Been a long time...

We decided earlier this year to start moving towards Jacksonville, NC where my family is from for quite a number of reasons, mostly to be closer to my paternal grandmother who lives on the old family farm all alone. The house that we are moving into is the house that I was born in and lived in until I was 8 years old and comes with three acres of land which should give us quite a boost in our homesteading endeavors since we will have more space and no subdivision covenants.

Sine April, we've been working on fixing up the inside of the house before we move in. So far we have painted the living room and the master bedroom and gotten one coat on what will be our office (no pictures yet). After the office is done, we will have our spare bedroom and our hallway to paint and all the trim and then we will be ready to move in!

I have also started a blog about cooking and recipes and will probably be posting a bunch of family favorites shortly. So keep an eye out!

Cooking Thoughts

Our drive towards cooking with basic ingredients is more difficult than I first would have guessed.

Growing up, I had always had home cooked meals provided by my Mom; eating out was a rare treat. I also learned to cook at a pretty young age, around the 13-16 range, but it was always cooking for myself. Mom never really wanted anyone in her kitchen and, honestly, it never crossed my teenage mind that she would want me to cook something for her and the rest of the family.

Once I moved out, I continued cooking at home and dining out on occasion. When my bro and I, along with a friend from high school, moved to our own place in Greenville, we had communal groceries and each night one roomy was responsible for a home cooked dinner for the house, so the habit continued.

It was not until I started going out with Chandler that most of my food didn't come out of my own kitchen. Not that I am blaming her, it was more along the lines that we were living off credit anyway, so why cut corners. By dining out, not only was I able to learn to like a great variety of foods but, I also was able to avoid washing dishes for weeks.

Once we were married and carpooling, it was always much easier to stop and grab a bite to eat while we let the worst of the rush hour traffic go by. This went on for years and I developed a pretty eclectic pallet. She made the mistake of taking me to my first Mexican restaurant, something I am sure she regrets considering the amount of times I suggested we go visit one. If it were completely up to me, and money nor any long-term well-being was a factor, I think I would never stray from the grand triumvirate of Chinese, Mexican, and Deli foods.

Cooking at home is much more difficult than just stopping in at whatever dining facility you happen to crave at the moment, but it is a lot cheaper and healthier.

Currently we plan our menu two weeks at a time revolving around Grocery Day which is the Wednesday following payday. (We hold out until Wednesday so that we can take advantage of whatever sales the grocery stores just started). Planning a two-week menu is no 'piece of cake' either. You have to try to balance a variety of dishes to tickle your taste buds around the ingredients you have on hand and the time you have available to prepare said ingredients.

As I said, we try to cook big meals on the weekend that will both provide us with lunch throughout the week, and provide dinner for at least Mon and Tues. Dinners towards the end of the week usually consist of crock-pot meals. After eating the same meal for 2-3 nights, not only do you want another dish, but I also like to rotate the kind of meat we have. I try to work in fish every now and again but considering the cost is a rarity. I am usually rotating through beef, pork, and chicken. As you can guess, trying to figure out what you will be interested in eating next Tuesday is hard enough, but given the other restrictions, menu planning can be difficult.

As with all things, I expect it will get easier with practice.

How Did I Get Here?

I will agree with Fenrirwulf regarding my scoffing at him buying books and magazines about self-sufficiency in the beginning of our relationship. I could never imagine myself doing anything that far removed from the vast consumerism that is city life.

I was born in Jacksonville, NC and for the first 8 years of my life, my parents, my younger brother and I lived in the house next door to my paternal grandparents on their farm. I remember following my grandfather through the fields and helping him pick vegetables. I remember counting corn cobs into bushel baskets and helping him sell watermelons off the back of his truck (and also helping him count the money he had made). I also remember countless hours sitting across the counter from my grandmother watching her make cakes and pies (this is where my love of baking and cooking was born). These are all happy memories but this was only a small part of my childhood.

When I was 8, my dad was transferred to Raleigh with his job. He worked up the chain at his job until he became a manager when I was in High School. This job kept him away from the family for 16 hours a day Monday through Friday and sometimes he would even have to go in to work on Saturday and Sunday. Because of his job, he missed the only play I was ever in and almost every chorus concert I had during High School. I'm not blaming him for his choices, he did what he felt he had to do to provide his family with every opportunity they could possibly want and I appreciate that. But, I never thought the time he missed spending with us was worth the material benefits we gained.

Because of the sacrifices my dad made when I was younger, I have always had easy access to everything I wanted. This has continued into my adult life since both Fenrirwulf and I make respectable salaries. We have a house filled to nearly bursting with junk that we don't appreciate because we haven't had to work for any of it. I often look at the things we have and think back to my junior year in high school when my chorus class was taking a trip to New York. My parents did not want me to go but told me that if I worked at my part-time job and saved up all the money it would take to go (the trip itself cost $450) then I could go. But, they would not contribute one penny to this cause. I worked my heart out that year and saved the cost of the trip + $300 in spending money. I had more money in my wallet when I set out on that trip than any of my friends did (and I was the only one that worked for mine). I enjoyed spending every penny of that money and I appreciated what I bought with it because I had earned it fair and square. I want to feel that way again about everything I bring into my home.

Also because of growing up in this atmosphere, I decided that I would never let my career come before my family or before myself. I like material things as much as the next person but, it's just not worth losing precious moments with the people you love. Right now, I have a career in the field of Human Resources but in the past couple of years, it has not been fulfilling some basic need inside of me. The job I have is ok but it does not allow me to express myself or my creativity very often and I feel like I am being wasted. I've come to realize that if we had a homestead like we have talked about, I could make and sell things and run my own business which fulfills one of my ultimate goals in life.

I have a 56 mile commute one way to work. I have to drive or ride (since Fenrirwulf and I carpool as much as possible) through rush hour traffic twice a day. These drives are unsafe and they also take a huge chunk of time out of my day. I hardly have any time to keep the house the way I want it to be kept or to cook a healthy meal. So, instead, we tend to go out to restaurants every day and eat junk (or we buy pre-packaged foods from the grocery store that are filled with preservatives and chemicals that are probably adversely affecting our health). So our health is declining as our weight is increasing. I want to know where my food comes from and that it is wholesome and healthy.

I'm looking forward to a lifestyle that will offer me physical activity and hard work and the satisfaction that I've come by everything I own honestly. I think this will be a healthy change for us both mentally, emotionally and physically and I cannot wait to get out of the city!

The History Behind Our Decision

To put it as shortly as I can, my goal is to be a self sufficient as possible. Anything I can provide for my family with my own two hands will be...eventually.

The first and foremost goal will be food. I want to grow our own vegetables and raise our own meat. Now I am not a complete novice in this department. While I was growing up my paternal grandparents always had a big garden (or two or three). I have done bits and pieces of most gardening duties. I started picking strawberries about the time I started to walk it seems, but most of said berries made it into my mouth not the basket. I have dug potatoes, strung butter beans, shucked corn, harvested apples, snapped snap beans, picked squash, thumped watermelons, you name it I have done it. (Except okra, Dad talked incessantly about how he hated everything about okra, and if my Daddy hated something, I hated it end of story.) Once I got old enough I was promoted to plowing with the tractor. Thinking back, I spent quite a bit of time on that tractor between plowing, mowing pastures, and just puttering around with it. I learned quite a bit about small-scale farming from the time I spent with my grandparents.

Their farm wasn't the only exposure I have had. When we moved to outside of Charlottesville, VA Dad created what was a little homestead though at that time I had no concept of the word. We had chickens for eggs, rabbits for pets, and a bit of garden. I learned early on that gardens have no love for hard red clay. There was also cultivation of native edibles. We had wild blueberry bushes around that I occasional made use of but the gem was a very large blackberry patch. From memory, I would guess it was about a 20 foot by 20-foot patch but this is back when I was in middle school, so there is no telling how large it actually was. The point is that it was a significant patch and just not a couple bushes. It was very wild and unkempt when we started, but after a bit of work we were able to tame it. The biggest improvement it that we built a frame out of nearby fallen limbs and small trees so that the large plants would have something to support the heavy fruits and we would also have a tunnel underneath the canopy to access the innards of the patch. We never had any home-raised meat because Dad is not the type to be able to kill an animal he has raised. We did have some friends of the family use one of our buck rabbits for stud and repaid the favor in rabbit meat. Needless to say, eating an animal I had been brought up to view as a pet was not the most enjoyable of meals.

Though I may have grown up a country boy, I was only ever a helper. I have never really grown anything in the garden to have it survive to the point of harvest. While I have collected eggs, I have never slaughtered a chicken. I have just enough knowledge to understand how little I know.

As I said, through gardening, animal husbandry, and maybe even a little hunting and fishing. I plan to supply as much of the food my family eats as possible. We are being cautious in our planning and are laying out steps on how we turn what is now the 'brown house' as my wife's family likes to call it into a full fledge producing homestead. The first step will be raised bed gardens. The number we start out with will be controlled by the availability of both money and land. To start with I only want to try to grow enough to feed the family (including being able to give some produce to our parents, grandparents, etc) and have enough left to can some produce to help us out over the winter. One of the advantages to moving to the coast instead of the mountains is the milder winter and longer growing seasons. With a greenhouse, we may have fresh veggies year around. I have read about having cherry tomatoes as houseplants and the possibility of having a constant supply of fresh tomatoes is quite tempting.

Along with a garden, we also plan to raise chickens for eggs and meat. When we add this once again depends on when we have the funds for the infrastructure they require. I keep researching breeds and think I will go with Barred Rocks. I like the black and while contrast of their feathers and they will fit in well with our border collies. I am also drawn to them due to the fact they are one of the oldest American breeds and were originally bred as a barnyard flock. I am still deciding whether I would want a separate laying flock and meat flock. I worry about the feed to egg/meat conversion of a dual-purpose breed. I at first was drawn to Jersey Giants since the chickens will be mostly for meat and the eggs will be simply an added bonus of the process. I shied away from those simply because from my research they were slower to mature than a normal sized chicken. Chandler liked the Jersey Giants because she called them Goth chickens, and I agree a good size flock of these huge black birds would be a sight, but I am not sure they are what we are looking for as beginner chicken-raisers. Right now, I am considering just ordering a couple extra Jersey Giant and Cornish roosters to start working on my own meat hybrid. I am sure the plans will change in between now and when we can actually get started but to me the planning is half the fun. If I can find a reliable market for eggs or meat things will greatly change. Right now, the plan is to have a small flock to provide for us. Given an egg market, I will add production layers to the mix. Given a meat market, I will further research the meat breeds. My plans do not rely on farm-generated income but I will keep an open mind in order to take advantage of any opportunities that are presented.

When the time is right we would like to expand further into diary and meat goats, cattle, turkeys, lambs, and anything else I can think of, depending how much land and time is available. Not only would cattle and goats provide some luscious red meat, but also a variety of dairy products. A fruit and nut orchard would be nice, but those take years to yield and therefore are a long-term goal on the back burner for now. As I said, I would love to be able to make some income from the farm by selling produce, eggs, or any other product but an income in not the main goal. While I believe there is a market for pasture raised meats and eggs, I have not done the research as to whether the market is already saturated. We are moving to a more rural area so not only will there be less people there will also be more of a supply. I cannot count on making a living through our homestead so all the plans are geared toward providing healthy food for the family. Another important advantage to raising our own food is that it should be cheaper and that will make it easier to transition to a one-income family so that a parent can stay home once we have children. That has been the biggest delay to starting a family, the fact that both of us refuse to allow daycare to raise a child.

We are moving to an area such that we could eventually buy as much land as we wanted, but I never want to be a strict commercial farmer. I never want it to be about the money, I fully understand that it will most likely always require one of us to work off the farm to generate the income needed to run it. I almost prefer that. Once your sole income comes from your farming endeavors, it will be too tempting to cut corners to increase profits. A strong dislike for the current practices of corporate agriculture is one of more important reasons we want to move to a homestead lifestyle. Animals raised on feedlots in unhealthy crowded conditions leads to a paradise for disease propagation that is controlled through heavy use of antibiotics and other drugs. It is more cost efficient to have fast growth through the use of hormones than it is through the use of high quality feed. All of these substances are ultimately passed on to the consumer of the meat. I will never be a vegetarian; I enjoy the taste of meat too much. By raising the animal myself, I can be assured that the animal was healthy, treated well during its short lifespan, and slaughtered in the most humane way possible.

The main goal is healthy food, but I look forward to what I will learn in the path to that goal. I am interested to learn how things were done during my grandparents' generation when homesteading was a normal way of life. I worry that society as a whole is becoming too specified in each person's knowledge and a lot of what was common sense 2-3 generations ago is being forgotten. Being the techno-geek I am, I will also look for ways to apply current technology to improve on the practices of my ancestors. By mixing old and new, I hope to have a true modern homestead. Raising your own food is not the only way to be self-sustaining. I also hope to eventually supply the majority of the electricity used. There are plenty of sun-drenched rooftops that are just begging for solar panels. With the flat land of eastern NC, a windmill may be usable. I want a root cellar if possible to help reduce energy required to preserve food, but I worry that the water table in that area may be too close to the surface. When adding chicken coops and other farm-type structures I plan to use recycled materials whenever possible while also making use of the more 'green' techniques such as straw bale and cordwood construction. I am already checking craigslist for the area to see if I can find a reliable source of pallets. They are an excellent source for free, recycled wood. I have seen sheds and other buildings built from them. Most of the time they use the pallets whole. My plan would be to disassemble the pallets so as to give me the greatest flexibility when using the wood.

Obviously the plans are many and goals great. Now I just have to get our current house in market ready condition, that and a big second mortgage is what are holding up the move currently. Oh, and finding new jobs. /sigh

It is still closer than it was the day before, which is the important part.