I would like to introduce my family and myself to those on the board who don't know me from the "good ole days" at the CS forum. Hope to get to know some of you all better, too. (Hint, hint...)

Our family is:

Pop (aka Russell); age 72. Pop is a retired union construction electrician, who also owned a sign shop where he specialized in creating Neon signs - back in the 50's and 60's. After he got out of the sign business; we operated a commercial orchard, raising apples and peaches along with a variety of annual crops for sale on our homestead. Pop's hobbies are watching Nascar racing (we mourn the Intimidator) and stirring the sh - errr poop - in town at the diner. He's contrary and cantankerous and has the softest heart of anyone I know.

Hubby (John); age 41. Hubby is a motorcycle mechanic - it's what he always dreamed of being when he was a little boy. He works for a Kawasaki/Yamaha/KTM dealer and also does specialty work on motocross bikes in his home shop. After 20+ years of motocross jumps, his knees have given out on him so he has switched to racing quads (4 wheelers) and lately I've caught him eyeballing the off road trucks and then looking at our little Dodge Dakota with a gleam in his eye! I think that he needs some grandsons to lead astray but we'll wait a few more years for those! His favorite hobby is being cheap.

Sis (Jessie) is almost 17. She is a typical high-school girl. Her hobbies are cheerleading, clothes, and her fiance' Ryan. She is involved in a lot of school activities and also works 4 days a week at a local discount store (to afford the clothes and her phone bill!). She plans to graduate from high school, marry Ryan and go to school to be an RN; then work toward becoming a psychologist. The kids have promised us 2 grandbabies - but not for a long, looong time!

I am Polly; age 42. I am an RN and I work on a psychiatric ward - it's an......interesting.....job. I also do Med/Surg, Cardiac, Monitored care and Rehab prn. I love to read - anything from cereal boxes to romance to mystery to gardening. I am especially fond of Gene Logsdon's books and have a much thumbed copy of "Wildlife in your backyard" that seems to be a permanent resident on my bedside table. I also love to garden, sew and piece quilt blocks.

Other characters you might meet in my posts include:

Ryan; Sis's sweety. He is currently serving our country in the US Army. I alternate between being proud of him and being terrified that we will go to war. I spend a lot of time baking cookies to send; he says that they are excellent bribes - especially when they are out in the field. He's a good kid.

Unc; aka Uncle Ivan, is Pop's baby brother. He has been a Case/IH mechanic for many years and is the main reason that most of our equipment is older than I am! He is a frustrated country boy and enjoys coming down to his cabin here on the farm and farmin' our 20 or so acres of tillable ground.

We live in E. Central Illinois on 30 acres, Pop has an additional 18 acres one road to the north. I sell strawberries at the local grocery store, and raise enough other stuff to have some to sell and lots to give away. Our livestock consists of 15 chickens, 2 really dumb dogs and about a billion cats. My favorite things on the farm (besides my family!) would be my garden and the woods (and the wildlife it contains).

Well, that's way more than enough about us - tell us all about you!!

-- Anonymous, April 05, 2001

Answers

Hi Polly, I haven't participated regularly on CS but was a long time regular on BWH forum. My husband, Tim and I bought a single wide mobile home this past summer and we moved from New Orleans to about 40 miles north so we would have a place to park it. I work for a medical school in downtown New Orleans as a medical coder, and I have finally gotten use to the 40 mile each way commute. There is a back way in that I can take that not only allows me to avoid the interstate but I get to watch the sun come up on water that is darn near the Gulf of Mexico, it's an awesome sight, kind of hard to keep my car in the road while admiring the view. Tim is an electrician and has to commute a bit farther than I do, and he has recently started teaching to wanna be electricians for his company.

We really like living out here in the woods, we are in a mobile home park for now. Land in this area is really getting expensive, so we may not stay here for retirement. We do have some land in north central Louisiana, which is actually why we got a mobile home, so we could move it there.

I had my first garden last year, and it was really a learning experience. I will have to garden in containers here because the yard floods easily. I have some five gallon buckets and have to get going with it really soon, because the weather is in the 80's already.

We have two grown sons, ages 21 and 23, both live in the New Orleans areas, one is engaged and the other one is looking. We have a 15 year old dog named Josh, and a 15 year old cat named Sam, plus three other cats that seven years old.

I am a wanna be homesteader, I grew up spending alot of time in the country, so I have an idea of what all is involved. For as long as I can remember I have wanted to self-sufficient, I don't think my husband has much of an idea what that means though. I am 54 and he is 50 and we have been married for 22 years. I am an environmentalist, and a conservationist. I think the world has way to many people, so population control is near and dear to my heart. I am semi-vegen, I eat a little butter, eggs and fish from time to time, no beef, no sugar, no dairy except for butter and limited caffeine (I can't ever remember how to spell that). I take lots of vitamins and herbs, try to get my husband to take them too and I prefer alternative health ways to allopathic medicine when possible.

I lived on "The Farm" in Tennessee for a few months in 1978 with my oldest son. Communal living just wasn't for me, but I appreciate the concept.

I guess that's alot about us, glad you started this thread Polly, it's a nice way to get acquainted.

Blessings, Judy

-- Anonymous, April 05, 2001

Good idea! Maybe we ought to have a 'profiles' section, I like that on other forums.

My husband Roger and I live in the mountains of Southern Utah at 6200ft. Can get plenty of snow in winter, but low enough for a good garden and orchard, neither of which we have started yet, since the place is brand-new. We'll be using lots of terracing and creativity 'cause it's very steep here.

Roger is a VERY soon-to-be-retired diesel mechanic and I am a cross stitch and craft designer, working from my home studio. He's 60 and I'll be 40 again this year (for the 14th time). Our family is our 5 spoiled rotten dogs and our 15 spoiled rotten cats, someday goats and horses or mules. I love mules. Oh, yes, Earl the ground squirrels. Can't tell 'em apart so we call 'em all Earl and they'll do just about anything for peanuts.

Our politics could probably best be described as left-wing liberal redneck hawks, is that the same as Libertarian? If our religion had to have a label it would be Pagan. We have the greatest neighbors in the world, mostly devout Mormons. The farms and ranches around here are going on their fourth and fifth generations of family operation and the knowledge and wisdom is priceless and readily shared. We love it here.

OK, now this worked on the BWH forum - the Haphazard Homestead and Glendale Plastic Bird Sanctuary, from a neighbor's hill on the other side of the canyon:

C:\My Documents\house.tif

-- Anonymous, April 05, 2001

OK, OK, maybe if I FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS, DUMMY! Sheese, photo, take two: http://albums.photopoint.com/j/View? u=1629910&a=12459250&p=45862655

-- Anonymous, April 05, 2001

Hi Group: I've been a regular at CS forum for over three yrs now and used to post at BWH a couple years ago. I found the CS forum more congenial so I stuck with them. Back then it was a fairly small group of consistantly helpful and respectful folks. As the group grew so did the variety of topics and along with that entered discussions about religion and politics, all of which was fine untill several discussions became shouting matches and not much good came of it. I'm happy this new board was started by Jim as a safe haven for those of us who aren't necessarily ultra-conservative or rabidly religious.

Tho I enjoy discussing either of those topics as much as anyone I guess I'd consider myself a slightly left leaning moderate politically. Religious wise, I guess I'd call myself a closet Christian because I'm wary of the pigeonholing folks tend to do when you apply some kinda label to yourself. I see truth and beauty in many of the worlds religions and reserve the right to explore as the spirit takes me. Actually, its one of a few of my abiding passions--- comparative religion with an emphasis on commonly held symbols and teachings.

My wife Chris and I moved to our current home about three years ago. We've got about 6 acres. About half the land had been a junk yard many years ago and about 1/4 of it had been a small rotten granite pit quary. We were able to buy it cheap because it looked like a moonscape when we got it. We've owned the land for 8-9 yrs and originally bought it as an investment without thinking we'd ever build here. But RE values really took off and the shack we'd been living in on a lake had increased in value enuf to justify selling it and build here.

We put up a used double wide on a basement and began in earnest to build a homestead, thinking this is where we'll retire. We've got about 3/4 acre in ponds(2) with fish that have wintered over for the last 6 yrs, a fruit orchard of about 22 trees, several raised beds for the garden in which we'll be growing cut flowers and vegies for market this year. For critters 2 cats, two goats, 45 chickens(manure, meat and eggs) and a small flock of pigeons just because I like them.

The sale of the other house afforded us the ability to also put up a pole building to which I attached an 11 x 52 greenhouse and a 11 x 18 chicken coop and pigeon loft. We've been planting stuff in the house to move to the greenhouse in about two weeks for a seedling sale this spring. I've got enuf bench space in the greenhouse for about 3200 4" pots tho I doubt we'll fill them this season. I'm hoping to get into high gear this year with income generating stuff. I've literally been building soil for the last three years with 5-8 truck loads of leaves from the city each year for composting since we don't have real soil otherwise---just sand ot granite.

I drive a delivery van for a courier service and Chris will be starting a new job Monday with an outfit that sells stuff on E-bay.

BTW, we live in central WI

-- Anonymous, April 05, 2001

I forgot to add that I am pretty close to being Libertarian, registered independent, and my husband is a staunch republican. I am non-christian with pagan leanings and my husband is a Christian. We're a strange pair, but maybe we keep each other from going to far to the left and right.

And if and when we are ever able to quit the rat race, I think I will go in the tradition of the Nearings and keep no animals, except as pets, and maybe eggs.

Blessings, Judy

-- Anonymous, April 06, 2001

Polly, great idea, I would like to get to know eveyone, I hope that many contribute! It sure is nice to know that there is a place that I can proclaim ,I WORSHIP DANDELIONS, without somebody freaking out.But really, I live in the Bible Belt, I was raised on the Bible, my grandfather was a free methodist preacher. My whole family, brother,sister, parents, all my neighbors are born again christians. Then there is me, a fish out of water. Often I wonder why, why I can't just accept the religion that was brainwashed into me since birth, but ya know I look at the idea that there is only one way to God and I just can't believe that it is true, and I look at all the damage that this mindset has caused. I believe that everyone should be free to experiance God in their own way, in their own time. I have no desire to persuade anyone to believe as I do, and I get exasperated with people who feel driven and obligated to convert everyone to their way of thinking. To me, God IS in the lowly dandelion , and he speaks through the voices of the winds, the songs of the birds, the frogs, Oh how happily he sings in the spring, in the chorus of spring peepers.!

Well my goodness, I soppose that, that is enough of that.! My husband and I started our life anew when we married here on our little two acres, under the pines during the summer soltice, about 4 yrs. ago. I have 2 daughters, the oldest is 14 and enjoys public school where she is into cheerleading, my youngest is now 8! I am homeschooling her for now. This has been rather hard, as she needs friends and all the fellow homeschoolers and homeschool groups in this area are Christian, and do not accept you if your beliefs do not match theirs.

My husband travels 40 miles to the city of columbus Ohio where he works at Lucent Technology. But his heart is here, here where his lettuce , peas and onions are sprouting in the garden , here where the peach and apple trees are budding, and the rubarb and asparagus are reaching their heads out of the ground. Jim is the head vegetable grower, fruit tree and berry bush pruner, while I am the head harvester and preserver. We grow LOTS of stuff on our little two acres, We use organic methods and believe in working with nature , not against her. We enjoy our many berrys, there is no taste treat greater to me then the first ripe strawberry in June, we raise, strawberrys, blackberrys, blueberrys, raspberrys,peaches, apples, cherrys, oh and all the wonderful vegetables, I guess you might get bored with me if I name them all. I never feel richer then when I am returning to house from garden laden with a basket full of beautifully colored, glistening produce, ready to be done up in a fresh dish, or preserved for winter. I do alot of preserving, everything from grape juice to pickle relish. Indeed everyday during summer, I spend harvesting and preserving the produce that most hollors, I am ready! I am ripe! we enjoy entering our produce and canned goods in the county fair every year and have a strand of ribbons around our kitchen, as reward for all our hard work, but the real reward is knowing that we are supplying our family with the best food possible. We have hunter neighbors whom I barter canned goods to for deer meat, which we love, espeailly the roosts done up in the dutch oven with vegetables.

We also raise Buff Orphington chickens and sell their eggs and any extra produce from our home. Our Mommys are in the chicken tractor now, which we have renamed the maturnity ward, one little peeper hatched out yesterday. It is so fun watching the mother chickens raise their young, showing them how to scratch for bugs, and how to take dust baths.

We also grow lots of herbs for spices and medicine, I make tinctures of echinicha, motherwort, astragulas, horehound, dandelion, nettle, and more, we make our own teas, of camomile, hops, clover, rose hips, lemon verbena, balm and mints, to name a few.

My real love though is my flowers and I am known as the flower lady around here. Our humble cottage is surrounded by Foxgloves, Canturbury Bells, Tree Peonies, Delphienims, Oh I could go on and on naming all the wonderfull flowers, but I really must be boring you.

Our home is very humble and we don't have many of the luxerys that the girls see in their friends houses, Like an extra bathroom , or big closets, or dishwashers. 'But I tell ya, I wouldn't trade the view from my front window for any of these, The rolling hills that greet me every day are a tresure to me.

If there was one thing that I would wish for and I do wish for it, often making myself very sad, because it seems so unobtainable, that is for a woods and a stream. Oh, how I yearn, to take myself down to a little stream, to think and to dream, how I yearn to have one to call my own, to experiance undisturbed.

All in all , we have a wonderful life, you can see our place on the countryside friends pictures, and I have a small piece printed in the latest Countryside titled, This is The Good Life. The boys they have posted above the article are not mine, altho. Countryside labled them as the Trendle boys.

Well hey, I'm sure that I have spoken more then my share, and I am interested in getting to know you all. I think that this is going to be an enjoyable journey. Love Tren

-- Anonymous, April 06, 2001

Hi everyone, I am going to be 57 this year and my husband Gary will be 63. I have a hodge-podge background that is a bit wierd to discribe. In the 60's I was an anti-war activist. I married a man part Potawatomi indian and we had three children, lived in a geodome we built in the middle of 70 acres. A combination of too much drugs and alcohol, plus his dissatisfaction with the homestead life, turned our marriage into one of abuse and eventual divorce. I lived there with 3 small children, no phone and no central heat (we are talking michigan here) for several years and eventually gave up and moved to town. I have been a political activist most of my life until, after totally devoting most everything to the passage of the ERA and nuclear freeze initiative, I became discouraged and just plain dropped out. I studied under Chogam Trumpa Rinpoche, a Tibetian Buddhist Vajrayana master, for many years, until his death. 18 1/2 years ago I became totally defeated in my alcholism and entered a recovery program and have been clean and sober ever since. I married my best freind in recovery 16 years ago. We are both born again Christians, but have deep convictions that the teachings of Christ have been very perverted by traditional Christian churchs. We are far more fundimental than the fundimentalists and believe All the teachings of Christ should be followed. (for this I have been somewhat demonized by the fundimentalist Christians on the forum) We live on 40 acres here in southcentral Michigan, raising all our own meat, veggies etc. We bought bare ground 13 years ago and have slowly built a homestead. I guess this is getting long, so I had better quit. Oh, my favorite president was Jimmy Carter, in fact, he was probably the only one we have had that I have respected. I would discribe myself as terribly radical environmentally, in that I share the indian view of "ownership". I think that there should be a "green belt" all along both oceans and around the great lakes that no one "owns", but admit that it is too late now to reverse what has happened. Enough already, take care

-- Anonymous, April 06, 2001

Well, let's see. I'm Betsy and I'm 27 years old and I live at the foot of the Catskill Mountains. Unfortunately, right now I work and live during the week in New York City and my sweetie, John, holds down the fort upstate. I go home on weekends; not ideal, but the best we can do for now. Right now our family includes an eight-month-old Rottweiler pup, called Zoe (at least we think she is, we got her at a shelter) and Tara, a fourteen-year-old grouchy cat.

We're planting our first garden this year (as you may know) and we are wanna be homesteaders--so far we've agreed on bees and goats. Chickens would be OK except for the butchering part. I'd have to get my dad to help me out (he's an old farm boy). I learned how to can last year and now I'm trying to get an old sewing machine we found up and going so I can use some of the stuff Zoe has DESTROYED in a quilt.

I like to cook from scratch, read and go to yard and rummage sales. John is a car enthusiast and we have a 1974 Porsche 914 that he restored (he's a mechanic among many other things). We hope to get married sometime soon--he won't say when and I'm not gonna nag. There are some things you can't bully a man into.

Well, that's enough about me for now. See you beyond the sidewalks!

Betsy

-- Anonymous, April 06, 2001

Hi Betsy, Yesterday I wrote a question similar to yours, but the computer went haywire and I couldn't send it. I would also like to read "profiles" of the folks here. I'd like to print them out to refer to later. I'm more interested in peoples philosophies of life than were they live etc., but that can be interesting too.

I'm a deep ecologist, christian, semi-vegetarian, artist, fiance, animal lover, organic gardener, book lover, PBS watcher and NPR listener.

I'm 43, own my own 1910 stone cottage located about 20 west of Kansas City and a 1987 Ford pickup. I'm getting married for the first time this summer. (Took me 26 years to find someone I could stand to have around everyday!) I have 1 dog, Gabriel and 3 cats, Lacey who is 18!, Esi, and Tom. That pretty much sums up my world except for mentioning my Dad who will be 80 this year.

-- Anonymous, April 06, 2001

I posted most of this on the CS forum last year, but with a few revisions, is still accurate, so here goes:

I have held many different positions, from Army Interrogation Team Chief/Russian Language to Medical Laboratory Technician to Aerospace Electronics Rework Technician, and I have a B.A. in Russian Language and Linguistics. I now work as a legal assistant in an intellectual property firm, commuting to work. It takes me away from home 10½ hours a day. There isn’t a lot of rural opportunity in this field, but the money is good and will help pay for my farm-to-be.

I am very concerned about the environment and the ever-increasing class division in this country, so I guess that makes me left-leaning politically.

My partner, Dean, is a mechanic, and a darn good one. He’s been at it for 27 years, and is getting ready for a career change, which will happen when his youngest, now 17, is independent. Although he is not a homesteader by nature, he is very supportive of my eccentricities, and is generally wonderful!

We have been together going on ten years, now. He is a suburban guy, but we will move to the country as soon as his youngest is independent. To that end, I have purchased ten and a half acres, about 4 acres of it in pasture, the rest in timber, with a small house. I will be developing it until we can move out there. I anticipate that will be in three or four years. During the intervening time, I would like to get it mostly paid off. We just planted 12 fruit trees there. It has a water catchment system that I need to improve or expand, since water seems to be a real problem on the island. Some wells there are already dry. Scary!

For now, I’m learning as much as I can on approximately 1/4 acre downtown in a small city, Everett, Washington. Our place has a large and very visible front yard, and I am trying to develop some edible landscaping there so it’s not a total waste of land and resources. I have little use for lawn. For the back yard, I have worked with Animal Control and the neighbors to be able to keep chickens and goats. I also have 4 dogs, a cat, and assorted finches. I’d like to get rabbits and bees, but I’m running out of room and time. Inside activities I enjoy are spinning, making soap, making bread, cooking, and reading. I’d like to get more involved in canning, too.

My biggest challenge lately is getting things in the ground, and once they’re there, getting them to produce before the fall rainy season mildews them to death. (Lot of trouble with tomatoes here in NW Washington State.) Heat units for ripening are also scarce, but in the summer, we frequently go for LONG stretches without any serious rain, so irrigation is still an issue. I’m having fun learning though, and try not to take my (many) failures too hard. I’ve failed many times at making hard cheese, once at making fudge (so far), and last year’s bee balm, sweet woodruff, and pennyroyal starts dried up and blew away.. But, the five new fruit trees, two grapes, two currants, and one Loganberry that I planted last year all survived and are doing well. Yeah!

-- Anonymous, April 06, 2001

Hmm. Wow! Your lives all sound so interesting!! I’m glad to get to know you.

I am soon to be 49 and my husband is 11 days older than I. We have been married 19 years; no kids. We live in Snohomish County in Western Washington State, east of where Laura does. We have a modest 2-bedroom house and various outbuildings on 5 acres. We have a bunch of sheep (duh.) and a couple of goats, plus chickens, ducks (eagle bait now) cats (5) and geese. This is all old news.

I am a Christian, capital “C”, and I like it! I go to organized church and participate as an officer, etc. My denomination is unabashedly liberal, theologically speaking. We are quite inclusive and try to remember that Christ hung out with a bunch of marginalized weirdoes. So I try to remember to love everybody (some people seem harder for me to love than others!!!) I also believe that God speaks in a bunch of different languages, all the way from blades of green grass waving in the spring, to other languages and cultures in countries far away.

I don’t know what I am anymore, politically speaking. I used to be a very liberal feminist and civil rights supporter. I think getting older has mellowed me quite a bit, and events over the past several years have made me less inclined to believe that liberals have all the answers to things. Up until fairly recently, I have been thinking of myself as pretty middle-of-the-road. However, our new president is sending me fleeing right back to the left!

Job-wise, I am currently working in town as a medical transcriptionist. I also do some administrative stuff, which I would rather not have to do, but eventually I hope to get a clean-cut gig just doing transcription, hopefully from home. I “retired” a couple of years ago from working in retailing (apparel buyer, inventory manager, planner, systems analyst, etc.) which made for an interesting schizophrenic lifestyle while trying to live a simple country life! I hated commuting and corporate politics (still do.) So I up and quit a couple of years ago! However, I realized that my husband could be freed from his job sooner if I could only work a few more years (I think 3 at the most!! 2 even sounds like too long!!) Thus I went back to school for 45 more credits and graduated this past January. Been working since mid-February, so I’m still a newbie at all this medical stuff. Interesting, though! I really like the transcription part!

I got side-tracked for the past year with the school/new job thing so everything seems out of control and behind around here. I have a garden going again but with all the chores and maintenance (seems like every fence needs mending (goats!), every outbuilding needs painting, and every other project needs finishing!) I’m not sure how much I’ll be doing this year except trying to catch up. Ah well. That’s life!!

-- Anonymous, April 06, 2001

Well, lets see…

I’ll be 36 in July and my wife (Ruth) will be 46 in November. Is that what’s known as a May/December romance? :-) I know at the time we started dating Ruth got quite a bit of ribbing that she was “robbing the cradle”. We’ve been happily married almost 16 years and are childless both by choice and by circumstance. But we do have three cats: Ralf (16), Maya (7), and Sunni (1.5) whom we think of as our “surrogate” children.

Regarding our jobs: Ruth works for a nearby medical clinic running their computer network and I run a farm storage business here at home. We rent out a large machine shed to local farmers for any overflow machinery that they don’t have room to store and we also rent out several grain bins. The storage business really doesn’t require much from me and because I’m here at home I pretty much take care of all the housework, too. We’ve found this works pretty well and consequently leaves us plenty of time to spend together in the evenings and on the weekends.

We’ve only been in our current home for two and a half years now. This is our third home in ten years – We buy them, fix them up somewhat and then re-sell them. We then invest the profits into a better home and repeat the process. We don’t have any plans for continuing that anymore, as we’d like to settle down here and grow some roots. It’s hard to establish a homestead if you’re picking up and moving every few years.

We don’t have any livestock and I don’t think we probably ever will. My allergies/asthma recently flared up after several years of dormancy and with already having housecats, I don’t think my body would handle any more exposure to animals. I would like to have a few beehives eventually but that’s probably the extent of it. The first year we were here we planted several fruit trees (apples, pears, peaches, cherry) but the deer destroyed all but 2 of our apple trees and 1 cherry tree. :-( We do have 16 raised beds (each bed is 4-ft x 4-ft) in our vegetable garden and plan on putting 6 larger (4-ft x 10- ft) beds around the 16 existing beds. This year we’re putting a 20-ft row of raspberries and a 20-ft row of asparagus in next to the raised beds. Next year will see the addition of a 20-ft row of strawberries. I’m really interested in Permaculture and would like to experiment and do research with that here on our 10 acres. I have a name all figured out for my “research center” - I’m calling it: Permaculture Research Institute of Southern Minnesota or P.R.I.S.M. Kinda clever, in my opinion, but that’s all the further I’ve gotten. I have all these grand ideas in my head but have yet to implement many of them. Oh, and we do have lots of flower gardens – you can’t have too many flower gardens, right?

We are both into crafts in a big way. Ruth likes to cross-stitch and I like to try anything that catches my eye. I really enjoy woodworking - so far I’ve built a couple of adirondack chairs, birdhouses, a canning shelf, and a 3-tiered light stand for seedlings. I would like to get into furniture making but I need to put in a better workshop somewhere before starting down that road. Right now I’m dabbling with polymer clay and finding that I really enjoy the medium. I haven’t created very much yet (mainly just some jewelry for Ruth) but I’m experimenting and learning different techniques and looking forward to letting the creative juices flow.

As for politics: I was raised in a very liberal home (my parents were Hubert H. Humphrey Democrats) so I was exposed to liberalism early on. I have fond memories of heated debates with my parents on many different political topics and I thank them immensely for allowing me to speak my mind and treating my opinions with respect. I think this greatly influenced who I am today – maybe to my detriment, as I still tend to speak my mind and that gets me into trouble from time to time. But ultimately I drifted away from the Democrats and about eleven years ago found the Libertarians. I really was more influenced by a sub-set of the Libertarians (namely the Individualist Anarchists) than the Libertarian Party itself. I was heavily influenced by the writings of Benjamin Tucker and Lysander Spooner so never really got involved with the Libs all that much. And to this day I still consider myself much more of an anarchist than a libertarian.

As for religious or spiritual beliefs I would have to say “none of the above”. My parents were Lutherans (Missouri Synod) and tried to instill their beliefs in me but it just didn’t take. After many years of Sunday morning fights trying to get me to go to church I just plain stopped going - somewhere around age 16. To this day I don’t go to church or pray. I don’t consider myself an atheist (i.e. there is no god) but more of a non-theist (i.e. I simply don’t know and I have no way of knowing so I just don’t think about it all that much). I do enjoy watching a beautiful sunset or digging in my garden or simply enjoying nature but I can’t say if that’s spiritualism or not. There are times when I wonder why I have so much skepticism regarding God and religion but I can’t explain it – maybe my brain is simply wired different…

Well, I think I better stop here. I could go on and on but I wouldn’t want to bore you guys even more than I already have. I think what I’ve written here will give you a little glimpse into who I am. Thanks for listening.

-Jim

-- Anonymous, April 07, 2001

Howdy to all you fine folks, My partner and I live in the Columbia Gorge in Washington state. We began our travels together 8 years ago in Wisconsin. From there we moved to Washington state,(3 different cities in three years) then back to Wisconsin, then to Tennessee, then back to Washington. Phew. That's about enough of that. I'm entering my second half century and she is finishing up her first half. We're geting too old for this foolishness. Actually the perspectives we get by moving make it all worthwhile. There are good people and bad no matter where you go. The important theing is to enjoy where you be. That old bumper sticker 'no matter where you go, there you are ' rings true. I was raised baptist and ES was raised atheist. Funny thing is,she is about the most moral person I know. We now are agnostics who dabble in buddhism. We do a little meditation with a group and went to a unitarian church last week which was a real treat. We like to hear about all paths and how they impact lives in a positive manner. We now live in a village where we are limited to our cats but we are avid or shall I say rabid gardeners. We've done the homesteader thing in the past and maybe again someday. We work part time and try to make little enough to pay no fed taxes. Less money means less impact on the environment as well as more time to 'live'. We kayak and hike when we get the urge. Take care jz

-- Anonymous, April 08, 2001

I've never been very good at these intro things, but it's been so interesting reading about everyone else that I guess I'll give it a try.

Hi, I'm Sherri! I'm 37 y/o and I live in Indianapolis, IN. Right now I'm living on 0.2 acres in the suburbs while I get myself out of debt and able to buy some land. I have a BS in Medical Technology and a Masters in Immunology/Molecular Biology, and I work for a medical device manufacturing company in their regulatory department.

I live with my boyfriend/fiance/Designated Honey/ Keith. Keith is 36, he's a HS graduate who spent 10+ years in the Army, mostly doing radio-intercept work in Germany before the Berlin wall fell. Now he does customer service work for a company that processes Medicare/Medicaid claims. We're childless by choice, but we are owned by three cats: Big Kitty (age 16), Kira (age 4), and Wenna (age 4). We've been engaged for about 3 years now, our joke is that we're going for the Guinness Book World Record for World's Longest Engagement (only 57 more years to go). We're both secure in our relationship, the only thing getting married would do would make us have to pay more income tax. (If they do away with the marriage penalty I'm in trouble!)

I grew up on what was a dairy farm in southeastern Michigan. All of my family still lives there, in fact my middle sister and her family live in the house where my dad was born. I have very faint memories of the cows, but my mom was never happy with being a farmer's wife so when I was about 5 they sold the herd and rented the fields, and my dad went to work for Ford. We always had a big garden in the summer, but that's the only practical experience I had growing up.

I got married straight out of college and spent the next 12 years living the typical decadent yuppie Republican lifestyle. I was miserable, but I didn't know why. I finally figured out that the life I was living was 180 degrees out of sync with my belief system. I went through a lot of changes that my husband couldn't deal with, and we ended up divorcing.

As far as religion goes, I was born and raised Methodist and was active teaching Sunday School, choir, Job's Daughters, and stuff like that, but none of it really "took". I used to sit in the back pew in church on Sunday and read "The Lord of the Rings" during the sermon! After a brief stint of fundamentalism in college, I became an atheist for many years. I now refer to myself as a "Pagan Agnostic". I believe in the divinity of nature, I'm just not so sure about the whole concept of God(s). I take most of my religious practice from Celtic folklore beliefs, and we do have a group of friends that we gather with to celebrate the eight neo-Pagan holidays. My interest in homesteading stems from my spiritual beliefs. It just seems silly to me to practice a religion based on the agricultural cycle and not be an active participant in that cycle. It's a hunger to be a part of the land that I just can't put into words. I know that I'm romanticizing it, so Countryside magazine and these forums are my reality checks.

Most of the time I feel like I'm living a double life. My job is very scientific, I spend quite a bit of time dealing with the FDA. My co- workers are conservative Christians, and my boss just bought a $50,000 sports car because she was bored. What I really want to do is be a Clinical Herbalist. I did a medicinal herbalism apprenticeship last summer that I really loved. My dream is to buy some land where I can have an organic herb farm, and develop my own line of medicinal tinctures and teas that I could sell on-site and through mail-order. I also would like to have a permanent grove for our group to worship in, if not an actual spiritual community.

My other interests are reading (SciFi,fantasy, historical fiction), quilting, cross-stitch, soap-making, going to Renaissance Faires, and role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons.

This turned out to be a lot longer than I expected. :-)

-- Anonymous, April 09, 2001

Sherri, I’ve heard that called “pagnostic”. ;-)

I am 48, born in Northern Wisconsin, have lived in Southern Wisconsin for the most recent 22 years of my life. Married at 23, divorced at 28, been on my own ever since. I share my dwelling with 2 cats, Katrina and Harry, and 11 birds. I have a 7/8 Arabian mare who is boarded.

Raised in a Christian/Indifferent (mom’s always been a Christian; dad was nominally a Christian, but I’d characterize him as mainly Indifferent) household, one older brother, one younger sister. Julie is that sister, you can see her on this board and CS too. Brother isn’t on the ‘Net and I doubt he’d be here if he were – he’s into conventional landscaping, grass, and no animals.

I grew up in a SMALL town, less than 200 people (and had to go to High School in the County Seat about 25 miles away), with a two-room school house. Though this was in the 1950’s and early 60’s, our little town was caught in a sort of timewarp. Things were behind the cities. Everyone wore hand-me-downs from older siblings and cousins and saw no disgrace in it. Almost everyone in town was at least a shirt-tail relative to everyone else. I never saw a TV program until I was 8. We didn’t get our own TV until I was almost 11.

Grew up with lots of animals – as well as house pets, we had, at various times, rabbits, bantam chickens, mallard ducks, a Toulouse goose, and even a pet raccoon. We also had pigeons and pheasants that were supposed to be used for training my dad’s pointer. That never happened. The pigeons multiplied and the pheasants escaped to the wild. Learned a lot about chicken and duck behavior.

All the men in my family were hunters, and we ate a lot of venison, duck, goose, pheasant and grouse (yummy yummy). We even ate snapping turtle and fish eggs. Germans on dad’s side, so we also ate stuff like scrapple and hasenpfeffer. Grandpa supported himself with his bait store (caught the minnows himself), guiding fishermen, and trapping in the winter.

I spent many years working in the medical field as a clerical. I was a secretary in the Heart Surgery/Transplant Program at UW Hospital and most recently, in Admissions. My main income is now from a family business, unrelated to homesteading.

I’m still a Wannabe, for reasons too complicated and boring to go into. Hope to change that in 2-3 years. I have never had enough sun to have an entire garden plot, so my growing has been done in patches here and there and in containers. This year I should be able to have a garden plot (I’m going to start a separate thread about that). I’m thinking about getting into worm ranching too – need to do something with all the left-overs from the birds (very messy eaters). Can’t have any outdoor critters here, so I won’t be staying here forever.

I hope to someday have fowl for eggs – ducks and/or chickens. Maybe a goose or two for guardians. I like sheep, so MIGHT get some of those if I ever have the land. I don’t really want to leave Wisconsin. I love this area, but unfortunately so do a lot of others, and land is getting very expensive (and built up with suburbs), so who knows where I will finally end up. Maybe I’ll just move off to Hawaii! ;-)

-- Anonymous, April 10, 2001

Hi , this is Patty in Northern NY .Tim and I have been married for 16 years .We moved here 3 years ago .We have 140 a farm .Our house is in constant repair and the barn is next .We also hope to put an addition on the house this summer.We have 4 children 15,12,8, and 21 months .We have beef cows,sheep,goats,hogs,chickens, barn cats and dogs.Including my new Australian Cattle Dog pup.

-- Anonymous, April 10, 2001

Interesting that so many folks work in medical fields. Is that b/c there's more jobs there, or does that say something (I have no idea WHAT that says...just something, maybe!)

-- Anonymous, April 10, 2001