Post by Tim in NY on Sept 24, 2006 7:46:18 GMT -5
Well I’ve always intended to write a post for this thread, its such a great one.
My interest in homesteading/family cows etc. started when I was in high school, it sort of grew out of my desire to be a hermit in the woods and never have to talk with anyone again! (Maybe a little bit of angst I don’t know). My Dad is an optometrist, my mom is a nurse, I grew up in Colorado. My parents are very devout Baptists, this meant, oddly enough, we moved a lot. Whenever the outfit my Dad was working with (optometrists tend to contract with eye care providers rather than work for them, its complicated) wanted him to work Sundays, he would start looking for another job. From middle school through high school we moved around Colorado about 4 times. It made it hard to make friends so I was kind of a loner. I started dreaming about backpacking in the woods alone for months at a time. I planned all these tortured routes
through the national forests where I thought no people would be. I asked my mother to drive me over and she said I was never camping by myself ever. So that ended that.
So then in mid-highschool we moved near Denver into a very affluent suburban area. Its always hard to change schools in HS I think and this place was full of cliques and I never was happy there. So I did a lot of reading, gradually my “wander aimlessly in the woods” plan became more of a “live in the woods” plan. I started reading books about gardening. I took over the small garden my Dad always planted, he was good about this even though it is something he enjoys a lot. I think he was glad to have his garden back when I moved out of the house!
Then I found a book that totally realigned my world. I picked it up at the library because I liked the cover art. But when I opened it up that night it astonished me. The book was “The Guide to Self-Sufficiency” by John Seymour. To my eyes it had everything, butchering, plowing, draft horses, black smithing, baking, brewing, gardening, farming, and on and on with amazing line drawings showing it all in detail. I didn’t even sleep that night I was so enthralled. I ended up checking that book out a million times, I read other homesteading authors too, the library had a couple of good books by Gene Logsdon and a few others.
So I was all set to homestead but my Dad wanted me to go to college. So I ended up going to Colorado State and studying agronomy. They really weren’t teaching what I wanted to learn to my way of thinking, organic agriculture was definitely pooh-poohed and agribusiness was king. I was unhappy and felt lost and alone. I regret not realizing the opportunities I had for learning and networking while I was there. There was a lot of really good information that I didn’t learn because I was moping about not being on the land. Oh well, hindsight is twenty-twenty.
So I managed to graduate and immediately after college I got an internship on an organic vegetable farm in Argyle, NY. It was a really good experience in a lot of ways. The farmers I worked for are very successful business people who taught me a lot about farming and business. I also met the woman who became my wife there, we were both interns.
I next got an internship at the Rodale Institute in Kutztown, PA. That was a great experience, I met a lot of great people and learned a lot. Rodale is sadly diminished from it’s glory days (while I was there we joked about the “Golden Age”) but it still has a lot of information if you are hungry for it and the name looks great on a resume.
Then I got another internship at Howell Living History Farm in Titusville, NJ. That was another great experience, I learned to care for draft horses, sheep, and cattle. I learned to drive oxen and plow with them. While I was there I used the farm team to win a plowing contest in NH. It was fantastic. The farm also had a full metal/woodworking shop that interns had unlimited access too. I spent most of my time there learning by doing. What a fantastic learning experience, I learned more there in eight months than in 4.5 years in college (not because college failed ME, but because I failed to take advantage of what was there, SIGH).
At that point I wanted to get a REAL job, I found and took a job as a farm manager/caretaker at a small vegetable farm in NE PA. It ended up being a bad move. Maybe because I have so many dreams and goals of my own in regards to farming, and because the owners had their own, we ended up in constant conflict. The things they wanted to do I felt were a waste of resources and time and they rejected every one of my ideas and plans. I felt betrayed as I had been honest about what I wanted in the interview. I realize now that the somewhat told went along then because they were desperate to get someone on the farm. They commute to the farm from New Jersey and needed someone there full time. I stayed there two and a half years but eventually our disagreements came to a head and I was fired. Probably I wasn’t mature enough to be a farm manager right out of the box and the person they truly want doesn’t match with my skills and dreams. I hope I learned something from it, but getting fired was a blow to my self confidence.
Shortly after that my wife and I got married. She had gone into the Peace Corps right after we interned in NY together. We kept in touch while she was gone and when she returned we started dating long distance. So I was out of a job with a new wife and we had decided to move to upstate NY because the price of land seemed affordable. It was difficult to land jobs a first but right now we are doing pretty well. We don’t own land but we are looking. We’ve planted a huge garden on the property we rent and we sell vegetables at a local farmers market on Saturdays. We are anxious to get some land and more room to start a family. Since we got married we’ve also had a special savings account we call the “Cow Fund” most months we put at least $20 into it. It is well over $750 at this point. The hope is that we’ll have enough in the cow fund to buy a cow without straining the rest of our budget. I also have dreams of sheep and poultry. My wife has recently gotten into knitting in a big way so I’ve been building a spinning wheel.
We are happy and excited for the future. Sorry this post is so big. I’ve been waiting to write it for a while and it all came out in a rush.
My interest in homesteading/family cows etc. started when I was in high school, it sort of grew out of my desire to be a hermit in the woods and never have to talk with anyone again! (Maybe a little bit of angst I don’t know). My Dad is an optometrist, my mom is a nurse, I grew up in Colorado. My parents are very devout Baptists, this meant, oddly enough, we moved a lot. Whenever the outfit my Dad was working with (optometrists tend to contract with eye care providers rather than work for them, its complicated) wanted him to work Sundays, he would start looking for another job. From middle school through high school we moved around Colorado about 4 times. It made it hard to make friends so I was kind of a loner. I started dreaming about backpacking in the woods alone for months at a time. I planned all these tortured routes
through the national forests where I thought no people would be. I asked my mother to drive me over and she said I was never camping by myself ever. So that ended that.
So then in mid-highschool we moved near Denver into a very affluent suburban area. Its always hard to change schools in HS I think and this place was full of cliques and I never was happy there. So I did a lot of reading, gradually my “wander aimlessly in the woods” plan became more of a “live in the woods” plan. I started reading books about gardening. I took over the small garden my Dad always planted, he was good about this even though it is something he enjoys a lot. I think he was glad to have his garden back when I moved out of the house!
Then I found a book that totally realigned my world. I picked it up at the library because I liked the cover art. But when I opened it up that night it astonished me. The book was “The Guide to Self-Sufficiency” by John Seymour. To my eyes it had everything, butchering, plowing, draft horses, black smithing, baking, brewing, gardening, farming, and on and on with amazing line drawings showing it all in detail. I didn’t even sleep that night I was so enthralled. I ended up checking that book out a million times, I read other homesteading authors too, the library had a couple of good books by Gene Logsdon and a few others.
So I was all set to homestead but my Dad wanted me to go to college. So I ended up going to Colorado State and studying agronomy. They really weren’t teaching what I wanted to learn to my way of thinking, organic agriculture was definitely pooh-poohed and agribusiness was king. I was unhappy and felt lost and alone. I regret not realizing the opportunities I had for learning and networking while I was there. There was a lot of really good information that I didn’t learn because I was moping about not being on the land. Oh well, hindsight is twenty-twenty.
So I managed to graduate and immediately after college I got an internship on an organic vegetable farm in Argyle, NY. It was a really good experience in a lot of ways. The farmers I worked for are very successful business people who taught me a lot about farming and business. I also met the woman who became my wife there, we were both interns.
I next got an internship at the Rodale Institute in Kutztown, PA. That was a great experience, I met a lot of great people and learned a lot. Rodale is sadly diminished from it’s glory days (while I was there we joked about the “Golden Age”) but it still has a lot of information if you are hungry for it and the name looks great on a resume.
Then I got another internship at Howell Living History Farm in Titusville, NJ. That was another great experience, I learned to care for draft horses, sheep, and cattle. I learned to drive oxen and plow with them. While I was there I used the farm team to win a plowing contest in NH. It was fantastic. The farm also had a full metal/woodworking shop that interns had unlimited access too. I spent most of my time there learning by doing. What a fantastic learning experience, I learned more there in eight months than in 4.5 years in college (not because college failed ME, but because I failed to take advantage of what was there, SIGH).
At that point I wanted to get a REAL job, I found and took a job as a farm manager/caretaker at a small vegetable farm in NE PA. It ended up being a bad move. Maybe because I have so many dreams and goals of my own in regards to farming, and because the owners had their own, we ended up in constant conflict. The things they wanted to do I felt were a waste of resources and time and they rejected every one of my ideas and plans. I felt betrayed as I had been honest about what I wanted in the interview. I realize now that the somewhat told went along then because they were desperate to get someone on the farm. They commute to the farm from New Jersey and needed someone there full time. I stayed there two and a half years but eventually our disagreements came to a head and I was fired. Probably I wasn’t mature enough to be a farm manager right out of the box and the person they truly want doesn’t match with my skills and dreams. I hope I learned something from it, but getting fired was a blow to my self confidence.
Shortly after that my wife and I got married. She had gone into the Peace Corps right after we interned in NY together. We kept in touch while she was gone and when she returned we started dating long distance. So I was out of a job with a new wife and we had decided to move to upstate NY because the price of land seemed affordable. It was difficult to land jobs a first but right now we are doing pretty well. We don’t own land but we are looking. We’ve planted a huge garden on the property we rent and we sell vegetables at a local farmers market on Saturdays. We are anxious to get some land and more room to start a family. Since we got married we’ve also had a special savings account we call the “Cow Fund” most months we put at least $20 into it. It is well over $750 at this point. The hope is that we’ll have enough in the cow fund to buy a cow without straining the rest of our budget. I also have dreams of sheep and poultry. My wife has recently gotten into knitting in a big way so I’ve been building a spinning wheel.
We are happy and excited for the future. Sorry this post is so big. I’ve been waiting to write it for a while and it all came out in a rush.