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New to homesteading

 
Posts: 3
Location: Gallatin TN
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Hi I just bought 33 acres off the Powell river in harrogate tn are there any other off grid homesteaders around me that I can go to for advice
 
pollinator
Posts: 155
Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada -- Zone 5a
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I'm very very far from you, but wanted to wish you best of luck with your new homestead.
 
master steward
Posts: 6974
Location: southern Illinois, USA
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Welcome.  I am in the southern tip of Illinois. There are loads of people here who can provide excellent advice.
 
Posts: 65
Location: Bought the farm and moved from Maine to western tip of Virginia.
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Hi, Thomas,

We're not far from you in Jonesville, VA, just south of the Powell River.  Our 30 acres needs a lot of work to bring it back into production.  We're learning as we go, but more than willing to help out a "neighbor".  If you check out the Wickershire Project on YouTube, that's us, or rather that's my partner Billy Joe's website.  We bought the farm together last Nov, and I moved here from Maine in Dec 2019 to rehab the trailer, the only habitable structure on the property, so we would have a place to camp while we each build our dream house.

Billy Joe and his family arrived in early May, and he has about six projects going at once in what he calls the "Shire".  I've had as many as six going at one time, but I learned (the hard way) that I am not a multi-tasker, so I've cut back in an attempt to finish each project before getting overly busy on another.  Billy Joe hasn't learned that yet, but he will, as all six of his projects remain in limbo unfinished.  He puts himself on a guilt trip each time he restarts one of them because he hasn't finished the first one.  I'm sure you know how that goes.  He did finish his fish pond.

Of course, priorities change all the time.  Equipment breakdowns (stuff bought used on Craigslist) have slowed us down considerably.  I wanted to concentrate on building infrastructure this first year, but Billy Joe is focused on getting a huge garden producing everything, all sorts of livestock, setting up his solar power system, building greenhouse(s), putting in food forest, excavating a pond or three, and a dozen other long-term projects that he's sure he can do quickly.  Good luck on that!

Anyway, check out Wickershire, watch some of Billy Joe's zany videos (he is up to episode 20, I think), "Like" a video or two, subscribe to the channel, post a comment there, and we'll connect up.  Maybe we can meet halfway, in Rose Hill, for a get together.  It'll be fun discussing our failures and successes with others who get it.

Good luck with your new venture / adventure.  Talk soon.
 
Cimarron Layne
Posts: 65
Location: Bought the farm and moved from Maine to western tip of Virginia.
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Hi, Thomas,
It's been about 6 months since I replied to your request for other permies in your neighborhood.  
A lot has happened since, so I thought I'd send you an update.

We've been working on our homestead pretty steadily and have cleaned out the barn and shed, made the trailer liveable, repaired most of the stuff that needed repairing, built dog house, mobile chicken coop (Chickshaw as designed by Justin Rhodes), a pig shelter, and put up moveable electric fences with solar chargers.  We moved them around our open pasture areas about once a week all summer and fall.  We've sold about a dozen hens, pullets, chicks, and one rooster, which covered our feed costs for the year.  Our first pair of pigs farrowed the first of Dec and we moved the whole family, along with the chickens, to the barn for the winter just in time to beat the Christmas deep freeze.  We'll sell the piglets as soon as they are weaned for enough to cover a year's worth of pig feed.  In the spring we will add milk goats to our menagerie and use them to clear brush from our forested areas of the farm.

I also took the time to get my Permaculture Design Certificate and completed Geoff Lawton's Permaculture Masterclass.  So now I can legitimately do PC designs for others and teach Permaculture.  When we complete some more of the infrastructure here, I may start teaching PDC courses here at Liberty Tree Farm as there are none located nearby.  Believe me, I looked!  And most of the online PDC's I found on the Internet were expensive and not highly rated.  One really needs the hands-on group classes for everything to make sense.

I hope all is going well for you and your family and you are staying healthy.
 
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