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Top Poster: JLC (31,651)
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Re: Farm Living
I'm probably more remote than you'd like. I live in a county with a population of 4000, our population density is 2 people per square mile. The nearest gas station and small grocery store is 30 miles. The nearest traffic light to me is 90 miles away. Nearest interstate, 100 miles. It would be a 4 hour drive to work at Barnes and Noble. My nearest neighbor is a mile away, the next one is 6 miles.
We have or had; horse, Angora and dairy goats, chickens, Angora and meat rabbits, cows, dogs, guinea pigs, cats, one BP and a Corn on Monday! Plenty of Bull and Rattle snakes, they're free range!
Cell phone service just got here a few months ago. It works better than land lines, but we drop calls just about every phone call. People get use to us calling them back.
Internet and TV is through satellite.
When the cows come in to water, we don't have water in the house. So in addition to having one bathroom, we basically share the bathroom (water anyway) with cows and goats. Timing is important. You can't explain to a cow they can't drink right now because you have to take a shower.
Crime rate? I don't think we have one of those either.
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Re: Farm Living
Jay I'm pretty much in the same boat as you :D
The girl I'm planning on spending my life with has always wanted to live/retire on a farm(after she gets that medical degree and pays off student loans).
We talk about all the animals we want.. starting with chickens since they're pretty darn easy but eventually everything from cows and horses to alpacas and sheep. I'm looking forward to raising my own grass-fed beef, TASTY stuff! My girl and I have an agreement that I'll be in charge of any slaughtering, I have zero qualms about that sort of thing.. I guess it's just the hunter/predator in me. She, on the other hand, was a vegetarian for a while, but was won back by delicious hamburgers.
Her parents have 120 acres of just, well, land, up north of minneapolis about 1 1/2 hour drive away. It's mostly forested, but there is a house on a small amount of cleared land, and next to the house is a 25 foot x 25 foot fenced garden. It went neglected for some time so we've spent some weekends this summer and fall weeding it and getting it ready for being a garden again next year. We even planted some garlic there just a few days ago.
I know that my girl's parents want some apple trees up there, but we have to put up a fence to keep the deer from destroying them first, so that will probably be a project for the spring. I think once the trees get big enough there isn't much of a threat from deer and they don't need to be fenced, but the trees you are able to buy(I think they are usually a year or two old) get killed by deer, especially in winter.
I think it will be important for us to start small, and if we just keep adding a little something every year or two we will eventually have a pretty darn good self-sustaining farm.
Also, if we have a farm, I'm sure she would be open to me running snake/other herp projects as well :D
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Re: Farm Living
Jay, that house and lot is about what you'd get for that amount to own it around here.
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Re: Farm Living
Looks like they threw on a coat of paint and some rolled roofing on a 100 + year old house. May be rough inside, may need some serious repair. Nothing that can't be handled over time, I'm sure.
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Re: Farm Living
*Sigh* I have the same dreams as you. I want a place that isn't smack in the middle of town, where I can have chickens and sheep. Only, I want something a bit bigger than 4-5 acres. Our problem with that would be gas to get back and forth to work. :/
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Re: Farm Living
I like being out in the middle of no where. I went to college in Wise, Virginia. The biggest event there was when they got a super Walmart. I loved it. It was so much quieter and it was slower paced out there.
I'm a vegetarian, so no need for meat animals. But I do want some farm animals as pets. I guess I'll have to get used to slaughtering rabbits, chickens, and button quail, since my ferrets and cats are on a raw/whole prey diet. I want to be as self sustaining as possible. I want to grow my own food and learn how to do things on my own. I also want to homeschool my kids. (when I have them).
So my fiance and I are going to stay where we are. He's got a new job that pays better so we are going to stay here and save up some money and then move out to the country. :)
Does anyone have pictures of their farm/homestead?
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Re: Farm Living
Where I grew up.
There's no livestock now, but we used to have horses, goats and rabbits.
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