I've been planning on starting a blog for a while and keep track of my travels and progress as I try to save money and get land to start a homestead. I still have a lot to learn about everything, but I thought it might be cool to share the journey and see if there are others with similar goals. I also plan on visiting some farms over the summer and I'll be posting up everything I learn about farming practices and stuff. I decided to start it now because in a few weeks I'm going to start my hike across Massachusetts and wanted to be able to document stuff when I get back. Anyway, here's the link if anyone cares, I called my blog look4amerika . http://look4amerika.wordpress.com/about/ The main things I plan to write about are: Farming & Gardening, Hiking and Nature, Sustainable Building, anything I learn about where our "stuff" comes from or goes to, etc etc etc.
This sounds good. There is a very cool old song by Simon and Garfunkel called America. It all started with a Greyhound trip from Pittsburgh. Gone to look for America. Very cool. Have fun with it. Peace
Truth be told I'm not positive because my animal experience is limited. I've been shadowing the class that dill has been teaching at the free school about farm animals. From the research I've done I think chickens are a no brainer home stead animals. Goats would also be very usefull, but I don't know much about them. On the sugaring farm I visited they used Oxen to help with their work, but it seems to me those require A LOT of care and space. Rather than go off half cocked on the animal pipe dream, I'm just trying to gather as much info and experience as I can and then see what the eventual land I get will allow for.
I also live on a farm with my boyfriend, he is co-owner of the farm along with his parents, but on his farm they have mainly sheep, almost 1,000 of the wooly buggers, they also have plenty of goats, chickens, ducks, geese, rabbits, and of course their livestock guarding dogs, to protect them from predators, and also, they are goign to be purchasing work horses to help with any other work that needs to be done, I'm sure they take up less space than oxen, but I also check out the forum in Free School, it does have a lot of useful information. I absolutely love being on a homestead, I love animals, and also, it's good to know where your food is coming from!
Yes, we just finished shearing last week. It was so hectic with all those sheep! And now we still have a group of 250 or so to shear. We also sell lambs for the meat, of course we sell them live and whatever they do with them is up to them, but mostly for the meat. We also milk the goats, and of course take the eggs the hens lay, as well as ducks and geese eggs.
