Farms
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How to Fail at Farming #7
I hope you’re enjoying this series! In case you’ve missed the other posts, here are the links to read them: A New Blog Series: How to Fail at Farming (Or, Mistakes to Avoid if You Want to Succeed at Farming) Buy a Farm without Considering Your Own Personality and Passions Buy a Farm without Considering Your Kids’ Activities Buy Land Before Learning How to Farm Learn About Farming from Books (Not People) Buy a Farm Because You Think it Will Be a “Simpler Life” We didn’t specifically go looking for huge land. Originally we were looking at 2+ acre pieces. Most of the pieces we found were closer in to town, nicely…
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How to Fail at Farming Post #6
I hope you’re enjoying this series! In case you’ve missed the other posts, here are the links to read them: A New Blog Series: How to Fail at Farming (Or, Mistakes to Avoid if You Want to Succeed at Farming) Buy a Farm without Considering Your Own Personality and Passions Buy a Farm without Considering Your Kids’ Activities Buy Land Before Learning How to Farm Learn About Farming from Books (Not People) I don’t know why I ever got the impression that farming was a “Simpler Life.” Let me start out by saying, loud and clear: Farming is NOT a Simple Life! You know what I mean, though, right? Picture…
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How to Fail at Farming #5
I hope you’re enjoying this series! In case you’ve missed the other posts, here are the links to read them: A New Blog Series: How to Fail at Farming (Or, Mistakes to Avoid if You Want to Succeed at Farming) Buy a Farm without Considering Your Own Personality and Passions Buy a Farm without Considering Your Kids’ Activities Buy Land Before Learning How to Farm I mentioned in my first post in this series that we knew nothing about farming. This did not stop me from acquiring every homesteading book I could find. Before we moved onto the farm, I checked them out at the library. I practiced making cheese, making my…
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How to Fail at Farming Post #4
I hope you’re enjoying this series! In case you’ve missed the other posts, here are the links to read them: A New Blog Series: How to Fail at Farming (Or, Mistakes to Avoid if You Want to Succeed at Farming) How to Fail at Farming Post #2, Buy a Farm without Considering Your Own Personality and Passions How to Fail at Farming Post #3, Buy a Farm without Considering Your Kids’ Activities Please trust me on this one, guys. I know how easy it is to become excited at the thought of owning your very own land. I know all of the ways that you can convince yourself that RIGHT NOW is…
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How to Fail at Farming Post #3
I hope you’re enjoying this series! In case you’ve missed the other posts, here are the links to read them: A New Blog Series: How to Fail at Farming (Or, Mistakes to Avoid if You Want to Succeed at Farming) How to Fail at Farming Post #2, Buy a Farm without Considering Your Own Personality and Passions How to Fail at Farming Post #3, Buy a Farm without Considering Your Kids’ Activities When we bought our farm, our kids were 8, 7, 6 and 2. We had dabbled in baseball, soccer and swimming lessons, but we did not have any set activities that were our family’s big activities yet. Buying…
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How to Fail at Farming Post #2
Figure out who you are and what God is REALLY calling you to do. You can't do everything well. You will drop at least one of the balls you're juggling if you try to juggle too many. Is farming your passion above all else? Will any of your personality traits cause issues for you as you try to run a farm? Are there aspects of your personality that you will need to consider, to make sure that you choose the right farm for you?
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Introducing a New Blog Series! How to Fail at Farming (Or, Mistakes to Avoid if You Want to Succeed at Farming) Post #1
If you’ve been following my blog over the years, you know that we bought a farm in 2010 with big dreams and goals. I had been reading every homesteading book I could get my hands on before that. Our oldest son said emphatically that he wanted to be a pig farmer (of course, he was only 8!). We had planted as many fruit trees and as big of a garden as we could manage on our tiny neighborhood lot. We were ready for space and a real farming adventure! We did end up having many farming adventures, and also many failures. Farming was a giant learning curve for us, as neither one of us…
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Friday Farm Photos: Can I Share Your Farm?
If you have been following my blog for a while, you know that we once owned a farm where we raised pastured, soy-free, corn-free chickens, hens for eggs, a few dairy cows, pigs, geese, ducks, turkeys & a pretty big garden. We worked really hard, and made some stupid, newbie mistakes along the way. Jumping into farming, without previous experience or education, is quite a learning curve! We had a quick, on-farm education and then the realization that we weren’t going to make it at farming any longer and had to sell our farm. See the photo above? It is one of my favorite shots of the land that was…
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The Pros and Cons of Tiny Houses
photo credit Over the last several months, I have been searching local sale sites for an RV for our family–not to live in full time, but for regular camping trips and an easy “head out of town” for the weekend option (and to reduce our hotel costs, as we now have a family of 7, and vacationing is pretty expensive for us). As I’ve been searching for RVs, I’ve come across several “Tiny Homes,” and the whole subject has sparked my interest. My first question was, why would people buy or build a tiny home rather than purchasing an RV? After all, isn’t tiny-house living and full-time RVing pretty much the same…
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When Newbie Farmers Wish Joel Salatin Could Come Move In…
Have you considered it? Writing Joel Salatin a letter, inviting him and his family to pack up their bags and move to your homestead? At least for a little while, maybe? We thought it. We wished it. The training we never got: Our story is probably too familiar to all of you. My husband’s grandparents, and my great-grandparents lived on farms. By the time we were married, the only grandparents still around and on the farm were my husband’s. We enjoyed visiting them on their 280 acre farm in Montana, but by that time they were in their 80’s and they weren’t farming anymore. We could see the life that “once…