“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.”

Be Like Ben

The dude was busy! My guess is he HAD to have a plan at all times so he could fit everything into his day! AC and I have taken ol’ Benny’s advice and made a plan that will (hopefully) help us reach our goal of homesteading.

Here’s a breakdown of that plan:

Minimize

We currently live in a 3 bedroom home that has been really good to us AND is full of stuff.

All this stuff won’t fit in our truck, which will be our home as we travel between sites (more on this in a moment) so we need to edit our lives, shed some weight, and get rid of things that we can live without. We’re gathering up all the clothes we don’t wear, furniture we don’t need, DVDs we no longer watch (does anyone watch DVDs anymore…?) and having a MASSIVE sale. So massive that we’ll actually leave most stuff in our house and invite folks to walk through and pick what they want, like an estate sale, but an “estate” sale…because no one died.

This project has been a bit daunting. First of all, how did all this stuff get here?! Who bought that? (Probably me—I’m the impulse buyer.) Why do we still have this? (Probably AC—she’s the more sentimental one.) When will we ever use that? (We won’t? Then please see the first question!) Anyway, deciding what to keep, sell, and donate is taxing on the brain. Furthermore, thinking about how to price everything, display items so they sell, market and staff the sale, and all the other questions that pop into my mind at 2am, have been all-consuming.

Learn & Explore

We don’t know a whole lot about homesteading. I have kept bees and a small garden before, so that’s a start. We also DIY a lot of home projects so I’m thinking we’ll be ok on the “handy” side of homesteading. Still, we have a lot to learn about animal husbandry, permaculture, food preservation, etc.

To help get ourselves up-to-snuff, we’re planning to participate in several Workaway/HelpX experiences. Workaway and HelpX are both organizations that facilitate “a cultural exchange [wherein] you offer a few hours of help in exchange for food and accommodation” (https://www.workaway.info/en/info/faq). We’re hoping to work on farms where we can learn how to raise and process livestock, grow and preserve food, and maybe even make some byproducts that we can sell (balms, soaps, cheese, etc.). I’m going to continue working remotely and contributing to the farms outside of business hours. AC will be full-time farming and likes to call this farmstay period her “adult internship.”

We’re also going to use our farmstay opportunities to explore more of the USA. AC has done her fair share of traveling around the states, but I have not. Neither of us have spent much time on the west coast, so we’re hoping to start our adventure there, then meander back across the country before settling in Virginia, western NC, or eastern TN (that’s the goal for now, anyway).

Dive In!

After we finish our “internship” we’ll buy some land (with or without a house?…TBD) and start our own homestead. 

Expect Change

Notice that each part of that plan got shorter as the plan progressed. That’s because we have no idea how our lives/minds/circumstances/goals/etc. will change in the span of a year. We are in the process of downsizing considerably so the Minimize portion is in full swing.  We know we want to start with farmstays so we’ve put a lot of thought into the Learn & Explore piece, but there’s still room for change there. We have no idea where we will end up or the kind of land we’ll acquire, so the Dive In part is really generic right now. 

Have I been drawing floor plans of my dream home, window shopping for land on Zillow, and researching chicken breeds in my spare time? 100%! Hopefully that research will benefit us in the future, but for now, we’re taking it one step at a time.

Until next time,

Charli