Dear MOTHER: Breaking Ground

Letters from our readers about dreams of homesteading, looking back on fond times, and learning more about solar-powered housing.

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by Gretchen Whittman
Gretchen has made the most of her property by keeping bees and chickens, and chopping wood.

Homestead Hopes

For years, I’ve read and admired the folks who’ve appeared in MOTHER EARTH NEWS, Grit, and Backwoods HomeMagazine. I’ve longed to live on a farm and be self-sufficient. I’ve dreamed of having the freedom to rise with the sun and go to bed when it sets. In the late 1970s, my boyfriend and I bought a 700-square-foot cabin that sat on 7 acres. The property had a small spring-fed pond with a cistern. We both worked for the Navy back then, so we’d commute the 50-plus miles to work. Life was good, and, eventually, I got to stay home with our children and work around the property. We grew our own food, raised chickens and goats, and even had a horse. But times changed, and so did we. By 2005, I was a single parent renting houses from other people, but my dream of a life on the farm never left me. I longed for self-sufficiency once again.

In 2015, I bought a single-family home on 2 acres of mountain land overgrown with trees and rocks. Since I was still about 60 miles from Washington, D.C., land was at a premium, so I couldn’t afford more land for a true farm. The land did have a year-round stream that fed into a small pond.

The first year on the property, I built raised beds with cinder blocks the previous owner had left behind. Trying to grow anything was frustrating! Lettuce and potatoes did well, but tomatoes were leggy, and melons were out of the question. Since I was still working a full-time job, it was difficult to get projects done around the house. One day, I knocked out a wall in my basement to make a separate bedroom for one of my daughters, and I found a chimney flue. To take advantage of this discovery, I purchased a monstrous woodstove from a neighbor that reduced my gas bill tremendously. MOTHER EARTH NEWS and Grit still had a place on my nightstand, and reading them helped keep my farm dream alive.

By the second year, I’d had several trees taken down to give me a few more hours of daylight to work around the property. I planted several fruit trees, some roses, flowers, and berries. I bought a chicken coop half-price from the local Tractor Supply store and stocked it full of chickens. My son planted ginseng on the mountainside, started mushrooms on logs, and planted sunchokes with my roses. I still kept up with MOTHER and would envy people who had an actual farm. I could only dream of getting up at the crack of dawn to milk goats, make bread, can, and manage other tasks of self-sufficiency.

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