I guess I'm
starting a blog now. It's still eight and a half months until I'm
even going to be able to start my project, but I thought I'd start
early with the blogging just to get in the habit of it and get better
at writing. But I'm getting ahead of myself already. I should tell
you more about what it is that I'm actually doing.
My parents were
“back to the land” sorts of people. I grew up with sheep and
goats and horses and was made to help with the garden at a young age.
As time went on, my parents split up, my mother died, my father
gardened less and less, and I stopped caring much about gardens and
such. I was a kid who wanted more to play in the woods and chat on
the internet and play videogames. Now, since I have been more or less
an independent (ahem) adult, I have
daydreamed about doing what my parents wanted to do. I have
daydreamed about buying property somewhere and trying to live off the
land. In my mind this was always sort of a pipe dream. I was broke,
my credit was terrible, I didn't know where I wanted to be in life...
land is expensive and farming is quite a commitment. I still had
adventures that I wanted to go on.
More
recently, while talking to my father about land and farming, I had a
revelation. I had been overlooking an obvious solution to my dream. I
see now why I never considered staying in Maine to farm, I had places
that I still wanted to see. I wanted to move out west for a time. And
I did. But now I have seen a few more places and have sated some of
my wanderlust and, in talking to my father I feel like I'm ready for
a new adventure. I want to own land and start a farm. He was talking
about buying the cheapest, hardest land to farm, just for the sake of
owning land, having a place to call his own, but it occurred to me
that I wouldn't have to go the hard route. I already have land, or,
my family does. When my parents split up, my mother moved to a house
in St. Albans, Maine. It was a... rustic old cabin on a 40 acre
parcel of land. When she died, the land went more or less unused and
has remained that way for almost twenty years now. Although part of
my brain reacts with a cringe and a grimace whenever I think about
moving back home, that is my best bet of having any land of my own.
So
one day I was having a hypothetical conversation about owning land
one day off in the nebulous future and the next day I had land that I
could plan for. Well, I had to talk to my family and make sure that
everyone was alright with me using our mother's land, but that went
swimmingly and the land is now mine to use. But with the hurdle of
owning land out of the way, I realized that there are about a
thousand hurdles left. Some are small, and some are really big. I
have to save up all the money I can and get out there with all of my
stuff, that should be easy I have a decent job and not too many
expenses, and I have a pickup truck and not too much stuff. But then
when I get out there I need a place to live. I have the land, but my
mother's house was in ill repair when we last lived there eighteen
years ago, It's entirely
unliveable now. I'm going to have to build a house. I have no idea
how to build a house. Not only that, but I'm going to have to build a
house for next to nothing. Then, once I have a place to live, I'm
going to actually have to start a farm. I also have no idea how to
start a farm.
So first I have to decide what exactly I want, then I'll figure out
how I am going to do it.
I
want:
-A house
-A barn
-Sheep
-Goats
-Chickens
-Bees
-A field full of
all the vegetables I can handle
-To do as much of
this as possible by hand and organically
Dammit. I don't
know anything about any of those things. That means that it's time to
hit the books. The first book that I looked to was called “The
Resilient Gardener” by Carol Deppe. It details how to be an organic
gardener, and how to grow the most basic crops necessary for self
reliance. As I was reading that I was recommended the “Foxfire”
series, a twelve-volume collection of interviews and how-tos from old
Appalachian farmers on simple living, everything from storytelling to
farming to log-cabin building. Then I was given “The One Straw
Revolution” by Masanobu Fukuoka, the philosophy/manifesto of an
innovative Japanese "do-nothing" farmer.
That brings us up
to speed. This is where I am now. Slogging my way through about
10,000 pages of resources that I've been given. And I still need
more. I still need to find more resources about building houses, I
still need to know more about raising and keeping livestock. I've
found some websites that have a lot of useful information, but I'm
looking more for books that I can take with me out into the woods
while I'm trying to build a new life for myself. I'm going to start
next march. Wish me luck.
