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Tamara Carroll wrote:Hi Steve,
I live quite close to that area. You can easily grow the things you wish to grow. In fact, we excel with corn and berries here. Currently I am growing apple trees, honeyberries, gooseberries, blackberries, black raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, a cherry tree, potatoes, onions, and the regular garden vegetables. I have an herbal/medicinal garden and I just planted somerset grape vines too. Hillsboro is far enough south that you get a jump on the growing season as compared to Northern WI. I grew up in Northern WI and we grew everything just fine there too. While it rains often enough , plan on watering too, as Wisconsin is unpredictable, especially in late summer. It may rain two or three days straight but then be dry for two weeks... you just never know. We water our plants. Wisconsin has a large Christian community, my family included. In Hillsboro there is a Christian camp called Trail Ridge Camp that may need some help. My family has been there and they are about the best camp out there... real good people. There are so many contractors in the area, hungry for workers. You could always help one out. off and on. People with your skills do fine just starting a little handyman business. Additionally, there's lots of farms in the area. You would not have trouble making a go of it here. Reach out if you have more questions. Wisconsinites are generally a friendly bunch of people. Prepare to have strangers wave at you and your family as you drive down the road, and they will also chat with you in the line at the grocery store.
Wisconsin is targeted by many political organizations (in a bad way) as Wisconsin is one of the swing states, so we get our fair share of propaganda thrown at us on a regular basis, and they spend a lot of time and money in the schools trying to indoctrinate our children to their particular ways of thinking. Other than that, Wisconsin is one of the best states, in my humble opinion.
Ned Harr wrote:Cool idea, definitely see the draw. I do wonder a lot how much you can separate the lifestyle from the religion. Staying close enough to visit without needing a car is a big part of the Amish value system, as of course is the intentionality around technology, but those ultimately stem from a desire to live in a humble, simple, and self-sufficient way, which the Amish see as mandated by their Anabaptist faith.
Related, possibly of interest to you: https://www.newphilosopher.com/articles/the-art-of-amistics/
We (we here on Permies, most of us) already choose to live like the Amish, I think, in certain ways. It's definitely what I think of when I see people use phrases like "appropriate technology".
It's a fascinating topic!
Tyler Hill wrote:So I recently had three large oak trees felled by the city in my backyard that were encroaching on power lines. I’m working on processing the wood into firewood but it’s a big project. Most of the wood I’ve yet to process I’ve stacked on pallets to get them off the damp ground and allow air flow. Some of it however is far too heavy for me to move until I’ve chopped it into shorter pieces and split the shorter pieces and so it’s just been lying directly on the ground.
In the section of Lars Mytting’s book Norwegian Wood entitled “Wood That Never Dries” he writes “in deciduous trees for which the drying conditions are poor at the outset, the moisture content never falls to the level it does in timber that has been dried quickly… The rule is never to let timber lie wet in the forest…get it back home and chop, split, and stack it.” My question is this: How quickly does wood need to be removed from the ground if one wants it to dry properly? There must be a length of time that is acceptable to let wood lie on the ground if one can’t immediately move it for whatever reason. I just have no idea if that length of time is one hour or one week or one month or whatever. This is a fairly new area of interest for me and I’m feeling rather in over my head so any input is appreciated.