One of the biggest decisions in creating the perfect homestead is selecting the home itself. For those interested in green building, this can be a difficult decision: Is it better to build a new, energy-efficient home or to renovate an older house?

Both choices have their advantages and disadvantages. But as far as homesteader David Schafer is concerned, building a new, greener home was the only option. 'If resources allow it, I would strongly recommend starting from scratch and avoiding the temptation of leaving bad designs in place,' he says. Schafer and his wife, Alice Dobbs, moved out of a drafty, century-old farmhouse on their northern Missouri property and built a new house using the latest green building techniques. 'We built our own home based on what the farmhouse was not,' David says. 'Our new home is tightly insulated and almost maintenance-free. It does not require lots of energy to heat and cool.'

The couple's new house uses a combination of straw bales and exterior stone to create a well-insulated home. It also has many passive-solar design features, plus solar-electric panels, a rainwater harvesting system to collect cistern water and a bicycle-powered pump to pressurize water in the house.

Harvey Ussery in Hume, Va., made the opposite decision, falling in love with a 200-year-old farmhouse. Although most older homes are not as tightly built or well insulated as newer ones, Ussery says, the house is better than you might expect. 'Our 10 inches of solid wood and chinking is actually pretty green — that's a lot of insulating power,' he says.