I thought you all might be amused to see my ten year plan, written right after purchasing the property in October 2003.  Many of my goals were later mitigated by Mark's realism, but it's still fun to see how far we've gotten.

Generally:

1. To have repaid the totality of the cost of the land.  (Need to hurry up and pay off the other $5,000 I owe my friend.  I seem to have forgotten about that debt in the excitement of living on the land.)

2. To be relatively self-sufficient, growing the majority of the food I eat. To live simply, cut off as much as possible from the consumer economy.  (We do grow nearly all of our vegetables and an increasing amount of our fruit and meat.  I know we don't live as simply as I had planned when I wrote my list in 2003, but I think we've reached a good compromise.)

3. To have a small cash crop, probably ginseng, possibly art or writing, to pay for cash expenses.  (Well, the ginseng got stolen by hunters and the art and writing don't really pay the bills, but the chicken waterers do.)

4. To make no more money than I need to pay for immediate needs and to put a small amount away for retirement.  (I guess this would be a failure --- we're making more money than I planned to.  On the other hand, we're doing our best to give a lot of the excess back to the local community with projects like our internship.)

5. To have half of my time free to draw and write and take care of the woods.  (This would be a total win.  If the week is divided into 14 work periods, we take four of those off and I write for three of them.)

6. Once my immediate needs are met, to give surplus food to family and neighbors.  (Yes, we're giving away some surplus, although we could do more.)


Specifically:

7. Buildings - A house for me to live in. Barn roof replaced so that barn can be used for tools, food storage, and animals. A loft in the barn built for guest housing in summer. A root cellar. A composting toilet. A greenhouse to grow food in winter. Electricity to run a computer and lights. A phone line. A mail box.  (We're partway there.  The trailer made the house easy and we've saved the cash for the barn roof, even though we're still talking to potential roofers.  Joey's yurt has taken the place of a loft in the barn and I decided that quick hoops are better than a greenhouse for my uses.  We've got the composting toilet (or a semblence thereof), electricity, a phone line, and a mail box.  All we're really lacking is a root cellar.)

8. Garden - an acre of garden and orchard. The garden will begin by growing vegetables, and will work up to supplying all berry fruits, vegetables, grains, and beans used by me and my animals with enough to store for the winter and for guests. The orchard will provide tree fruit.  (We've got about two acres of garden and orchard which feed us well, although we're still in the early stages of growing food for our animals and haven't really got our grains figured out.)

9. Animals - Chickens, probably about three, to feed me eggs and to live primarily on scraps from me with some grains grown for them. A goat (possibly 2) to provide me dairy products. To set up arrangements with neighbors to give away/sell the kids and mate my nanny once a year.  (We've got a lot more chickens than that and don't have the goats.  On the other hand, we have figured out meat animals a lot better than I thought we would have, so it evens out.)

10. To heat the house and cook with deadwood from the property.  (We've got the wood stove, but we do buy firewood.  This is one goal I'm happy with letting slide --- buying firewood puts money into a local entrepreneur's pocket and gives me time to write and Mark time to invent.)

11. To provide a means of entry to the property for those who require a road or other un-walking method.  (So-so.  If it's dry enough, we've got the truck, and we also have the golf cart if we can figure out what that noise is....)

It's also interesting to see what I completely left out.  Husband?  Naw, not on my ten year plan.  Community?  What's that?  I guess I know what will be on my next ten year plan --- making our sustainable homestead reach beyond the boundaries of our property.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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