An Introduction:

Hi everyone 

I wasn't sure where this should go, so please move it if there is somewhere better.

I am a 39 year old, soon to be empty nester.  My husband and I have spent the last 10 years sharing a 7 acre farm in Wyoming with my parents.  We've kept a milk cow, chickens, a couple of horses, learned to make cheese and other dairy products, gardened, and built a small, but conventional style house. 

Now my parents are retired and there doesn't seem to be enough room for both families.  Since they actually own the property, we've decided it's time to move on.  So we bought 11 acres smack in the middle of the Missouri Ozarks.  We've very excited to be moving to a place with lots of trees and rain. 

While we've focused on self-sufficiency in the past, our efforts were mainly on food.  We have a clean slate with this place and are planning to expand our attempts.  We're building a small earthbag house and planning on using the mass rocket heater for heat.  We're quite excited about this new adventure and I am enjoying reading all of the experiences on here.

Have you started building?  Do you have pictures?

HI! Missouri is quite a hop!

paul wheaton wrote:
Have you started building?  Do you have pictures?

LOL!  That pretty much answers any questions I had about finding supportive people here.


We are in the process of getting from here to there.  We're taking our fifth wheel camper down the end of the month.  I doubt we'll get started on construction before spring, but I've found a supplier of bags and figured out where our dirt is coming from.  We've decided on a plan by Owen Geiger, a 33 foot roundhouse.  We're still hammering out how we're going to do the roof and stuff, but it'll come.  We had no idea what we were doing when we build our other house either 


This fall we'll just be putting up the electric fence and hopefully build an earthbag barn.  We figure by doing the barn firs, we can make our mistakes there.  The barn will be much simpler anyhow.  I want to play around with homemade milk paints.  We always have a surplus.....I can only make so much cheese!

Sherry

Welcome Sherry,

Boy, I hear ya on the cheese - and yogurt, and kefir, and .....

In another post we were discussing the spreading of diluted milk on fields and how it seems to help amend the soil and give a better yield.  You may want to keep that in mind for when your milk starts to overflow.....

Welcome Sherry. I am excited to have another person interested in permaculture in the state (southeast MO here).

I strongly urge you to look around here before you start to build. Congratulations on starting your own little homestead!