Things you wish you had known

Howdy y'all!

My name's Dennis, and I'm new to this site. Stumbled across it looking at ideas about powering a generator with ethanol. And, while bio-diesel seems now like a more viable alternative, I've found a very interesting community existing here.



The ENTIRE world is continuing to head in the craziest of directions. Everything is filled with uncertainty, and the idea of abandoning all of it for a more simple and self sustainable life is becoming more and more appealing. If for the purpose of helping me personally, or anyone else who might stumble down the rabbit hole of living more self sustainably,

What are some things you wish you had known??

It'd be great also to have an understanding of your circumstances as well! Like, what are you doing? what's the kind of area you're living in?

Anything to help out someone who hasn't quite put an idea together of what to do, or how to do it. What's something you wish you had known?


Any response is appreciated! I'm really curious to see what kind of message board I've stumbled upon, who all of y'all are, and what you do

Much respect,

-Total Noob

Oh my, the list is endless - but I've been at this a long time.

Have you tripped over the SKIP program here on permies?  https://permies.com/wiki/skip-pep-bb
This is a great starting point because many of us don't even realize how many skills are necessary to be more sustainable - like repairing things instead of buying new.

It's a bit hard to know what might be useful for you without knowing a little about your "growing area" and your current living situation. This doesn't have to be precise, but identifying your climate zone, major weather patterns, urban, rural or big city, etc give people a sense of what might be relevant.

Dennis, welcome to the forum!

My best suggestion once a person has shelter and water for drinking and irrigation is to start slow when adding to the equation.

What is most important learning to garden or learning to grow animals?

With my family, it was growing vegetables then building a shelter for chickens.  Another year it was cows, etc.

Some other good thing to consider is making compost and growing mushrooms as these will help build your soil year after year.

Hi Dennis and Welcome!
Things I wish I'd known (earlier)
Landraces: https://permies.com/t/139843
Soil: https://permies.com/t/63914/Soil (etc.)

I've got a little bit of windswept hillside on Skye and I wish I'd known how much better the self sown trees (native stock) would grow. I also wish I'd moved away from the "day job" years earlier (I still get strange dreams about working at Jaguar...just last night I dreamt I couldn't find my desk in the open plan office).

Life is not a rehearsal - we're all just making it up as we go along!

EVERYTHING. COSTS. MORE. THAN. YOU. THINK.

Costed everything out perfectly? Oh no you haven't you forgot the trailer hire to get it home, that one specific tool that you'll probably never use again, oh and XXX broke just as you needed it on a Friday evening meaning a 2 hour drive to borrow one.

Not only does it cost more than you think, but it takes longer to. Think you'll dig the garden on Saturday in time for planting on Sunday? nuh uh, it rained all week and there's no chance of even walking out there until next week.

Always underestimate your ability and overestimate the time things will take.

Start small and add things when you have the last thing under-control.

No matter how much of a loner you are, no matter how independent you are, neighbors have a great deal to do with how successful you will be.  Neighbors can be constructive or destructive.  

I wish I had known ... to start planting trees.  Immediately.  And don't stop.

I moved to this present farm in 2010, and planted ... I think all of *six* trees the first eight years here.  The four that made it, all look very nice, wish I had 40 instead of just the four.

Plant trees.

I wish I had known ... that Life will keep moving the goalposts. In all your planning and efforts, always consider resilience, adaptability, and readiness for change. For change will come.

I think most of my failures were needed so I can grow. I regret expending too much time in the garden and leaving my wife aside when she most needed me, but alas, the kickback maybe was what I needed to become who I am now.

That said, regarding gardening, there are a couple of tidbits that should have come handy:
- The local growing seasons: Fall (oct-nov), Winter (Dec-Jan), Spring (Feb-Apr), Summer (May-Jun) and BEACH SEASON (Jul-Sep).
- How to grow seedlings in a wet tray.
- Waiting until the soil is moist before digging.
- Thistles are annoying but edible. Some are even tasty.
- If I refuse to do some work, the ecosystem evolves to adapt to the work I do. This involves losing some species, and living with the ones who thrive on my inputs. For example, if I don't figth bugs, some plants die, but predators appear. If I don't irrigate, some plants dry, but some others propagate with ease (like tasty thistle). This works for everything in life!! Given enough diversity, do just what makes you happy and the world around you will evolve to adapt for it.

In other words, I do the work that makes me happy (prunning, digging, foraging), refuse to do what I dislike (weeding, figthing bugs/diseases, irrigating), I plant/seed a big diversity, and let the system respond. Did I mention I don't feed too much from the garden? X'D

If you are buying a house in a snowy area, get one with a steep pitched roof that will shed snow.  Do not trust that the local people who built it necessarily got it right!  At age 72 I am still climbing on my almost flat roof to shovel it off after major snow storms.  Someday you too will be be 72 or older.
Also, beware of long winding tree lined driveways which look lovely when you see them in July.  They can be a pain or a major expense when they need to be plowed after 2 feet of snow.
Plan for when you are 90.

Gary Numan wrote:I wish I had known ... to start planting trees.  Immediately.  And don't stop.

I moved to this present farm in 2010, and planted ... I think all of *six* trees the first eight years here.  The four that made it, all look very nice, wish I had 40 instead of just the four.

Plant trees.

Totally, absolutely, undoubtedly sound advice. 15+ years after moving to 15 acres of barren pasture land (llamas) surrounded by timberland, one of my biggest regrets is not planting more trees sooner.  By now, I've planted over 400 trees including about 150 fruit trees and I still continue to plant more. Sure, we can't eat all the fruit, but friends, the foodbank, and the wildlife take care of it all (no llamas). Elk and beavers have taken their toll on the trees, and I have to cage all the fruit trees while they're small (trunks of all permanently for the beaver), but it's worth the effort for food, firewood, and watching the wildlife.

"Work smarter not harder" is a great mantra that I wish I focused more on earlier in life.  

I wish I had known more about the wild edibles in my area and encouraged more to grow on my property sooner.  Zero work involved, endless bounty and a way to continue to eat off our land as we grow old.  

If you like asparagus plant a large patch.  Deer don't bother ours and early Spring they are the first crop we get to enjoy and new shoots literally grow in time for dinner the next night.  

We also tried a dozen different deer fence configurations that all failed.  Long thin garden plots was the answer in the end.  Our small kitchen garden is just 7' X 30' with one  raised berm down the middle - we simply planted on top of a pile of felled trees and cut branches topped with soil as our raised bed.  Deer won't jump a fence if the back fence looks too close or if they feel that after the jump that they will be trapped in and not have room to jump back out.  If only we had figured this out sooner.

And finally, discovering hemp hulls took me over a decade of researching and testing different organic mattress fillings - which I have based my cottage business on.  Hemp hulls seriously make the best DIY mattress simply poured into a mattress cover with some stretch and layered over a soft forgiving base layer.  If I had only found them 12 years ago!!  

Nature truly provides all we need, we have just forgotten where to look.

Lynne Cim wrote:

We also tried a dozen different deer fence configurations that all failed.  Long thin garden plots was the answer in the end.  Our small kitchen garden is just 7' X 30' with one  raised berm down the middle - we simply planted on top of a pile of felled trees and cut branches topped with soil as our raised bed.  Deer won't jump a fence if the back fence looks too close or if they feel that after the jump that they will be trapped in and not have room to jump back out.  If only we had figured this out sooner.

Should one be inclined to have an odd looking fence, research has shown that deer won't jump over a 5 foot fence IF the fence is installed at an angle of 55°. As stated in the quote, they want to know what is on each side of any vertical obstacle they plan to jump. I am always amazed at how an animal as big as an elk is, can just seem to spring over a 5 foot fence. When elk started jumping a section of our fenced garden that was about 6 feet high, the rest is higher, I dumped a lot of larger plastic pots along the inside of the fence. This landing spot uncertainty was enough to deter them until I raised the fence.

Paul Young wrote:

Should one be inclined to have an odd looking fence, research has shown that deer won't jump over a 5 foot fence IF the fence is installed at an angle of 55°. As stated in the quote, they want to know what is on each side of any vertical obstacle they plan to jump. I am always amazed at how an animal as big as an elk is, can just seem to spring over a 5 foot fence. When elk started jumping a section of our fenced garden that was about 6 feet high, the rest is higher, I dumped a lot of larger plastic pots along the inside of the fence. This landing spot uncertainty was enough to deter them until I raised the fence.

Oh very cool note about the garden containers!  I wonder which direction would be best for the fence to be angled, in toward the planted area or out toward the approaching / jumping animal?  

Hi Lynne,
I read the fence research some time back, but I'm pretty sure it was angled outwards. I'll try to find it again.

Lynne Cim wrote: Oh very cool note about the garden containers!  I wonder which direction would be best for the fence to be angled, in toward the planted area or out toward the approaching / jumping animal?  

 Pictures I've seen always had it pointing out towards the jumping animal. A search for images will likely give you a number of options. For me, I would go for the "vertical fence with a brace coming out at about 4 ft high with several wires on the brace" version. This way I can access under the fence for management - otherwise Himalayan Blackberry would invade and I'd have no way to discourage it. Also, our soil gets sooo... soggy in the winter, I would worry about a 55° fence gradually sinking to a lower angle. One's exact ecosystem is a factor with choosing designs!

I agree with Skandi, everything costs more and takes more time than you think.

I tried planting trees early, all but two died. Our environment is harsh. Now I don't plant anything that isn't protected from wildlife and able to be watered. Even native species require watering at first, nature gets around this by planting so many that only 1/100 or 1/1000 lives. I can't afford that, either in time or money.

I have had great luck with deer fencing. My raised bed garden has a 6' chain link fence. Other areas that I have fenced have 7' field fencing. I've never had a deer jump them. But there are plenty of other areas for the deer so maybe they just don't feel the need.

Trust your instincts. I've had others out to my property to advise and after much consideration, I've discarded most of their advice. Many suggested putting all of the livestock in the pole barn, but it's not near the houses, and not set up for livestock. I've decided to have more dedicated areas for different species each with their own housing closer to where I can keep an eye on them. The pole barn will be used for entertaining mostly. My youngest is having their wedding reception there.

Like you, Stacy, I would not use a 55° angled fence - too many cons, including all those you mentioned. I spend a lot of time removing blackberries without having to deal with a 55° fence. For the elk, people tell me to get a dog or shoot them. I won't do either because 1) they were here before me, and 2) I enjoy watching them. I chose to take the effort required to protect (not always successfully) individual trees and other plants scattered across the property. For most, protection from elk is only until the trees is big enough, except for 6' of the trunk they like to debark with their antlers - and then there are the beavers, too. The elk, standing on their back legs, can readily reach, and break, branches up to 8' to 10' so a fruit tree needs fairly long term protection.
Back to the original topic - you can't go wrong by planting trees as soon as you can, lots of them.

Abraham Palma wrote:I think most of my failures were needed so I can grow.

I totally agree that I appreciate my failures because of what I learned from them. Especially when I failed on some smaller things that helped me do better when tackling some larger thing later on

Abraham Palma wrote:
- Waiting until the soil is moist before digging.

😂 Oh yes, definitely this. So much wasted energy and unnecessary blisters. Also that the same hole can be dug with much less effort by giving a group of kids some hand shovels and daring them to dig a hole they can sit in. I did that the last time I had a bunch of trees to plant. I just marked the perimeters of the holes by removing a ring of grass and let them at it. In fact some of the holes ended up too deep!

Abraham Palma wrote:
- Thistles are annoying but edible. Some are even tasty.

What kind of thistles are you eating and how are you eating them?! I have tried eating the stem after peeling and it was very unpleasant tasting.

Abraham Palma wrote:
- If I refuse to do some work, the ecosystem evolves to adapt to the work I do. This involves losing some species, and living with the ones who thrive on my inputs. For example, if I don't figth bugs, some plants die, but predators appear. If I don't irrigate, some plants dry, but some others propagate with ease (like tasty thistle). This works for everything in life!! Given enough diversity, do just what makes you happy and the world around you will evolve to adapt for it.

I am learning this too. I lost some trees last year to disease and rather than planting the same type again, I'm going to plant a completely different type. If I'm working too hard and things die when I can't do that work for a few weeks, then I'm fighting too hard against nature. I'm learning to work with nature instead.

Dennis Coyle wrote:

It'd be great also to have an understanding of your circumstances as well! Like, what are you doing? what's the kind of area you're living in?

Anything to help out someone who hasn't quite put an idea together of what to do, or how to do it. What's something you wish you had known?

I wish I had known that trying to "do it all" is not a good way to get things done. This led me to writing this https://permies.com/t/156318/hour-week-job-making-home. Also reading the books "Early Retirement Extreme" (Here is a link https://permies.com/wiki/ere ) and Paul Wheaton's book "Building a Better World in Your Backyard" (here is a link https://permies.com/wiki/122611f426 ) I feel better about how I live.  For me there is no pressure in trying to emulate other who want things that have no use.  For example, why do I need to drive a truck to work if I do not need a truck to get to work. Or why get cable with 100s of channels if I do not watch any of them.

Try this:

Homesteading is a full time job. You're on call 24/7/365. It does not pay overtime, and often nothing at all. No pensions or benefits. Vacations are very difficult to arrange. If you want to complain to the boss, look in the mirror.

If you are still reading this job description, you are either certifiably insane or a member at Permies.com.

Ahh, but the real pay, though not bankable, makes it all MORE than worthwhile. And, I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about.

It really would not have changed anything, but health does not necessarily last forever.

Eric

Douglas Alpenstock wrote:I wish I had known ... that Life will keep moving the goalposts. In all your planning and efforts, always consider resilience, adaptability, and readiness for change. For change will come.

In a similar vein to this and not to sound all "woo-woo" but as the decades have passed, I've come to know many who knew 'themselves' better than I knew myself.  We all  unfold on a different caldendar, but I think there is a lot of merit to really knowing, to the extent that you can, who you really are at your core and starting to face that as early in your adult life as possible.  There is an appreciable amount of waste around me at the homestead that represents what I thought was "me", but not infreqeuently turned out to be some culturally fashionable idea that I took as my own.  Perhaps some of this waste might have been avoided with a bit better insight into my "id"-entity in earlier days....

John - I like what you have to say, and many others. Some things that I learned early in my adulthood, like being a mother, have held true. Other things like keeping up with the Joneses were never my thing, it was something I indulged in because it was important to my ex. Identity has always been a difficult thing for me. I do what I must to survive, but I'm a mother. I've always been a mother and I always will be, to my own children and many, many others. It, more than anything defines me, but I feel like this thread is digressing. Not that I'm not enjoying it.

What kind of thistles are you eating and how are you eating them?

The best one is Scolymus hispanicus. I didn't find them, but I'm going to seed them now.

What I've found is one from the carduus family that has the flower at ground level, but I couldn't find the name. In summer it loses all the branches and only the flower is visible.
I remove the thorny leafs from the stems, boil the stems and eat them with fried with garlic or in an omelette.

I could eat also Eryngium campestre, though the flavour is too strong, so I use it in small quantities to add flavour to the pottage.
I have also Carduus marianus in the field, which is a common edible weed, but I haven't tried it yet. Supposedly the flowers are eaten like artichokes, picking them before the flower opens.

Water: too much (flooding,  no storage), not enough (limited rainfall, drought, well issues), not usable (contaminated).

Rules and Regs: just because you want to does not mean you can.  Oil, gas, minerals (everything subsurface) may well NOT belong to you; you may only own the "surface" of your land.

Location: is this for "right now" or forever?  If forever always plan and build with future-proofing in mind.  What is simple at 40, not necessarily at 70. 20 miles down a dirt road is no biggie in summer, but may be impassible in the wet.   Being off-grid is great,  but in the future access to the grid MAY be wanted for some services, if only for backup.

Access to a town for supplies,  medical services, etc.

Neighbors,  knock on doors before you buy.   The perfect property could be hell if you have neighbors who suck.

Buildings and services:  skip the "pretty stuff and focus on the "bones": structure, roof, insulation, windows, plumbing pipes, septic, electrical.  All these systems are costly to replace or upgrade. Fencing is either backbreaking or expensive.

If just choosing a property location and existing level of buildings and services would be my deciding factors.

Lastly,  grow what you love ❤️ not what everyone says you must.

Paul Young wrote:

Gary Numan wrote:I wish I had known ... to start planting trees.  Immediately.  And don't stop.

I moved to this present farm in 2010, and planted ... I think all of *six* trees the first eight years here.  The four that made it, all look very nice, wish I had 40 instead of just the four.

Plant trees.

Totally, absolutely, undoubtedly sound advice. 15+ years after moving to 15 acres of barren pasture land (llamas) surrounded by timberland, one of my biggest regrets is not planting more trees sooner.  By now, I've planted over 400 trees including about 150 fruit trees and I still continue to plant more. Sure, we can't eat all the fruit, but friends, the foodbank, and the wildlife take care of it all (no llamas). Elk and beavers have taken their toll on the trees, and I have to cage all the fruit trees while they're small (trunks of all permanently for the beaver), but it's worth the effort for food, firewood, and watching the wildlife.

Please tell me how to protect my baby trees from the local elk! It's almost criminal to pay the price for good fruit trees just to have the elk decimate them.

Paul Young wrote:Like you, Stacy, I would not use a 55° angled fence - too many cons, including all those you mentioned. I spend a lot of time removing blackberries without having to deal with a 55° fence. For the elk, people tell me to get a dog or shoot them. I won't do either because 1) they were here before me, and 2) I enjoy watching them. I chose to take the effort required to protect (not always successfully) individual trees and other plants scattered across the property. For most, protection from elk is only until the trees is big enough, except for 6' of the trunk they like to debark with their antlers - and then there are the beavers, too. The elk, standing on their back legs, can readily reach, and break, branches up to 8' to 10' so a fruit tree needs fairly long term protection.
Back to the original topic - you can't go wrong by planting trees as soon as you can, lots of them.

What kind of fencing is effective for elk?

Wish I had researched earlier how to identify native growing fodder and weeds. Cause only now just realized that the one field is littered with snake root and that there’s a LOT more work to be done to get that stuff out. Would have been nice to jump on the ball to get that stuff out a year ago.

Build the best fence you can afford.  In our case, we built 6 strand high tensile.  It requires training to work.  Without it, pigs, goats, coyotes, and dogs will run right through it.  Too much of a pain to change now, but I had it to do over again, I’d used 42” goat mesh with a 3 hot wires.  One at the top and 2 at 16 inches or so, inside and out.  Might put a strand of barb wire down in the dirt underneath as well. (Premier recommends this).  As it is we have taken some heavy predator losses.  Could have used a smaller charger as well, vs the lightening box we have on 4 acres;). All of this is still cheaper than a dog.  Our small herd just doesn’t justify the expense of a dog.  

If you want to heat with wood and live in an area with lots of precipitation, build a very nice woodshed first.  Well seasoned wood produces a lot more heat and and a lot less creosote.  

Before you cut or graze anything, make an attempt to ID everything you possibly can.  No doubt tons of saplings and woodland plants were lost when we grazed everything off with goats.

Apples, peaches, cherries, and many plum varieties do not grow well in our area without intensive management (organic or conventional).  Mulberries, blueberries, and pears seem to do much better.

I’ll echo planting your trees early.  Nut trees take a long time to produce.

PVC conduit and fiberglass hold up a lot better than treated wood.

You can’t do everything.  Bees, mushrooms, and a greenhouse are on my shortlist, and have been for a long time.  Not sure if they will ever happen, but that is okay.

Can’t say for sure if I’d be in better shape or not, in terms of joint health, if I had used more equipment (primarily a loader and logsplitter).  Farming is good for the body and hard on it at the same time.  Just something to think about when you take on a huge manual task.

How to keep ag taxes.  every county is probably different though.

We wanted to be sustainable eating what we grew and the farm animals we raise.

When I went to file for the ag taxes they said I had to provide my income tax statement.  So we didn't qualify because we didn't sell anything.  Wich I had known that when I was giving away all those free veggies.

First and biggest lesson is plan for old age.  Things that were nothing in your 20's and 30's may be a real trial after you pass 50.

Build for the long haul where possible.  Taking short cuts nearly always comes back to bite you in the butt.  Be aware when taking risks.  How will you deal with them down the road many years later?  Build for long term simplicity and durability.  If building something different keep multiple copies of records of what you did. parts sources, changes in procedure etc.  Also take lots of pictures and videos.  I am finding things would be so much easier if I had a video log of things like exactly where trenches ran, wires ran, plumbing ran.  Be sure the photos include a few good reference points.

NEVER pour a concrete slab without burying hydronic heating tube under it.  Make your best guess as to how the zones might need to be laid out.  Ideally over lapping zones so a system can fail and be edited out without loss.

Plant trees as early as you can.

Plan ahead.

Oh yeah, don’t buy that corrugated galvanized steel roofing from the box store.  Buy proper steel roofing, it costs just a little more and easily lasts 3x as long.

Another thing, especially if you’re buying land that has Woods on it.
look up at the tops of the trees. If there’s been a tornado some of the tops of the trees will be cut. You would think it’s not that common but once you start looking around it’s common.
It doesn’t have to be the mile long tornadoes that destroy and pull up everything that you have to worry about. The little ones will mess up your day too!
A really good sign that it’s not a tornado path is having older established trees that are usually 300 years old. We have live oak trees, depending on your region the tree may be different varieties. always a good sign when you have older established trees.
Keep in mind I’m in Florida. Florida tornado patterns are different from The Midwest where that tornado goes were ever it wants. Florida has tornadoes all the time, but ours will be at the most F2s or f3s and pop from being on the ground to going back into the cloud a lot.

Hi Sam,

Yes, and if there is a house on the property, go in the attic and look up.   It will be obvious if parts of the roof has been replaced.