick silos, gravel roads, cows, horses, chickens . . . . My father would say as we would near an old weathered-grey barn, "If we didn't have so far to go, I would pull over and take a picture as this is a barn with painting. And later as we pasted another he would say "maybe on the way back". I always wanted to live on one of the farms with all those animals. Watch westerns as a child just to see how people lived back them – it was heaven.
I cannot believe the price on those properties. Places like those would have sold for those amounts outside of Overland Park KS in the late 1980s.
Now back outside to finish cleaning the fly leggings and face masks before packing away for next.year. BTW, I don't do well for about a week after the clock takes away my daylight.
what a lovely story from such a learned couple just showing how being grounded in the country is so important to keep us sane especially in the shambles that is now. your tales of starting out reminded me of my parents when my father after fighting in Burma, persuaded my very English upper lady mother to emigrate to Southern Rhodesia where the government was offering reduced price land to exservice people prepared help develop the Federation. She was brave enough to go with my half brother whose airman father had died in the desert in Libya, and me at 6 weeks old. He had no former farming experience and they developed a mixed farm of 100 acres with dairy, chickens, rabbits and fruit and vegetables which he mostly sold to local schools, lodgings and businesses in the town 10 miles away. My childhood was a paradise, freedom then as never possible now. The most dangerous things around were the Black Mamba snake in the irrigation pipes stack, the baboons in the ' Kopje' , sadly my father shot the only leopard in the farm - as it was taking live stock from us and the farm workers compound, but it made a superb sofa throw in days before we became more aware of options to move the animal on rather than kill it.
we left 10 years later at the breakup of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland and moved to another farm in South Africa but the experience didn't match. Sadly I never matched up with someone to repeat the exercise, living in towns and suburbs in Uk and Europe since then. I see children playing in parks and feel sorry that they will never know the meaning of true Freedom.
thank you for reminding me of my good luck and I agree that opportunities to take an 'alternative ' route in life should not be turned down lightly. I look forward to more anecdotes from the farm and both of your continuing efforts to help enlighten the world to the scandalous experiment the human race has been through since 2020. Best of luck in the Romanian trip, i will e watching the Livestreams ICS 3 has given me so much information to pass on to the blinkered.
Wonderful article! We did this years ago and would like to try it again if our “older bones” can handle the grit I know it takes. We built a “healthy house” with all the particulars of land selection to healthy building materials and processes. We had a few acres and decided to raise Alpacas on the land. That was quite lucrative back in the early 2000’s.
All I can say is WOW! Such insight and fortitude. I love reading these kinds of posts from you, You could inspire a nation! And if only a few gain benefit from your lessons, it is well worth the effort. It sounds like many have been enriched by your commitment to community. I remember many of my father and mother's family leave the farm for "greener pastures" that were not so green after all. (The look on the dog's face says it all)
Hi Dr. Ma-Lion/ess! I’m canning pickled beets from the garden today! Good work. Self sufficiency could save us from being exterminated by AI too, lol.