What makes your homestead unique?

Not a trick question, but I admit there must be a ton of different ways you could approach the question.

Homestead: the home and adjoining land occupied by a family

- Source

What fills you with joy about your homestead? Is it the particular climate? Maybe a natural feature on it?

Have you made or created something on it?

Share what makes your homestead special.

I believe the thing that makes my homestead standout from the rest has to be the proximity to a (now abandoned status) railroad. This has led to both challenges and benefits when trying to reach certain permaculture goals.

It is a frustratedly common experience to dig in proximity of the tracks and finding a deposit of softball size rocks all clustered in one spot with an inch or so of dirt on top of them. I can only imagine they were piles of rocks thrown to the sides during construction way back when.

An unintended benefit is because of the railroad path being cut into the ground, my homestead slopes several times down towards it and the ground does not hold excess water. Manitoba maples hold together the steepest sloped space with their roots.

I appreciate what I have, its a nice spot.

My current place is its spot on the river. Because of the way the river makes a bend right at our place, we got a nice view straight up the river and not merely across it. But that is only partially it. While we are on a river at the confluence of another major stream, because of those flowing water bodies, there is a lot of conservation land around us. In fact, we are surrounded by 2500 acres of land that we can walk, hunt, gather, and otherwise appreciate. Obviously, it is not ours, so logging trees and other more invasive uses are not going to be allowed, but we pay for one acre of land, and have access to 2500 more and all without worry of having any more neighbors.

This picture was taken this morning.

What I love most about my homestead is the peaceful connection to nature. The climate suits my gardening, and I feel most at ease in a special spot by the small pond I made myself. Creating a small herb garden and seeing it thrive has been incredibly rewarding!

Our spot has a bunch of showy goldenrod growing in a weedy manner, and my grassland researcher friend theorizes it’s because showy goldenrod evolved around our area. True? What do I know! In any case, it’s a beautiful late-season treat, and the best show our little prairie puts on all year. I love it!

Surrounded by warehouses and dense residential neighborhoods on all sides, yet no one can see inside because the tree hedges are so thick. The farm that time and urban planners forgot!

What fills me with joy about my homestead is the sense of connection it brings to all the hard work that went into making it thrive. Also the satisfaction of harvesting fresh vegetables and fruits. And the little touches I've added, like my hand-built compost bin, ornamental wind mill, little greenhouse and my small herb garden.

The granite stone house sold the property.  It needed a lot of work.  Built facing south, length runs east to west.

I love my piece of 8 acres in Kentucky and I'm building a 40ft geodesic dome,  covering it with Adobe and a solar system.  My biggest challenge has been finding helping hands cause the area I live in they don't believe in this type of construction, and even when I paid helpers the really don't work cause they think playing with mud it's a child's play, but I'm not giving up cause I have a vision of what want there is also the plan of heating my dome with a rocket mass heaters as well. I wish I could load pictures but the website won't allow me the button for choose files it's not working . Littlewolf

No electricity ⚡

We have an 18 acre regenerative/organic family farm. I suppose what I find most unique is that I can (largely) do what I want without much concern or question from others and feel so independent under our big, big sky, day after day on our little piece of earth. Then if I want to go to the state capital downtown, I'm there in 12 minutes. Many visitors comment on this dichotomy. I see visitors, delivery drivers, etc stop and look at the apple trees, take pictures of the goats, pet the friendly barn cats, or try to identify something in my wild garden right outside the door. It's Country Mouse delighting in the awe of City Mice.

Patricia C Amenic wrote:I love my piece of 8 acres in Kentucky and I'm building a 40ft geodesic dome,  covering it with Adobe and a solar system.  My biggest challenge has been finding helping hands cause the area I live in they don't believe in this type of construction, and even when I paid helpers the really don't work cause they think playing with mud it's a child's play, but I'm not giving up cause I have a vision of what want there is also the plan of heating my dome with a rocket mass heaters as well. I wish I could load pictures but the website won't allow me the button for choose files it's not working . Littlewolf

What inspired you to build a dome?