Oddbean

I wonder who feels the same way and what you do/did about it: Bear one says to get a smaller homestead, tend to it and rely on that piece of soil a lot. He'd like to sell the apartment in a big city and go have hens and carrots and raise homeschoolers, because fuck this system. Bear two says to get Paraguay citizenship or whatever to have two passports, sell the apartment in the big city, start nomading, v4v via notebook and raise homeschoolers, because fuck this system. There's actually that conflict, that we're on with @9sirtom5 for years now. We're not sure what to do, because it's huge expensive leap into a dream. Could be stupid as hell. nostr:note1qqqq8tg494v2tf7q96njmtqrm24r5rt2spsra3t456xdf6h866qsz9zejh

I think about this a lot, but we made the decision to commit to a piece of land and stay at least in the same country as most of our family. I have no doubt that some places will deal with upheaval better than others, and on my long list of sovereignty to-dos is figure out a plan B, but for now we're throwing ourselves into what we can build on our land. It's good that both bears are thinking more or less along the same lines, that one of you isn't wanting to commit more to a city right now...

I'm afraid that attaching to the place will greatly weaken your purchasing power, so homestead plus remote job seems to be mandatory to me. How did you do that? My biggest concerns are possibility of letting my kids choose the education/university/hobbies (money and distance), the low flexibility (you need to care for what you have there obviously) and due to hard work outside I don't see where to get enough time for another job.🤔

We were lucky to have enough remote work (online teaching - one of the good outcomes of the pandemic for us) to keep our work when we moved. For live concerts, of course, we had to restart our community and connections, but after so many cancelled concerts for the lockdowns we realized how unreliable those were anyway. If my kids were still small, this would have been a more exciting move (time outside, real connection to soil and animals...) but also much more difficult in terms of urgency of building local community and connections. Once you have community, you can work with others to help each other with livestock chores (and there are a few things you can build in - automatic waterers, automated chicken coop doors). However - yes, in general you have much less flexibility. A lot of families manage homesteading with jobs, and even with jobs and kids. You just have to choose your projects carefully.

And just like that, Bäretta remembered she's a teacher.👀😅 Thank you so much. I'm now slightly tapping into homesteading, I take kids every Sunday to remote shack I rent by a homestead and sometimes help with sheep, chickens and in garden. We're about to have some lambs soon☺️ My kids visit "forest kindergarten" deep in the woods and they are so muscular and fit, whole days out rolling in snow or mud. It's awesome, but tending to animals in the winter is exhausting beyond imagination of city folk. So uncomfortable 😂😅 That's why I'm so careful with that idea, the work🥶 On the other hand, I learned a lot about putting meat on the table and picking warm bio eggs is one of the best things ever.

A few other thoughts I had while going to feed the chickens: I think there's probably a way to do things so that you lease/borrow the land instead of buying it. Also - you're experimenting with carnivore, right? We're moving in that direction (I'm trying it until March and loving it so far, and most family members are intrigued). I'm realizing that this may dramatically shift our workload on the homestead. Gardens - weeding, composting/fertilizing, watering systems - are a lot of work! At this point we're focusing mostly on perennials (fruit and nut trees) for beauty, livestock forage, back up food for us and on the animals. It doesn't improve the flexibility that you mentioned, but it definitely simplifies our routines.

Yes, carnivore is my concern. I know how to get a chicken on the table, but with other animals, especially bigger ones, I'm pretty sure the learning curve is massive and quite expensive even when done successfully.

Usually homesteaders are self-sufficient in meat before they are with other foods! Butchering beef is a big project and beyond the facilities and skills of most folks, but goats, sheep, ducks and chickens are relatively simple.