Moving to A Bigger Homestead: Our Journey
Welcome!
We hope you enjoy following along in our journey! We started working toward greater self-sufficiency while living in a residential neighborhood on 3/4 of an acre in suburban New Jersey.
We started on a small scale with a few raised beds, rain barrels, learning to can, and 8 chickens in our backyard {slightly against our towns zoning, but our neighbors were cool}.
I'm SO grateful for those 8 years on our small plot, those experiences really helped us prepare for our new property. So where did we escape the high taxes of NJ to? The Mountains of New Hampshire!
(We didn't start moving in until after Christmas and got lucky with a pretty mild Winter, these boxes were never-ending, I'm still using them in the gardens for weed suppression!)
Why New Hampshire?
How did we end up here? We had some family in New Hampshire and once we spent more time up here we fell in love.
The house in NJ went on the market, I found a nursing job, and within a few months we moved to NH {and in with family}. Basically, we moved without having a home to move to!
We took a leap of faith and we couldn't be happier or prouder of ourselves for doing it!
(our new Homestead on 8 acres, built in the 1920s)
A Long Time Coming!
It took us months to find the perfect spot for us, then almost a year to move into our home after settlement. Although we fell in love with the property itself, and saw the potential inside, it needed so much work we weren't able to live in it while we worked on it. (See this post and this post for the house transformation!)
We feel so blessed that our property came with an existing asparagus patch, raspberry bushes, concord grapes, apple trees and a few rhubarb and blueberry plants! We couldn't be more grateful that the previous owner (who had the house for 30 years!) planted all those things:
We also have an amazing 2-story barn (that clearly needs painted) and a few outbuildings, one of which we converted into the chick coop.
(the bones to the barn are amazing, all cosmetic fixes are needed but the house remodel took priority!)
And the best part? The basement has a root cellar off of it, that's right a ROOT CELLAR!! Something I've always coveted! It's the little things!
(how it looked when we moved in, still a work in progress but located completely underground!)
Since we've moved in we've gotten chickens and have been transforming the gardens using as much permaculture principles as we can, and as we've done with all our previous gardens, we've kept our principles totally organic (click here to learn more about our first growing season).
I started this blog to document our amazing and exciting journey, to document our successes and failures, and to share our homesteading knowledge. If you're following along, I hope you enjoy the ride with us!
Thanks for reading,
Jess
