I was struck by a throwaway sentence in Good Farmers, a book about traditional farming practices in Central America and Mexico.  The author noted that traditional farmers usually lack heavy equipment and funds to pay for lots of hired help, so they have to take a process-oriented approach to big tasks rather than being project-oriented.  For example, if they have a steep hillside that they'd like to terrace and create farmable ground, traditional farmers are more likely to put in a spare afternoon here and there building the terrace bit by bit rather than renting a bulldozer to get 'r done.

Homesteading is slowly teaching me to slip out of my project-oriented mindset and enjoy the journey.  For example, the wood we bought was delivered to our parking area, half a mile from our house.  At first, I was considering just taking a day and making golf cart trip after golf cart trip to bring the wood back to its shed.  But instead I've been taking in a load of wood whenever I need to drive the golf cart out to the cars anyway.  A week later, our shed is already a third of the way full!

Want more in-depth information? Browse through our books.

Or explore more posts by date or by subject.

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.



Want to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed, or simply check the box beside "email replies to me" while writing your comment.

Powered by Branchable Wiki Hosting.