New Homestead, where to start

- 4 minutes read - 771 words

As I mentioned in my re-introduction post last week, I just bought a house on five acres, and I’m busily thinking about how to turn it into a homestead. I know enough not to try to do everything at once, but I’m trying to decide what to prioritize, and what I’m thinking about long-term.

I’d like to have some small-scale livestock. There’s not a lot of open space, so I think chickens are a bad idea, at least at first, so I’m thinking quail and/or rabbits. In either case, I’d want to breed my own and have a self-sustaining population, as well as meat and possibly eggs. But that’s a big endeavor, so I’ll put it off for now and do the one thing I am already set up for: bees.

That means I’ll have to figure out the right place to put them, and make sure all the equipment is in good shape before I get them.

This also means I’ll have to actually find someone local to buy some from. I made a friend at a beekeeping meeting in December who I am led to believe raises local queens and nucleus hives (forever more ’nucs’). So I’ll have to remember his name, reach out to him, and see if I can’t get on the list for two hives.

The equipment should be in pretty good shape, though I know I have at least one whole hive box that I never built out. That means I’ll have to build that out and either paint or otherwise treat it so it lasts. That won’t take long, but it won’t be quick, either.

I’d also like to grow a garden, of course, but again, I could jump in with both feet, but that’s not a great idea, because my property is pretty wooded, and I don’t know where is going to get enough light when the trees leaf out. So instead I’m going to bide my time, observe, and probably take a couple of cuttings of blackberries from the bushes I planted at my ex-wife’s house to plant somewhere along a border here. I don’t know exactly where that’ll be, but it’ll be somewhere. Maybe along the powerlines between my property and the closest neighbor, or maybe I’ll try taking out some other plants that I haven’t identified yet, that I initially thought might have been rhododendron and covers the lower maybe 1 acre of the property, and put some blackberry there. We’ll see.

I also have a lot of hobbies that aren’t homestead-related that I’d like to get back to doing. Some of them are easy, or at least not hard. I can start running again easily enough, and I don’t have much of an excuse not to. I could start reloading again, but I’m not 100% certain where I want my workbench. Right now I’ve got it in my garage, which will probably be fine, but I might want to put it inside in the basement. And I’ve got a squat rack that I need to put back together and start lifting weights again, but again, it might go in the basement, or in the garage. I think I’d be more likely to use it in the basement, but I don’t absolutely know that. And the space in the basement is actually my son’s bedroom, though at around 20’ square, it’s far larger than a 10 year old needs.

I have an outbuilding that’s in decent, but not great, shape. There’s a part of me that really wants to spend the time and money to fix it up: there are holes in the roof to fix, and the plywood floor under those holes isn’t in great shape, mostly. And I’d need to put in some steps so it’s easier to get into if I’m going to use it regularly. But I also don’t have any real need for it. It’s way off up the property, and doesn’t have power. But it also seems like a waste to let it slowly rot when I could do a little work now to prevent needing to do a lot of work later, or even having to tear it down.

So I guess this week’s post is a long winded way of saying that, while there are a ton of things that are vying for my attention as I settle into the house, I’m going to try to remind myself to take it slowly, and do the thing that really need doing first, and for everything else, keep it in mind, but not in a way that will distract me.

See you next week!