hope the throat feels better.. I swear the winter doesn’t know what it wants to do this year!

much like the economy…

🙂

Can’t wait to hear today’s podcast on my drive home! i just discovered your podcast this week while listening to recent episodes of the Geek Farm Life podcast. My husband and I just bought a 7 acre farm last september and we are busily forging it into a working homestead. The few episodes of your podcast I’ve listened to in the past couple days are bang on with what we are doing too! We’ve got alot of work ahead of us to get to the point where the farm is providing all we need plus a financial income, but we’re making a great start with it. We’re up in Alberta Canada and we’ve already started seeds in the house for this season’s harvest. Check out our blog at aboussafygardensaga.blogspot.com and you can follow our progress over the past couple years till now! Soon we’re launching our own podcast to help other people doing the same as us 😀

Another great show! (Of course)
Several years ago, I paid off my truck – early with my income tax refund. Then, two years ago, I paid off my house – early. Now all I have to worry about is the real estate taxes and utilities. Yeah, it’s old and in need of a lot of repairs, but it’s all mine.

I have no fruit trees anymore. I had an apple tree in the back yard and there was a crabapple tree in front (city property) Both trees were always full of fruit until my apple tree died. (heavy with apples and the wind) Then the crabapple tree started dying so the city cut it down. (Lost a lot of shade!)

I planted a couple maple trees in back for shade, but want another apple tree and a pear tree. I am also planning a garden. (small to start – a couple plants) Just tomatoes, green peppers, lettuce, cabbage, corn, onion, garlic. My neighbor has a garden every year and I will ask her for her help. I also want to learn to can (with her help also)

Listening to you and reading the blogs has encouraged me. (And I don’t feel like such an odd-ball anymore)

Thanks for your help.

Jack thinks so much the same way as I do about some of these things that it is sometimes scary. I used to own a duplex house as a bachelor, with the intention of gettin’ hitched one day, and moving to the country. However, I ended up falling in love (good thing) and marrying (very good thing) a wonderful woman (very very good thing), who already lived in a suburban house (bad thing), with kids in the schools (good kids, expensive schools), and an in-law apartment with an in-law in residence (OK thing, but bad moneywise).

It has taken years to get her to understand that to me any property that doesn’t generate a return is simply a trap.

Now, with the kids out of school, she has been working with me this past year to make the move. I am both excited an nervous since, after a year of looking, we just made an offer on a great homestead. I am excited at the prospect of becoming the steward of 143 acres with a mile of brook trout stream, 3 waterfalls, 110 acre managed woodlot, 30 acres of hay, a good barn, and a 4 bedroom house with a forced air wood furnace. It generates about $10k per year, cash, from hay and lumber alone. I am sometimes nervous that it will slip through our fingers. If it is meant to be then it will happen. The nearest neighbor has 130 acres, is 89 years old, has his parents buried there, and his son lives in the house next door – they ain’t movin’. The other neighbor is a 570 acre state forest. It is one hour from my place in the Adirondacks, and 50 minutes from the city in upstate NY where I now live. There is no telling the future, but we are putting all of our karma, mojo, and chi (and money) into this one.