Back to your original post, Niels, "How did you get started before you got started?" I could write a book, but I'll try to keep it to one chapter.
I grew up in Maine (NE corner of America, with Canada to the north and east) on small subsistence farms with one cash crop or livestock. Chicken farm,
dairy farm, potato or sugar beet farm,
apple orchard or blueberry farm. We moved often. At 17 I joined the Army Reserve during my last year of high school. I went on active duty as soon as I graduated. Three years in the Army I dreamed of having my own farm, but I wanted to raise a little bit of everything. This was in the 1960's before Mollison and Holmgren coined the word
Permaculture.
I finished my tour of duty and went back to Maine for college on the GI Bill (a tuition subsidy program for military veterans). During those three years I spent a lot of weekends at my best friend's family farm where they raised Appaloosa horses, sheep, chickens,
hay, and had a large garden growing everything they liked to eat, and an orchard with several varieties of fruit. They traded for
milk from a dairy farmer neighbor. So they were food self-sufficient. Most of their income came from the sale of horses, sheep and wool (both raw and spun). They also boarded and trained other people's horses. His mother made quilts and sold some of her canned goods, jams and jellies. Both parents worked at the
local toothpick factory during the winter months for extra money to pay the college tuition of their three kids. I loved that farm and dreamed of owning one like it.
Upon graduation from college with a teaching degree, I decided I didn't really want to teach in the government run public schools, so I accepted a commission in the Army and went back on active duty. I saved a good portion of my pay toward a down payment on a farm. Then I fell in love, got married, and while stationed in Germany, we had a son. I requested relief from active duty to the Reserve, but my spouse stayed on active duty. We came back to the states and bought our first house (3 BR/1-1/2 bath) on 1/4 acre near the post where we were stationed. I'd gotten a second degree in Accounting while in Germany, so I took the CPA exam in Virginia and passed. Since I wanted to work nights and be home with my son days, I started my own accounting firm and gradually built it up. After several months of repairing, repainting, and insulating the attic and crawl space, we started a garden in the backyard, planted a few fruit
trees and figs, and built a small shed for garden tools, mower, and other stuff. All of which was learn-as-we-go. No Internet in the 1970s, but we had "How to" books from the library and my father-in-law's welcome assistance.
When my mom moved in with us we no longer had a guest room for my in-law's visits, so we found a larger house (4BR/2-1/2 bath) in need of repair on 1/2 acre, sold the first house at a nice
profit, and completely rehabbed the second house over a period of months. Then we put in a larger garden, planted more fruit trees, built a larger shed for a riding mower, tools and bags of potting soil, peat moss, lime, etc., with a fold down potting table on the sunny side. We produced more than we needed and sold some at farmers' markets and gave to friends and neighbors.
After 7-1/2 years of conflict, we divorced. She got the assets, I got the liabilities, so I was broke and on my own again. My CPA practice had been shut down twice when I was called up for six month active duty tours in 1979 and another in 1980. I had to turn over my clients to other accounting firms while I was gone and try to rebuild each time I came back. In 1982 during the divorce, I accepted another six-month active duty tour developing accounting software for the Army. My job was to analyze requirements, write the specs, build the flow-charts, and turn them over to the programmers to write the code, but I learned COBOL on my own so I could double check the programmers work. When I got back, I found a programming job with one of consulting firms around Washington, D.C. I was promoted rapidly and spent the next 17 years in IT, mostly writing accounting or financial software for various federal government departments, the Navy, and Fortune 500 manufacturing companies. The work was generally in cities where I had no access to land, so all I could do was dream about my future farm and learn various skills that I thought would be handy.
I did a lot of traveling during that 17 years and beyond, both around America and dozens of other countries. Mostly I eliminated places I wouldn't want to live or farm. I retired in Reno, NV, and spent six months on a lavender and gojiberry farm where I cared for chickens, sheep, llamas, and two large Great Pyrenees. I also put in 18 raised beds, wired and plumbed the owner's workshop/honey shed/distillery where she extracted lavender and other essential oils, and helped her build beehives.
Eventually I returned home to Maine and bought a run-down old Victorian house built in 1903. I spent a year and a half rehabbing it as a fix-and-flip during which time I built a few raised beds and tried my hand at gardening and foraging, but after shoveling snow from Oct to May two years in a row, I couldn't wait to
sell the place and move to a more temperate climate.
I was looking for enough land to support a small
intentional community and already had one family of four who wanted to join me. I made several trips to Tennessee and Kentucky and finally found a 30-acre fallow farm in southwest Virginia (the western tip sandwiched between TN and KY). It had originally been a tobacco farm, later converted to a hog farm, and finally to a horse farm. The last owner had died and his daughter had inherited it. She wanted to rehab the old house trailer and restore the farm along
Permaculture lines, but found it to be more work and needed more money than she was able to tackle alone, so she put it on the market. It was priced at the top of my price range, so I passed on it, but I couldn't find anything I liked better at a lower price. In Oct 2018, I got an email from Zillow (an American online real estate listing company) that there had been a price drop on the property. It put the farm well within my price range. I called the listing agent and put a full-price offer on it with the only contingencies being my onsite inspection (to make sure nothing significant had changed) and availability of financing.
I immediately drove the 1,200 miles from Maine to Virginia to finalize the deal. I hauled a truckload of stuff with me and put it in a local storage unit. I was able to obtain financing through the local Farm Credit agency with 20% down payment. Since the trailer was ineligible as a "residence", it was treated as land only which usually requires a 50% down payment, so 20% was a great deal. I had 13% + closing costs, and the family provided the remaining 7%. We closed in Nov, so I hauled another truck load of stuff and put it in the trailer and barn. I had to go back to Maine for the closing on the house there.
Since I hadn't been able to find a qualified buyer, and the market in the area was depressed due to the closing of the paper mill that employed most of the workers in the town. There were more houses for sale than there were buyers, so I sold it to a young couple with a small down payment and monthly payments on a land contract. Under that form of sale, the deed remains in my name until they pay off the note at which time the deed is transferred to them.
I headed back down on Dec 3 with my last truckload, leaving in a blizzard with near whiteout conditions which turned to freezing rain further south. It was slow going until Pennsylvania, where I had intended to stop for the night, but since it was nearly sunrise due to the lost time and clear, I decided to keep going for awhile before the storm caught up. Bad decision. I must have dozed off, because when I opened my eyes the highway was curving off to the left and I was veering off the right side. I hit the bottom of the swale with a bang and the shattering of glass. The truck cap had come loose from the truck bed and spun off one corner at a time tossing stuff around in a wide circle. A convoy of heavy cargo trucks smashed everything that landed on the pavement and dragged boxes a half mile down the road. My dining room table top spun like a discus and landed at the edge of the woods, papers sailed on the wind and caught on trees, and
my stuff was spread over a couple of acres. I first dragged stuff off the pavement before the next traffic came through. My new scoop shovel looked like a pizza spatula, microwave
oven was crushed but the glass turntable was unbroken, shop vac and pressure washer flattened. Several items were on the other side of the highway four lanes and a median away.
It took several hours to gather up the stuff. I put the trashed items in the upside-down cap and the undamaged stuff in the bed of the truck. A couple of college kids stopped to help and tried to gather up some of the paperwork, most of which was blank paper from a new ream that had split open and taken flight. They had to leave to get to classes, but the truck bed was about full by then. Finally, a PA State Police car arrived and the officer helped me add some more debris to the cap and told me I was responsible for cleanup or I'd be fined for littering. I told him I needed to get the truck to a repair shop, but I'd be back to finish the cleanup. He seemed satisfied and drove off.
I drove the truck in the swale along the highway until I found a spot where I could climb back up to the highway. The back wheels were splayed and running on the inside edges of the tires, so I took it easy with my safety flashers on. My GPS found the closest Ford dealer and I drove it in for an evaluation, then I called my insurance company and reported the accident. Since I needed to wait for a claims adjuster, I walked to the motel near the Ford dealer and booked a room. I slept the rest of the day and most of the night. Adjuster came the next morning and totaled the truck (cost to repair more than value of truck). Insurance would cover the balance on my truck loan but no more. Offered rental truck for up to 14 days to get my stuff to Virginia. Truck arrived shortly after. I transferred stuff from old truck to new, removed my receiver hitch and a few other items that were undamaged, and drove back out to accident site and found a few more usable items and put more trash inside the cap and covered it with heavy stuff to hold the light stuff down. Then I headed south again leaving the cap and "litter" as was.
Over the next 2 weeks I got the electric turned on, figured out water pumps, framed in the open end of the trailer, installed a large insulated window in that end with the help of a neighbor and his son, and insulated the inside which seller had gutted down to the studs. Installed more electrical outlets, porch
lights and switches, weather stripped windows and doors, caulked or foamed gaps, and generally made it weather tight. Drove to local storage unit and retrieved stuff and terminated my contract there. Then I headed back up to PA to turn in the rental truck and pick up a used truck I'd found online with 0 down financing. Back to the crash site and nothing had changed. I picked up more trash and found several more usable items along the tree line. Headed back south and figured PA Dept of Transportation would eventually pick up the cap and take it to a dump. The paper was biodegradable so it would eventually work into the soil.
Over the next six months I finished rehabbing the trailer (drywall, trim, wallpaper, etc.) and making it livable with new kitchen cabinets, used stove, refrigerator, washer and
dryer, window curtains. In late May the family arrived and we shared the trailer until they could build their dreamed of shed-to-tiny-home. Unfortunately, they had spent all of their remaining nest egg on
solar panels and equipment to set up a huge
solar array that they didn't know how to hook up to the trailer's circuit box, so it only powered the well
pump and a charging station for batteries with extension cords plugged into the inverter. They traded four solar panels with a homesteading family in NC for a sofa, two coolers full of home butchered
beef, pork, and chicken, and 12 laying hens and a rooster in a makeshift cage. When they arrived back home, I quickly threw together a temporary chicken coop in one of the end stalls in the barn until I could build a
Justin Rhodes Chickshaw. I ordered a portable electric chicken
fence and solar energizer package from Premier1.com. Next, they came home from an outing with two potbelly piglets for the kids. Again I quickly built a portable pig
shelter and surrounded it with welded wire fencing and t-posts I had on hand until I could order another portable electric
fence package for them.
The family proved to be more a liability to the farm than an asset due to physical and mental disabilities I was unaware of before selecting them. I tried to work with them, hoping that just being out in the fresh air and eating better quality food than they'd had in Boston would improve their lives, but I ended up doing all the work, paying all the bills, and they just sponged off me as long as they could. I eventually had to borrow the money to buy them out and sent them packing. They are now situated on a quarter acre in an established off-grid community in western TN. They are living in their dreamed of shed-to-tiny-home with solar, rainwater collection, composting toilet and graywater system. They are living on welfare and getting lots of help from other members of the community. I hope they will be happy there.
Meanwhile, I've been scavenging all kinds of materials: dismantled an old porch and a wooden fence in another town for the lumber, picked up left over steel roofing panels, poly-carbonate clear panels for
greenhouse, PVC pipe and odds and ends of fittings, chains, tools, etc. Finding a few bargains on Craigslist. Took down most of the top 2x12x16-ft boards from the horse stalls in the barn to build 4 raised beds in the garden area. Salvaged corrugated metal panels from an ancient collapsed log barn on the property. Replaced some rotten purloins in the barn roof and installed steel panels with poly-carbonate clear panels for a skylight (really brightened up the inside of the barn). I want to do the same thing on the opposite corner to light up the stall we use for the chickens during the winter to give them more sunlight.
Got my
PDC in 2020 and used this property for my final design assignment. Cut in my first of several swales on the hillside and planted 5 fruit trees in the lower
berm as the start of a food forest. Planted or soon to plant 4 kinds of grapes, 2 varieties of blueberries, Brown Turkey figs, and hardy kiwis. Brush hogged or mowed the entire 10 open acres twice each year, raked hay by hand. Good hay to the barn for winter bedding, spoiled (rained on) hay to the compost bins and garden
mulch.
Gradually I am making progress, but at 76 I'm starting to slow down, so I put out a few ads on Permies and other websites looking for compatible families and really lucked out with the next family I selected. The family that joined me in Jun 2022 could not be better. He's a carpenter and all around mechanic, she's an avid gardener and herbalist who is always looking for more work to do, grown daughter is just like her, and son not much interested in farming, but he willingly helps when asked. They brought a 4WD truck, a fifth wheel RV to live in, lots of tools, a Case excavator that has already proved essential, and years of experience. Plus, where I see something that needs to be done and put it on a list, they all see something that needs to be done and do it. I feel blessed. A couple more families like them, and this place will become a
Permaculture paradise.
So, Niels, my advice is just do it now. Don't wait for everything to be just right. Don't procrastinate. My only regret is that I didn't do this 30 or 40 years ago while I was still full of energy and strength. If you don't have the confidence or financial wherewithal to do this on your own, find a community or a local farm needing help and jump in. Find a friend with similar goals and join forces. If community isn't for you, find a small piece of land, preferably with a livable house or
cabin that you can afford, and start trying different things. You can always go larger later on. Most of the work and materials you put into a small farm will increase the value of the property so you'll be able to sell it for a
profit. Experience is the best teacher. Yes, you'll make some mistakes, but that is how you learn.
Fortunately this family has cared for elderly parents and understands the aging process and the limitations of seniors. They don't expect me to work alongside them or keep up with them. They are happy that I'm willing to share the land with them and give them credit for the work they do toward equity in the land. So it is a symbiotic relationship. A win-win.
Good luck and God bless with whatever you decide to do.