A History of Our Homestead - part 5
In November 2022, we settled into our new home. We still had about 7 acres of property, but unlike our previous property, it was now mostly wide open. Over the next year, we worked on cultivating a homestead. We put up fencing, planted a garden, added goats and bees, acquired more chickens, and, in 2023, we added a couple head of dairy cattle. The story of our journey to having cows is a story in itself, but for now, let’s focus on things like fencing, hay rings, and building a milking stanchion.
Our neighbor had an additional 3 acres he was willing to allow us to use - and we also had a fairly large pine grove that would’ve made for excellent goat forage/eventual silvopasture - but at the time, we felt limited by our lack of fencing. So we kept things on the smaller side.
THIS, though. This property was our home. And we planned for it to be our home forever. It was just right for us.
Then, life demanded a change for us. There’s no need in hashing the details, but in the last month of 2023, we left our home in the hands of friends (which is a really amazing and…unconventional… story for another time), picked up our southern roots and made a move northward. We are born-and-raised southerners and, in the grand scheme of our life, moving so far from home was something very unexpected. But life throws curveballs that require either hitting or missing and we decided to lean into this one and knock it out of park. Now, I’m not saying we’ve done that, exactly, but we decided (to use an expression that originated in another sport), to just roll with the punches and make the most of an unexpected experience!
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When we learned we would be moving, we knew we wanted to take our homesteading along with us. At the same time, because we didn’t know exactly how long this adventure would last, we decided to look for a property to rent, rather than be saddled with something we would need to sell once we moved again.
So, the land we found is part of a larger property - we rent the home and use of a portion of the property to use for our homesteading adventures. The land is beautiful - we couldn’t have chosen a more lovely place to live, if we’d tried; however, in terms of homesteading, the one drawback is that there was no fencing. So we needed to be creative and figure out something that would work while we are here…while being something we can pull up and take when we leave.
What we actually ended up deciding upon and installing is another post for another day, but…we did it! We ended up making this place our home..and even better, one where we can continue our homesteading dreams.