Homestead

Rural New York State. Never rural enough but it'll have to do. Beside I do have a plan to get away from the road. I keep thinking anything bad that were to happen would come from the road. With the economy in the tank and still going down that leads to people losing jobs, losing there homes and trying to find a way to feed their families. If something terrible happened to the bigger cities people would begin walking or driving the roads. I can't be entirely sure that they would not come this way. It wouldn't make sense for them to come here. I keep thinking people in big cities like NYC and smaller cities like Buffalo and Syracuse, that the people would head south down 81 and 95 especially if it is winter here or maybe if they are desperate they would head west on the thruway. I think it would be rare for city dwellers to come here but maybe not and I must be prepared either way.

My plan:

Next summer (hopefully) I want to build a cabin back in our woods. This three and a half acre spread has a mixture of swamp and highland. If the SHTF than we only need to walk out the back door and into the woods.

I keep thinking living by the road we are so vulnerable for anyone with a vehicle, for anyone with a gun. My stash of food grows every week and if I could not get more from the store how would I feed my family? If someone took it, I could not replace it. It must be hidden, right now I realize food would be the last thing stolen unless someone were starving but if there are no stores left it will be one of the most important things. (I realize guns will be another be I'll write about that at another time).

The cabin that must be built will have to be built as cheap as possible. I'm still trying to figure out how it will happen. I'll keep the reader in touch every part of the way.

For now:

I'm going to tell you about the homestead without getting too specific. I would not want any unexpected company. We live in about a 2000 sq. ft. home. 3 bedroom, 2 bath. It makes us sound rich doesn't it? We're not. It takes two weeks of paychecks just to pay the mortgage. That doesn't include, heat, electric, $50 in water filters every week because no one bothered to tell us the water was full of iron and was brown. Pretty much we are on a tight budget. We do not go out to eat or for any type of entertainment. We do not get any type of TV. I did decide to get internet for the first time in four years and that was a hard decision because $40 a month takes food away from us and I'm trying to have enough to eat and to put some into storage.

The land here is very wet. When it rains the ground holds the water for days. Lower spots never seem to dry up. We may have bad water at the house but the low spots fill up with water that could be ran through a filter and drank and I bet that water would taste good. We do not drink the water at the house and I have to collect water every week from an outside source.

We have only lived here for about about three months. The yard and house are about an acre of land. The other two and a half are mainly woods. Some one butchered the trees back in there and there are wide open spots surrounded by trees. There are many pines between 1 and 5 feet that have grown back. Plenty of dead wood out there where they felled trees and just left some of them. It's a mess. We've been gathering a lot of smaller pine branches and putting them in buckets for kindling. We chopped ten cords of wood with the wife's father for our fireplace. Hopefully soon it gets delivered here. Today is already November first and we live in a snow belt. Here we get much snow and it is called lake effect snow. It's not unusually to get two feet of snow overnight and still go to work and school the next day.

Who ever lived here before used the land as their dumping ground. There is broken glass and all kinds of junk embedded into the land. I don't know how we'll get it all up. At this point it would be easier to bull doze it all underground and put fill over it. Unfortunately there's no money for this. Especially now that fall/winter is here, the tall grasses are dying and you can see into these ditches. We knew we would have to do a lot of landscaping/yard work when we bought the place. Of course we didn't know about the junk embedded in the land. We figured the rotten logs and pulled up trees would be what we would be working on not glass and broken toys. All kidding aside I've found a faded fishing box (still works and stays dry), broken lights, baby stroller, toy guns, light bulbs, crockery and more. And this stuff is mainly just from mowing my lawn and gradually cutting into the deeper grass to get a bigger yard.

OK that's the homestead. I hope you get the picture. What we do and where we go from here is wide open and for me it's always with an eye toward the future. Unfortunately I don't think the future looks all that good which means preparing for the worst while hoping for the best.