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apatite fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Feb 16, 2016 |
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Jan 9, 2014 19:03
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apatite posted:Keep bringing it up, I think it is good for people to hear about real life experience. Keep in mind though that we didn't just jump in! It took a few years with hilarious/disastrous results and plenty of wasted effort first
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Jan 9, 2014 19:07
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neogeo0823 posted:You should probably look into aquaponic farming. It's hydroponic farming, but it adds fish into the mix to turn fish food into plant food. If I ever had the money and land, I'd built a good sized warehouse in which to make an aquaponic farm. There'd be a large pool of Tilapia, which would eat duckweed and poo poo out tons of plant nutrients. This water would be piped into aqueducts which would hold the plants. The plants themselves will be in cubicles that are individually climate controlled, with LED lighting tuned to whatever appropriate spectrum of light the plants needed. There are actually a couple guys around here doing just that sort of setup, with striped bass instead of Tilapia, though, as they're more in demand for restaurants. http://www.extension.iastate.edu/article/webster-city-bass-farm-generating-interest-iowa-aquaculture-hub But yeah, the thing that stops me from doing exactly the sort of thing you are is land prices. Anything even remotely near a town around here is in the $2k an acre range, and since it's Iowa, anything within squinting distance of not vertical is bare farmland. Farmable land prices are currently averaging $8700 an acre here. I keep looking though. Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 19:42 on Jan 9, 2014 |
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Jan 9, 2014 19:31
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My ideal would be something like this http://www.windermere.com/listing/WA/Pe-Ell/3-Hill-St-98572/7258786 It has trees, a stream and not entirely flat. Build a small cabin on it. I've stayed in a trailer before so my mind is already made up in terms of that, it is a no. With some extra work you can build a decent and durable cabin for roughly $5-7g which I figure into supplies. I'm not Dick Proenneke so I'd probably be buying a stack of lumber. The pacific northwest is my ideal area and not east of the cascades which certainly limits things (it is basically desert out there). I recognize these are all excuses but I have been looking into this stuff for a while and I want to remain realistic and not put myself in a poo poo situation due to some crazed living off the land fantasy. I am not running away for the cheapest possible option. Edit- that is kind of funny given what I linked is one of the cheapest options in western Washington. Kurt_Cobain fucked around with this message at 19:48 on Jan 9, 2014 |
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Jan 9, 2014 19:44
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apatite fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Feb 16, 2016 |
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Jan 9, 2014 19:59
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For reference, the land my parents are on has maybe 10 acres of open meadow/farm land, and about 60 acres of a wooded hillside (A NY State registered tree farm, in fact, which made a decent amount of money with its first cut this year). They are in the middle of nowhere in central NY State, about halfway between Syracuse and Binghampton. The nearest town with a grocery store/restaurant/bar/school/fire department is about a 10 minute drive away. Their land was in the $700-1000 per acre range in 2000. Thanks to NY's fracking ban, it hasn't gone up much, but I think it will if the state allows fracking. Which brings up another point: Buying country land can be buying a productive asset. My parents get income from selective logging and from a gas lease (which, once again, because of the fracking ban is not nearly as much as it once was). Their neighbor has a sawmill, and barters finished lumber for raw lumber from my dad, which means that he has very low materials costs for anything wooden he builds. Even if they had done nothing to it, the land would have come close to paying itself off over the term of the mortgage through timber and the gas lease. stealie72 fucked around with this message at 20:40 on Jan 9, 2014 |
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Jan 9, 2014 20:36
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apatite posted:$8700 per acre!!!! Imagine being the guy that bought up a whole county for $0.43/acre or whatever back in the day. Talk about an ROI... Unfortunately, it's lead to a lot of sprawl. Family farming is essentially dead these days, the profit margins just aren't there. So when the old farm families with land close to town realized that their kids weren't interested in being perpetually in debt and they had no retirement funds, they sold out to developers for 20-30k an acre or more. In ten years, the edge of Des Moines moved something like five miles west, all McMansions dropped on old farmland and built like poo poo. My grandparents' old place, which back when I was growing up was far enough out that we didn't have rural water until I was 12 and still had an outhouse until the mid 90's, has a subdivision a half a mile up the road now. It's terrible. 
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Jan 9, 2014 20:55
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Kurt_Cobain posted:My ideal would be something like this As someone currently living in a somewhat rural area in Western Washington and looking for 5+ acres I can confirm that particular property is really cheap. The areas I've been looking at are typically starting around $10k/acre and only getting down to $2k/acre when you're buying 40+ acres and are still 2 hours away from civilization. The problem around here is pretty much everything is owned by timber companies. Nobody gets to use the land for anything because in 10-20 years the wood will be worth millions. I'm living as cheaply as I can and saving as much as I can right now while learning and practicing useful skills on my city lot. Hopefully in the next few years I'll have enough saved when the right piece of property pops up.
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Jan 10, 2014 00:04
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Yep, the wife and I are planning to do the same in 3 years. We've got 2 years to pay down the house to what we owe and pay off both 2 year old vehicles. We are looking for 30+ Acres as we want around 15 acres cleared for farming. The biggest issue with be finding a good job that's not too far away from the farm/homestead. And one that hopefully has DSL available at a decent price.
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Jan 10, 2014 00:25
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kastein posted:You should read I Married Adventure by Osa Johnson. Goes very well with the rest of the books you listed. In fact Osa and Martin Johnson went on trips with Jack London, as I recall. My mom is a big Osa Johnson fan, she's got all the books (some first editions even). I think we have one or two on our shelf as well, but I haven't gotten to them yet. quote:the one about the Alaskan husky/wolf hybrid that went all the way across Alaska looking for its master was amazing too. Yup that's White Fang. quote:"Bulldozer" by Stephen W Meader. I can't recommend it enough. I will have to look that one up. Thanks! Plus_Infinity posted:Leperflesh- there are plenty of rural areas just outside major cities. Undoubtedly my viewpoint is skewed by the insanity of California real estate prices, but I'm reading people gasping at $10k an acre and it's hilarious to me. In the outskirts of the Bay Area, $100k an acre is a bargain. If my wife and I want to homestead, financially the only option is to leave the Bay Area... and this is where all of our friends and much of our family lives, so that would be a hard thing to do. If we did do it, we'd probably head for something near Portland or Seattle. The climate isn't too cold in the winter for my wife's anti-snow preferences, the land is (I'm guessing) somewhat more affordable, and it's still close enough to home to make the trip on a long weekend to see family and friends. Portland has a reasonable art scene and Seattle's is good too, so those are real options. apatite posted:It actually costs much less than living a standard 9-5 wage slave life does for most people, and that's because they are always in debt or buying stupid poo poo. This is quite a rant, and I won't go into every point you made, but you are exaggerating in some ways, perhaps intentionally for effect. But there are some things that are easy to go without (big TVs, brand new cars, McMansions) and some things that, whether you appreciate it now or not, are very difficult to go without (substantial retirement savings, a good school district for your "demon spawn"). My wife and I choose to be childless, but the choice to have children is equally valid and it's stupid to just dismiss it as being a wrong or bad decision. The retirement thing, well. Owning your own land and home and growing your own food is great up until you physically can't do it any more, which might happen when you're 80 or it might happen when you're 50. Good clean country livin' might help but it's still a lottery, and if you find in your early retirement that you cannot afford to feed yourself through subsistence farming, and you also have no retirement savings, you are going to have to rely on the (increasingly miserly) welfare state, and/or the generosity of your family, for support. So saving for retirement is a wise thing to do, and that requires some form of income, and that means a job that makes money, not just subsistence living. quote:What I'm saying is that it is really the trappings of modern convenience that end up costing people so much money. We have no car payments, no giant TVs, no electrical/water/trash bill, we don't pay people to mow our lawn or plow our driveway, our house was built with essentially a bunch of junk nobody wanted and a little bit of cheap lumber and roofing. It's fine to build your home out of junk if you don't care about inspections and code, but I don't think its reasonable to recommend or suggest to others that they should ignore inspections and code as a lifestyle choice. We're talking around that in this thread and I won't go into it further out of deference, but it's fair to say that if someone wants to build a home on their property, and also obey the law, it's going to cost more than just time + whatever free/super-cheap used building materials you can scrounge. quote:It would be really cool if I could help convince some people that moving out into the wilderness to subsistence-live is the opposite of an expensive endeavor. People used to do this stuff because they had no other option and there was no money. And this is the last point I want to dispute a little. Rubs me the wrong way. Maybe you didn't mean it how I read it, and I really hope I'm not making GBS threads up your thread with this, but... well, here's my own rant. This is absolutely true (that subsistence living is cheap). But the broad thrust of human history over the last ten thousand years has been a story of generations of people's struggle to improve their lives over what they had via subsistence living. I am drawn to some of the advantages of such a lifestyle, but it's unfair to just totally mock or ignore the advantages that come from living in, and participating in, modern civilization. In some respects you and your wife's ability to do what you're doing is being supported by all the people who are participating in the modern economy; from making it possible for you to have safe drinking water (modern water treatment equipment), electricity (the solar setup you've got), etc. to the basic conveniences you're enjoying (affordable fuel, toilet paper, motorized equipment, access to health care facilities) to being able to post on SA about it and take photos of your life with your digital camera. All of that stuff is provided by the people who are putting in the 9-5 office jobs and the long commutes and so on. So my take on the whole thing is a balance. I think it's possible to enjoy living on a plot of land, caring for it, growing some of your own food, a simpler lifestyle. Fewer debts, fewer of the annoyances of modern city living, taking in the rewards of the presence of nature. But at the same time, one should recognize that there's tremendous value in modern technology and the people who make it and support it, and that it's not really pleasant to wholly abandon all of that to try and live a truly independent subsistence lifestyle; a sealed system with no inputs from the modern world requires two people to work 100% of their time in order to provide themselves with just the basics of food, shelter, and a small amount of personal safety. Basically... quote:If you are already working poo poo jobs for poo poo money then it might be your ties to our stupid modern cultural ideal of life that are keeping you and most others from doing this. It is so much more gratifying to know that the beneficiary of your hard work is... you. Not someone that considers you a faceless number in the cog of their profit generating machine. ...never forget that those faceless cogs make much of your lifestyle possible. Someone manufactured that snowmobile, someone engineered that solar panel, someone worked a life of unrewarding toil to make the cheap russian ammo for your cheap rifle. If everyone tried to do what you're doing, we'd have a population a hundredth the size we have now, and we'd all be working our whole lives to support a much, much lower standard of living, because it'd be 15,000 BC. We'd be a lot closer to nature, and maybe that would be fulfilling, and maybe we'd even be happy... but half our children would die before they turn 1, women would face probably a 25% chance of death every time they got pregnant, a serious injury or illness would likely mean death, and we'd never, ever get to see funny jokes on the Internet. Probably about a third to a half of humans on Earth today would either choke on their laughter, or choke on their rage, to hear someone expounding romantically about the attractions of scraping out an impoverished living from a tiny plot of land. When most of the people in a country have to live like that, poo poo is Not Cool. Americans choosing to move into the woods and build a cabin and grow some veggies are not independent subsistence farmers. We're taking advantage of the tremendous wealth of our country, of the functional social institutions that our taxes provide, of our access to cheap energy and high-quality land and the security that our enormous military expenditures provide, even if much of those things are invisible to us on an individual basis. Being financially able to go live in your cabin may "feel" poor, but it is actually the lifestyle of someone who, on balance, is far wealthier than the global average. Having said all that, I want to reiterate that I'm an admirer of what you're doing. I like it. I'm enjoying your posts and I hope you keep posting about it. I just hope you've got a complete perspective on why you're able to do this, and that that perspective includes a recognition of the privilege that you had to possess in order to do it. quote:Thanks for the book recommendations! A good one that I just finished the other day is "This Raw Land" by Wayne Short. It is about him and his families lives homesteading in Alaska, running trap lines and fishing boats, depending on the season. Another good recommendation I'll be checking out, thanks! Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 02:43 on Jan 10, 2014 |
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Jan 10, 2014 02:37
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Leperflesh posted:Undoubtedly my viewpoint is skewed by the insanity of California real estate prices, but I'm reading people gasping at $10k an acre and it's hilarious to me. In the outskirts of the Bay Area, $100k an acre is a bargain. If my wife and I want to homestead, financially the only option is to leave the Bay Area... and this is where all of our friends and much of our family lives, so that would be a hard thing to do. To be fair, that's $10k an acre in a state with a lower population than many single counties in Cali. 
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Jan 10, 2014 08:56
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stealie72 posted:I feel like I bring this up too often in this thread, so sorry if I do, but: I'm fine with you bringing this up, this is awesome. If I could ever convince the wife to do this when we're old and grey, I think this would be the way to do it. What are your parents using for their radiant heating? There is a guy on garagejournal that just built a large shop with living quarters that is heating it all with a outdoor wood furnace with his radiant heating, says it works awesome. Those SIP panels seem really great, too!
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Jan 10, 2014 13:57
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I always dreamed, but applying any of that to reality wasn't something I've been too good at. My biggest dream was to be a pilot. I've posted the story on the forums a few times. It's a long story I'll try to make short. I got my private license, but then was laid off of my job the next month. I ended up in tech school for aviation maintenance since I couldn't afford to fly. Though I learned a bunch, the program just made me miss flying. After graduating, a close friend a few states away heard about a flight school near him. I thought I researched it well and decided to pursue it. Their program would get me all my licenses and stuff in a short time. Then I'd turn around and instruct for them until I had the hours to pursue a job elsewhere. I got some crazy huge student loans, enrolled in a nearby state university for college credit, and moved to attend it. I got my instrument rating and all the hours for my commercial license, but it was becoming very evident their program was severely flawed, they were bleeding money, and getting anywhere near what I was hoping to achieve wouldn't be possible. After my father had a heart attack and I returned home for a few weeks with him I realized I needed to quit and see how I could recoup my money. In a nutshell, it was a very devious program, I only got about 1/3 of my money put to actual use, have been unsuccessful to get more back, there's an on going court case and arrests and what not. After fighting for a long time and getting no where I felt pretty defeated. A failed relationship at the time didn't help. I was literally living in my parent's basement in my late 20s with tons of debt but nothing to show for it. However, my aviation maintenance license landed me a decent 1st job in that field making $20 an hour doing contract maintenance. The job had frequent overtime and within a few months I was starting to get caught up in my finances to where some breathing room was available. I really needed to get out of that basement, but really wanted something with a bit of land and definitely a garage, but not another apartment in the city. Finding a place to rent fitting that criteria isn't easy, though. I looked for about a month at some OK places but nothing seemed worth the price. I finally found a 3 bedroom 2 bath double wide in an area I love on 1.6 acres next to a creek in seclusion with a 2 car garage and an out building that could also fit a car cheaper than any 1 bedroom apartment in town I'd looked at. I applied to the rental agency right away but was told I was 3rd on a waiting list. I went out of town that week for work and hoped the best. They called shortly later saying my application was accepted and I suddenly found my self getting keys to my first very own place (though I was renting). It's been said plenty of times how it feels to have a bit of natural life around you. I won't take more time to explain that aspect, but nonetheless it was the very place I needed to re-figure my life and it's new direction. Nearly a year after renting the owners scheduled a meeting. They explained the place was part of an estate and they wanted to sell it. Since I was already there I'd have first dibs at a nice price. Truthfully, the place was in disrepair. Nothing major is broken or wrong (except the septic system). There's lot's of quirks, though, making for a standard bank loan and sale not so easy. It became a 8 month process of jumping through hoops, inspections, appraisals, lawyers (the family estate was in a feuding war which is why they wanted to split ways with the place), estimates, and seemingly endless paperwork back and forth from bank to bank trying to figure it out. Thankfully the real estate broker involved was super awesome and truly had my best interests. At the end of those 8 months we finally thought we had everything in line and awaited final approval from the loan agency. It came back denied and their requirements put me way over budget. I was really dejected after nearly a year of working towards it. I went out of town with my folks to visit some relatives at my grandparent's farm where I grew up. There was an old trailer for a lawn tractor in the barn and my grandma said I could have it. While digging it out, my uncle walked in and started chatting. I was pretty close to his son when I lived there and they all came to visit me at my place a few months prior. We had a big family party at my place with lots of bonfire bbq, creek swimming, running around, and movie watching as loud as we pleased. He heard my parent's telling my grandma about the loan falling through. He had been investing in properties in the area to fix up and sell himself and, if I was interested, could loan me the money for the place. I was blown away. After all the problems I had previously from being laid off, frauded out of my educational money, and career change I couldn't believe someone could make such an offer. The broker worked up the deal, he wired the money, and suddenly I found myself signing papers for my own home and piece of land. I've kept a strict budget and accounting to my uncle to pay him back as quickly as I can. Most of all, my money goes to him and not a bank. It's been a few years since and I'm undertaking other tasks, so my work on the place hasn't progressed much. But I'm getting ahead financially to hopefully have the means to put the stuff in disrepair back to good shape. I'm at a much better job now with really good outlook and stability, so although it's a completely different direction than I originally intended, I'm surprised at where I've ended up and absolutely love it. I love driving down my driveway and going into my own yard after commuting from downtown congestion. Summer's are super fun, Winter's are cozy, everything in between usually means a lot of work, but it's all worth it when I go out and pick my own apples in the morning to make apple pancakes, or pick blackberries to put in my yogurt, soak myself in the creek after mowing the lawn or just run around with my dog. The being able to listen to things as loud as I like is a nice plus, too. I've posted it before, but here's a small album: http://imgur.com/a/lonTJ And we had an ice storm a few years back that did lots of natural pruning for me. http://imgur.com/a/niG6X
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Jan 10, 2014 14:59
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dreesemonkey posted:I'm fine with you bringing this up, this is awesome. If I could ever convince the wife to do this when we're old and grey, I think this would be the way to do it. The radiant just runs through their propane on-demand water heater. And really, combined with the SIP construction and a healthy dose of insulation in the attic, it rarely runs. It takes a while for it to heat up in the fall, but the nice part about radiant in a concrete pad is that you've got the thermal mass of the entire pad working for you, so once you get the floor to 68 degrees, it just needs the occasional circulation of water to keep it warm. Building with the SIPs was really easy. Once you get the 2x6(8?) track that you mount them to laid on your pad/foundation/floor, and make it perfect (you've got to get it perfectly leveled, perfectly square, etc), you just flip up the SIPs and connect them. A group of 8 of us got the entire exterior wall of the house put up in a day, once the base was laid. 3-4 guys to maneuver and place the panel, one guy to screw/nail (I forget which, it was 5-6 years ago) the panel to the base, and one outside and one inside person up top to glue the connecting insert into it and install the cap 2x6. The electric was surprisingly easy to do, since the foam insulation has clearly marked channels for wiring, but the windows are. . . interesting. In the end, the window frame holes were cut with what basically amounted to a small chainsaw. Mind you, this was for a single-floor home built on a pad. I'd imagine a two story built on a basement would be far more complicated. stealie72 fucked around with this message at 15:45 on Jan 10, 2014 |
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Jan 10, 2014 15:43
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apatite fucked around with this message at 19:05 on Feb 16, 2016 |
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Jan 10, 2014 15:45
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I love cities, and I grew up in a suburb close enough to see Philadelphia's skyline from my bedroom window, and I'm not some back-to-nature freak... And honestly, the choice to live where we live was almost an accident. I got a job in Vermont, and moved up here. I'd never visited or even thought about Vermont for a second. But now, the lifestyle my wife and son and I enjoy is simply too good to ever make me seriously consider moving back home. I've been here for just over 5 years, and while it can be lonely and sometimes difficult to live here, the trade-off is still great. Besides living in a really, really beautiful part of the world, on the side of a mountain surrounded by wildlife and natural serenity, the one other benefit is the lack of people. I can count the number of times I've been "stuck" in traffic on one hand. Usually it's because there's a tractor or a manure truck on the rural 2 lane road I commute on. Growing up outside of Philadelphia and living in DC and Baltimore - there's just not a price tag that you can put on NOT sitting in traffic ever. There's never a significant line at any store or other public venue. I can go to a driving range and see maybe one or two people. I can hike some of the East Coast's best trails and see NOBODY for miles. I can shoot a gun off in my back yard. At the same time I'm not really far from where I grew up (a 10 hour drive at worse) and I'm also less than 2 hours from Montreal, 4 hours from Boston, about 5 hours from Quebec - some really cool cities. Burlington is about 40 minutes away, though it's a really hilariously small city in comparison. And I'm only 5 minutes from town - which has a really nice grocery store, several hardware stores, a pharmacy and some of the best bars and restaurants I've ever been to. That last benefit might be more of a Vermont thing, but whenever I go home and someone wants to go to CHAIN RESTAURANT X, I just shudder. It's hard to eat crappy food here. Every restaurant serves local food pretty much exclusively. I guess my point is, the trade-off is a no-brainer for me. I just heard a story on NPR talking about someone predicting that 85% of the world's population will live in cities by 2050. And I thought, "really?" There are definite benefits to living in cities, but for me, I'm willing to pay a little extra for goods and services sometimes - and I don't mind doing a little manual labor to make up the difference. Although, gently caress, it has been cold here lately!
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Jan 10, 2014 16:50
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a2436516
apatite fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Feb 16, 2016 |
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Jan 10, 2014 18:32
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Well apatite it sounds like we pretty much agree for the most part! I took some of what you said to be more literal than you intended. Also I had gotten the impression you were advocating a jobless (e.g., no wage-slave) survival on a plot of land, vs. doing what you're actually doing - working like a demon to afford to be poor on your land. I have a lot more respect for making a lifestyle choice that isn't just enabled through other people's charity. Keep on keepin' on, my man.
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Jan 10, 2014 19:02
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stealie72 posted:I feel like I bring this up too often in this thread, so sorry if I do, but: Any pics/more info on the solar kiln? I was thinking last night about how you had mentioned that. When we were looking at places on the market that were already built there was an amazing place with a huge 3 story solar kiln on the side of a barn and we wanted it so bad... Last night I tanned the rabbit hide, only left it in the solution for 6hrs as opposed to almost 24hrs for the fox. Tonight I am going to tan a deer hide that we were given. Also started harvesting ice from the stream to make a small ice house. Got the walls about half done, now it is 45*F and raining 
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Jan 11, 2014 17:29
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My tannery seems to only operate on the graveyard shift. Pulled the rabbit hide at 4am yesterday or day before, can't remember. It is now 320am and just getting done fleshing and removing hair from donated deer hide. Got it in the tanning solution now and going to bedbedbed.
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Jan 12, 2014 09:22
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I'd drop everything in a heartbeat and move out into the country and become a proper broad acre farmer, with tractors and harvesters and all the other cool toys, except the for $2 million minimum buy in on that lifestyle now. And they wonder why farming is a dying trade
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Jan 13, 2014 13:22
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Ferremit posted:I'd drop everything in a heartbeat and move out into the country and become a proper broad acre farmer, with tractors and harvesters and all the other cool toys, except the for $2 million minimum buy in on that lifestyle now. Trufax: the average age of American farmers is about 57. They got into the business as kids, plan to do it until they die, and are sick of new generations trying to horn in on their game.
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Jan 13, 2014 15:44
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apatite posted:Any pics/more info on the solar kiln? I was thinking last night about how you had mentioned that. I don't have any pics, but the kiln is truly a piece of redneck genius. It's a lean-to type building with the slope of the roof facing south for maximum sun. The "roof" is actually a surplus window set (maybe a patio door, I can't remember right now, but it was either free or close enough to free) that is like 10x7 feet (maybe a little bigger). That sits in a frame that is connected to posts sunk into the ground with a stabilizing frame built at ground level holding it all together. Sort of like a really basic pole barn. This was then sheathed with some rough-cut board and batten lumber from the neighbor's sawmill. The doors are the entire tall side of the structure and are just your basic board and batten barn doors. The "floor" is a ladder of 4x4s every two feet between the long sides (I'm not sure of the exact dimensions on all the lumber since it wasn't built with commercial wood). The entire contraption is about 5 feet high on the short side and 7-8 or so feet high on the tall side. What really ties the whole thing together, though, is the hole cut through the side near the top for the box fan that provides ventilation and keeps it from just being a solar sauna for wood. And NY being NY, I'm sure the structure is only 99 square feet, especially since it has power running to it, since that keeps it from being a taxable structure. Green wood is stacked in there with scrap wood spacers and allowed to dry. I'm sure it's not the most efficient/best designed kiln ever, but it does the job, and provides my dad with essentially free raw materials for his ever-expanding old guy woodworking habit. My kid has been playing with fully vertically integrated toys from the farm for a couple years now, so I can attest to him getting some quality lumber out of the kiln. There's something pretty kickass, by the way, with my parents using a table that was built with wood cut down from their woods, turned into boards within sight of where it was cut, then dried, cured, and built on the property. Very Foxfire. Ferremit posted:I'd drop everything in a heartbeat and move out into the country and become a proper broad acre farmer, with tractors and harvesters and all the other cool toys, except the for $2 million minimum buy in on that lifestyle now. When I'm having an extra lovely day at work, I look up farms for sale and daydream for a bit. stealie72 fucked around with this message at 16:02 on Jan 13, 2014 |
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Jan 13, 2014 15:56
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Man, as an Iowan, have you -seen- corn prices? $4.30 a bushel just now. Extend that math out. Average corn yields with modern planting methods and equipment are hovering just below 200 bushels per acre. So that's less than $1k per acre before costs. Your average family farm is sitting on about 300 acres. Hard to pay off a couple million in equipment, plus seed and chemical costs, on $300k a year. Not to mention that we've had two major droughts and a massive flood in the last ten years that've made for lowered or destroyed crops.
Liquid Communism fucked around with this message at 17:22 on Jan 13, 2014 |
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Jan 13, 2014 17:19
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apatite fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Feb 16, 2016 |
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Jan 14, 2014 18:57
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apatite fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Feb 16, 2016 |
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Jan 15, 2014 16:29
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   See ya later, alligators apatite fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Feb 16, 2016 |
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Jan 17, 2014 19:04
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Is that one of your kitties in the second and third pics? He/she doesn't seem to mind the snow too much. My pampered little miss (who is a Siberian cat) whined like mad the one time I put her on the back deck after a snow (it was just for a second and she FLEW back in the door all  ). "You're supposed to LIKE snow!"
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Jan 19, 2014 15:33
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35723782
apatite fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Feb 16, 2016 |
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Jan 19, 2014 19:52
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TastesLikeChicken posted:Is that one of your kitties in the second and third pics? He/she doesn't seem to mind the snow too much. My pampered little miss (who is a Siberian cat) whined like mad the one time I put her on the back deck after a snow (it was just for a second and she FLEW back in the door all Like a lot of animals, cats are fine in winter conditions but only if they have a chance to grow in a winter coat. If your cat is normally an outdoor cat and gets a reasonable autumn of colder weather, she can grow in some extra fur and then maybe enjoy being in the snow for a while. If you just take a mostly-indoor warmcat and plonk her down in the powder, she's going to be too cold immediately.
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Jan 19, 2014 20:15
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apatite fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Feb 16, 2016 |
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Jan 28, 2014 22:00
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apatite posted:Hate to see a deer suffering on the side of the road for instance. ^ You're in pain? WELL LET ME SHOOT YOU IN THE BRAIN-CASE! But really, cool stuff. I hope the hide comes out nice. Also, good thinking on the pallets. I would HATE to have to shovel that whole driveway by hand.
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Jan 29, 2014 04:01
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Rodenthar Drothman posted:^ You're in pain? It really is a choice between a long, slow, painful death or a quick one. It's not like there's free deer vet and rehabilitation centers all over the place.
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Jan 29, 2014 04:26
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Time to turn that subaru into a plow then perhaps? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdCSkis5TSo
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Jan 29, 2014 04:58
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Wait, what? You found roadalmostkill, pegged it in the head, brought it home, skinned it, took the good meat and tanned the hide and all was well? Would you have brought it home when it was dead? Would you bring home roadkill you hit yourself (I did this once)? I mean, what are your standards like when it comes to wildlife? And did you feed the fox to the dogs, did you ate it yourself or what? So many questions...
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Jan 29, 2014 09:03
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[cue everybody thinking i really am a serial killer now] apatite fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Feb 16, 2016 |
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Jan 29, 2014 16:01
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It puts the lotion on its skin or it gets the hose again!!!! Kidding, I probably would have done the same. A deer that badly injured isn't going to survive regardless, may as well help it suffer less and make its death less of a waste. And there are a bajillion deer either way.
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Jan 29, 2014 16:10
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kastein posted:It puts the lotion on its skin or it gets the hose again!!!! Yep you did the right thing. Also, they are rats with hooves.
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Jan 29, 2014 19:05
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apatite posted:For clarification, I don't carry guns around with me so life turns out much more gruesome than it perhaps needs to. A few things: 1) I was joking. What you did was actually pretty noble, and awesome (as I had hoped my comments after the joke would point out). I kinda wish I knew how to skin/dress animals and whatnot (I may learn soon). 2) I do keep a rifle in my house, and if I lived in the boonies I'd probably carry it around with me - So I would've probably just pegged it in the brain-case, if I didn't know how to exanguinate it. 3) Unless that knife has never been used for anything other than meat, and the side of the road on which you exanguinated the deer were both blessed by a Rabbi - sorry, not kosher (though kosher, i.e. exanguinated, meat is far more delicious than unkosher meat.) Sorry for making a comment that could've been construed badly D: (Also, tell me how the venison is when you eat it!) Rodenthar Drothman fucked around with this message at 05:12 on Jan 30, 2014 |
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Jan 30, 2014 04:39
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| # ? Jun 12, 2024 07:30 |
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apatite fucked around with this message at 19:07 on Feb 16, 2016 |
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Jan 31, 2014 18:19
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