It seems to be an oft-dreamt dream these days: a little homestead, or perhaps a small farm, enough to sustain a family and perhaps pay for its own land taxes. A few chickens, a dairy animal or three, maybe a team of work horses or oxen, some pigs to eat the vegetable scraps and be bacon. But with a half acre empty lot in a subdivision selling for $40,000, and farms and their lands disappearing every day, it seems every day more like an unreachable fantasy. Who can afford to buy five or ten acres? To build a barn, let alone a house, that would satisfy local zoning ordinances and codes? With tens of thousands of dollars in college debt and good jobs seemingly always harder to come by, the average young couple who wants to farm faces a nearly impossible proposition.
And so, as someone who has managed to put together the capital to start on the path to homesteading independence, I would like to present a fairly brief history of our life choices that led us where we are. We haven't yet achieved our ultimate goal, since what we'd really like is a small farm with a few choice cows, where I can make artisan cheeses to sell, while feeding heritage breed swine on the whey from said cheese, all in the free state of New Hampshire (where regulations on said farm would be far less crushing than they would be here in New York). We've got a way to go yet, but we grow a lot of our own food and plowed our garden this year with our own team of oxen, and that's not nothing by my reckoning. And so I present our history.
Ben and I got married while he was still in grad school, and working full time at a dairy farm in western New York. We knew before we got married (and even before we started dating) that we both wanted to have a homestead or farm someday, though for quite different reasons. Ben and I both thought that it was the best environment to raise responsible, active, hard working kids; I also happened to believe that at some point America's food/energy system was going to break down and that those who grew their own food would have the best chance of survival. Ben had (and has) a more optimistic view of societal stability, but from personal experience he knew how hard it is to be at the mercy of price fluctuations and therefore held the same sustainability goals I espoused--just for much less dystopian reasons.
When we'd been married for one year and five days, our first daughter was born. Serenity came in the middle of Ben's studying for the comprehensive exam that would clinch his Masters' degree, and working the midnight to eight shift at the large dairy farm where his father and most of his brothers also worked. We were living with his parents to save money and making larger than necessary payments on his student loans, trying to whittle away at the college debt we had both accumulated. We were able to garden on a limited basis, and that spring Ben bought two Ayrshire bull calves, Bruce and Charlie, to train up as oxen.
By the following year it was time for a change. I was pregnant again (on purpose--I didn't want Serenity to get too used to being an only child), Ben's exam was finally done, and we were ready to have a home of our ow
n. My mom had inherited my grandfather's little house when he died, and the landscaping company I'd worked at for a few summers in college was hiring. We moved back to Syracuse in March so Ben could start the landscaping season and we had plenty of time to get a garden growing in the generously sized backyard. We got our gilt we had bought the previous year bred for a fall litter and installed her in my parents' barn, and Ben's oxen were becoming big pains in my parents' 2 acres of pasture, especially when combined with my horse.
Being in a home of our own changed a lot of things for us. We were the only people buying food, making me much more conscious of spending and of usage and waste; we also made all the decisions about the garden on our own, which was a good feeling. Our son, Bean, was born at home in August, and Ben quickly became a favorite at the landscaping company, where his work ethic earned him great renown. We grew a lot of pumpkins and butternut squash, and plenty of tomatoes, but not enough peppers to make me happy. The potatoes were an utter failure--we let them cure too long after cutting them and they rotted in the ground. Turnips were gangbusters, but obnoxious to utilize because of wireworm damage and bitterness from the heat of summer. Ben's coonhound thought they were fantastic and the laying hens loved the greens.
That winter was hard. Ben plowed snow, but there wasn't very much that year so paychecks were few and far between. Those bitter, pithy turnips showed up in an awful lot of our food, and our lovely next door neighbor, a Moldovan by birth, brought day old baked goods (from Wegmans, no less) on the regular. We kept the runt of the litter of pigs for our own use, butchering early in the spring: our first time butchering our own hog together. It was a rush having this connection to the land, our own sow producing pigs that sold like hot cakes twice a year. The Earned Income Credit plus having two kids meant a much needed infusion of cash to get us caught up (and let us pay off a couple of college loans) right around the time work started up at the landscaping company again. The long, lean winter was over!
That summer I did some work outside the house, first putting in some weeks of full time labor building a beautiful fence around a beautiful pasture for some yaks, then landscaping for a couple of folks. The supplemental income softened quite a few blows that would otherwise have been dealt to our slowly growing bank account. I still managed to can veggies and sell little pigs, and this time we had plenty of potatoes: turnips were almost exclusively used to keep the dog's mouth occupied. Ben's oxen got moved to a friend's farm, where not only did they have more room for their growing mass, but there was actually some work they could do. That winter was also much nicer: the tree crew got a big contract cutting down trees and Ben got to help out. Steady paychecks for weeks, in addition to plowing money.
Ultimately that dream died a slow, sad death. Other foreclosure homes came and went over the course of the next year. We held onto our tax checks and our bank account grew. NicKensie was born early in June, and I kept the garden very well that year: almost no weeds and very good growth for all the vegetables. I kept a close eye on the real estate market, once in a while going to see a house. I started working with an agent who specialized in HUD foreclosures. We saw a big house in great shape in Phoenix, NY, with 15 damp acres and a useable barn. It was a foreclosure up for auction, and we wanted it so bad we arranged to borrow money from two different sources... but we were still outbid and some lucky person got the place for $60k. That hurt.
We looked at a foreclosed home with 6 acres and a large shed. At that point we were used to seeing a promising property, only to reject it and/or have it snatched from our very fingertips. This one didn't excite us too much, but that much cleared land was a big deal, the structural steel shed was big enough for a cow and oxen and a horse and some pigs ... The house could be in liveable condition without too much expense. In short, at $35,000, it was one that at least ought to be considered.
As spring approached, the asking price dropped to $30,000 and it was time to make our move if we were going to. We talked with our dearly beloved lenders, and put in an offer for $28,000.
In the mean time Ben received a phone call offering him a job. A dairy farmer who attended our church had an opening since one of his two farm hands needed to retire, and he knew that Ben had dairy experience. The job had a lower rate of pay than what Ben was getting at the landscaping company, but it would be steady work year round. Even more important, it came with a large house on 5 acres--which, we were told, we could use as we pleased: any and all animals were most welcome.
We discussed this opportunity, and Ben went to look at the dairy farm's setup (the house was still occupied). Probably two days after we decided to accept the job offer, my real estate agent called to congratulate me: the bank had accepted our offer on the house in Central Square. We were now the proud holders of not one, but two properties, both adequately sized to make a decent run at homesteading.
The day I brought the first car load of boxes to our new home was the first time I saw it. It was a much larger house than the one we'd had, with bedrooms for everyone and even an extra playroom for the kids; it had a 16x32 foot shed where we could put pigs and the horse, and while a good percentage of the land was taken up by a large pond, there were a few acres that could easily be fenced in for the horse's pasture. And it is a pretty pond. The other house waited its turn while we set up our homestead and settled into the new job; essentially all I did that summer was keep the lawn mowed. When the new year came around I started working on the first order of business: I had to replace the breaker box, as the old one was corroded. A crash course in wiring resulted, and at inspection time it passed with flying colors. We started tearing out lath and plaster and hanging drywal
l. Naively we hoped that it would be done by spring...then by summer.... then by fall... At the moment we're hoping it will be done by summer. The birth of Trillium at the end of January, coupled with the surgery Ben had to repair a wrist ligament, has slowed progress to a crawl this winter, but it won't be long before we're back at it. We hope to sell it at a normal market value, not a bargain bin discount. This would give us the capital we need to fulfill the New Hampshire Dream.
And so, as someone who has managed to put together the capital to start on the path to homesteading independence, I would like to present a fairly brief history of our life choices that led us where we are. We haven't yet achieved our ultimate goal, since what we'd really like is a small farm with a few choice cows, where I can make artisan cheeses to sell, while feeding heritage breed swine on the whey from said cheese, all in the free state of New Hampshire (where regulations on said farm would be far less crushing than they would be here in New York). We've got a way to go yet, but we grow a lot of our own food and plowed our garden this year with our own team of oxen, and that's not nothing by my reckoning. And so I present our history.
Little Income, Big Dreams
When we'd been married for one year and five days, our first daughter was born. Serenity came in the middle of Ben's studying for the comprehensive exam that would clinch his Masters' degree, and working the midnight to eight shift at the large dairy farm where his father and most of his brothers also worked. We were living with his parents to save money and making larger than necessary payments on his student loans, trying to whittle away at the college debt we had both accumulated. We were able to garden on a limited basis, and that spring Ben bought two Ayrshire bull calves, Bruce and Charlie, to train up as oxen.A Step Toward Independence
By the following year it was time for a change. I was pregnant again (on purpose--I didn't want Serenity to get too used to being an only child), Ben's exam was finally done, and we were ready to have a home of our own. My mom had inherited my grandfather's little house when he died, and the landscaping company I'd worked at for a few summers in college was hiring. We moved back to Syracuse in March so Ben could start the landscaping season and we had plenty of time to get a garden growing in the generously sized backyard. We got our gilt we had bought the previous year bred for a fall litter and installed her in my parents' barn, and Ben's oxen were becoming big pains in my parents' 2 acres of pasture, especially when combined with my horse.
Being in a home of our own changed a lot of things for us. We were the only people buying food, making me much more conscious of spending and of usage and waste; we also made all the decisions about the garden on our own, which was a good feeling. Our son, Bean, was born at home in August, and Ben quickly became a favorite at the landscaping company, where his work ethic earned him great renown. We grew a lot of pumpkins and butternut squash, and plenty of tomatoes, but not enough peppers to make me happy. The potatoes were an utter failure--we let them cure too long after cutting them and they rotted in the ground. Turnips were gangbusters, but obnoxious to utilize because of wireworm damage and bitterness from the heat of summer. Ben's coonhound thought they were fantastic and the laying hens loved the greens.
That winter was hard. Ben plowed snow, but there wasn't very much that year so paychecks were few and far between. Those bitter, pithy turnips showed up in an awful lot of our food, and our lovely next door neighbor, a Moldovan by birth, brought day old baked goods (from Wegmans, no less) on the regular. We kept the runt of the litter of pigs for our own use, butchering early in the spring: our first time butchering our own hog together. It was a rush having this connection to the land, our own sow producing pigs that sold like hot cakes twice a year. The Earned Income Credit plus having two kids meant a much needed infusion of cash to get us caught up (and let us pay off a couple of college loans) right around the time work started up at the landscaping company again. The long, lean winter was over!
That summer I did some work outside the house, first putting in some weeks of full time labor building a beautiful fence around a beautiful pasture for some yaks, then landscaping for a couple of folks. The supplemental income softened quite a few blows that would otherwise have been dealt to our slowly growing bank account. I still managed to can veggies and sell little pigs, and this time we had plenty of potatoes: turnips were almost exclusively used to keep the dog's mouth occupied. Ben's oxen got moved to a friend's farm, where not only did they have more room for their growing mass, but there was actually some work they could do. That winter was also much nicer: the tree crew got a big contract cutting down trees and Ben got to help out. Steady paychecks for weeks, in addition to plowing money.
Itching for More
That spring I happened to notice a funny little house on 17 acres for sale not too far away. It was a foreclosure, and at an asking price of $40,000, it seemed like it might be something we could actually afford in the not-too-distant future. With the kitchen and bathroom on the second floor, there was not much to recommend it in terms of earthly beauty, and the land was overgrown with young woods; still, seventeen acres is seventeen acres. It sold pretty quickly, but it was too late: we had The Itch. That fall, a house came on the market a few minutes away from my midwife's home (spoiler alert: I was pregnant again,) for about $55,000 and with 25 acres and three outbuildings. It had structural problems with the attached garage, loads of cosmetic problems inside, needed a roof... But we were young and optimistic and in love. We started fighting with banks about financing, trying to convince them that despite our terrible debt to income ratio, we would be able to swing a teeny tiny mortgage.Ultimately that dream died a slow, sad death. Other foreclosure homes came and went over the course of the next year. We held onto our tax checks and our bank account grew. NicKensie was born early in June, and I kept the garden very well that year: almost no weeds and very good growth for all the vegetables. I kept a close eye on the real estate market, once in a while going to see a house. I started working with an agent who specialized in HUD foreclosures. We saw a big house in great shape in Phoenix, NY, with 15 damp acres and a useable barn. It was a foreclosure up for auction, and we wanted it so bad we arranged to borrow money from two different sources... but we were still outbid and some lucky person got the place for $60k. That hurt.
Houses and Lands
We looked at a foreclosed home with 6 acres and a large shed. At that point we were used to seeing a promising property, only to reject it and/or have it snatched from our very fingertips. This one didn't excite us too much, but that much cleared land was a big deal, the structural steel shed was big enough for a cow and oxen and a horse and some pigs ... The house could be in liveable condition without too much expense. In short, at $35,000, it was one that at least ought to be considered.As spring approached, the asking price dropped to $30,000 and it was time to make our move if we were going to. We talked with our dearly beloved lenders, and put in an offer for $28,000.
In the mean time Ben received a phone call offering him a job. A dairy farmer who attended our church had an opening since one of his two farm hands needed to retire, and he knew that Ben had dairy experience. The job had a lower rate of pay than what Ben was getting at the landscaping company, but it would be steady work year round. Even more important, it came with a large house on 5 acres--which, we were told, we could use as we pleased: any and all animals were most welcome.
We discussed this opportunity, and Ben went to look at the dairy farm's setup (the house was still occupied). Probably two days after we decided to accept the job offer, my real estate agent called to congratulate me: the bank had accepted our offer on the house in Central Square. We were now the proud holders of not one, but two properties, both adequately sized to make a decent run at homesteading.
Looking Ahead
l. Naively we hoped that it would be done by spring...then by summer.... then by fall... At the moment we're hoping it will be done by summer. The birth of Trillium at the end of January, coupled with the surgery Ben had to repair a wrist ligament, has slowed progress to a crawl this winter, but it won't be long before we're back at it. We hope to sell it at a normal market value, not a bargain bin discount. This would give us the capital we need to fulfill the New Hampshire Dream.
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