we finally found the land, but now...

Well, it's been an interesting couple of weeks.  First off, I'm sorry I haven't updated this blog in so long.  I did try a small garden here at the place we're at right now, but nothing survived.  This was partly due to my own negligence, and partly due to some not so great soil conditions.  Actually, the plants were doing so poorly because of the soil that that is the reason I started losing interest and just more or less gave up.

Just to give you a little 'background', I owned a house in suburbia, that I let slip into foreclosure when the economy started to fail back in 2007.  I also got divorced at the same time, making the house impossible for me to keep up with, so I abandoned it and rented something smaller.  Then I met my current husband.

He lived and worked a good two hours from me when we met, and since I worked at home, it made sense for us to move closer to his job.  Move we did, only to discover that the house we rented was in foreclosure- after having dumped close to $7,000 into the move and fixing up the house.

Faced with the prospect of having nowhere to go, we chose to go stay with a friend, back up even further from his job than I had lived.  We decided that he would give his notice, and we would both find jobs in that area, and I would keep my work at home job for a third income to help get us back on our feet.

But living with friends doesn't work out for very long, and we were certainly no exception to that rule.  We wound up living in a motel for about 5 weeks.  I worked my work at home job to cover the expenses, and very soon found a full time job. We then moved to this house.

It was cheap, close to work, and on the bus line.  But it's still not ours. And as time went on, I became more and more interested in finding ways to be more self sustaining and less at the mercy of others.  I wanted to know that I could grow food and build shelter.

In 2011, I became fascinated by the survivalist lifestyle.  I spent countless hours on forums, and reading blogs about gardening, micro farming, raising chickens, building shelters, DIY boats, alternative energy... anything you could think of.  I even started watching "Rocket City Rednecks."

 As much as I wanted to move to some land somewhere, it just wasn't in the cards with one income. Then I got laid off in Sept 2011, and I had mostly abandoned my work at home job for my full time job, and my husband didn't find work until Dec 2011.

Finally in December, my husband found a job driving a cab, and in January, I started doing the same.  The job is ok.  We work some very long hours just to make enough money to get by, but it's cash in our pocket every day, and we run the bank. There is no worry of showing up to work one day, and the doors being closed with the company owing us 2 weeks worth of pay.

We finally felt that we could be secure enough to move, so we started looking.  We found one place where the land was 1.7 acres and that was perfect, but the house was just too small.  We found another one where the house was huge and the owner claimed that the land was on 1.5 acres (but it looked more like 2.5 acres to me, and I have a pretty good eye for square footage).  Hubby was worried it would just be too much work for us to take care of, and the worst part was that there was a lake behind it. It was fenced off, but still, my kids are engineering enough to climb right over that. Plus, water moccassins and gators had me a little freaked.

But, we had decided to take it anyway. Until...I called my title company to find out about the status of the house I had abandoned to be foreclosed on back in 2007.  Well, it turned out the banks attorney was indicted on federal charges for robo signing last year, and the bank had to start the whole foreclosure process all over again.   They never did, and in October of 2011, the judge sent the bank a notice to either respond to questions about the case, or the court would dismiss it.  The bank did not respond and the courts have now dismissed the whole case.

So, title says we can live there easily for another year and a half to two years, and all we'll have to pay are the utilities.  Which are less than just the rent on the house we were looking at, and are about the same amount we've been paying for rent with utilities included in this tiny house we're in.

The main drawback is that there's still no land.  It's also on a main, busy road, and it has a pool.. (which is nice) but with two small kids, it's not the 'safest' house.

However, on just one income, we can cover our living expenses.  We have two incomes now, so effectively we could simply rent some vacant land to farm somewhere else.  I can have the chickens that I want at this house, and I can grow a small garden too.

Of course, we'll be looking more for land that we can buy with owner financing, rather than just renting, for our garden/microfarm.  And since we can have chickens and a garden at the house we're moving to, we'll wait on finding the extra land for a while, and use the money to build up some passive streams of income so that once the house is foreclosed, we'll at least have enough cash and income to that land either with a house on it, or build one ourselves.

Traded some of my own plants for blueberry bushes today

Two days ago, we took a ride out to a local Upick Blueberry Farm. I wasn't really dressed to pick, we just happened to be up that way and figured 'let's go take a look.'  While we there, I go to talking with the owner of the farm, and we got on the subject of gardening, and being self-sustaining, etc, and she agreed that we're going to need to learn how to grow and hunt food.  So I told her about my garden and she said she would trade me a couple of blueberry bushes for some plants.  So today I brought up some cucumber, zucchini, pumpkin, and winter squash plants for her.  I have a whole bunch more to bring up to her too, I just only  had so many containers today.  I picked out one big blueberry bush, and one small one, but again, it wasn't a good day for picking... it was HOT.

On the ride home, we found a place on the side of the road selling 55 gallon metal drums and 55 gallon plastic rainwater barrels for only $10.00 each. With the bushes and the kids in the Jeep, we didn't have the room to get them today, but we will be going back for them soon.  They just might even be a better solution for our homemade, solar powered island boat than collecting hundreds upon hundreds of water and soda bottles.

I'm truly enjoying this new lifestyle.  We're looking for a nice farm that we can get owner financing on, and one that's done, we'll be all set.  Tomorrow, we're heading to some friends of Shane's down in Lake Wales, FL who have a 1 acre garden, and a fish pond on their property.  We'll be rigging up the fishing poles tonight and tomorrow, I will begin to teach my kids to fish.

A Garage Saleing Adventure

We decided to go garage saleing today. We bought an axe, a pick ax, and an electric sander for $10.00.  That was a pretty nice find.

I also bought two hand can openers and a corkscrew for $1.00.

Hubby bought a set of Harry Potter books... ok, so not really a self-sustaining survivalist tool, but nonetheless, at least it's something to read to the kids for entertainment in an SHTF situation like a hurricane>loss of power.

We found a pedal powered front end loader and a wagon at a garage sale, so I picked them thinking they be useful for getting the kids to help with the yard work.

The best finds we got though, were from a house clean out.  They just put everything out by the curb, for the taking.  I got a bunch of bamboo, a fishing rod, two whole new sets of dishes, a stroller (wheels will be useful long after baby outgrows) and I can't even remember what else.

I also got about 50 little spice jars with two racks that mount on the walls, for $3.00 AND.. my husband bought 3 swords for $10.00. Might have to see what those are worth on ebay.

All in all, a pretty productive day I think. Still no supplies for my hen house though, and no chicks, and I still need a few more things to finish making the trellises for the viny plants.

I think the most important thing I have to remember is that I can't expect everything to happen at once, as much as I would like it to.

P.S. I was invited to join a newer site for the 'level headed' folks of the survivalist lifestyle.  It's got a really nice design to it, and seems like a good smaller community of people.  Vistit www.bugoutsite.com to check it out.