Homesteading: The Perfect Homestead

Finding the Perfect Homestead

Our house is on the market and we’ve been told it could take several years for it to sell. Real estate in Vermont is not moving quickly. This gives us plenty of time to come up with our lists of “wants and needs” for our perfect homestead.

If money were no issue I would want to move to a large parcel of land and employ a caretaker to help us run our homestead. However, this is not the case and it will just be my husband and me. We currently have more than ten acres and it is a lot of work. So our future homestead will be on a much smaller scale.

Ideally we would like to have enough land for a nice garden, some fruit trees and blueberry bushes and a few chickens. We are thinking of a small size homestead perhaps on only an acre of land! Just enough to be able to manage while not having to spend all our time on it, After all we are moving to be closer to our children and grandchildren so we would like to have time to spend with them!

In our last two homes I have had to start the vegetable gardens from scratch. This means years of preparing the soil year after year to get it just right. I would like to be able to find a new home where I am taking over from the previous owner. Moving into a home that had a previous garden lover would be awesome!

We don’t need a large lawn either. While a lawn is nice who wants to spend time mowing and watering just to have a nice green lawn? We don’t have plans to raise livestock other than chickens so I think an acre or so would be fine.

One of my favorite books is The Have More Plan. They talk about setting up your ideal homestead on an acre. If we can find just the right property I plan to follow their lead.

Basic Principles of a Perfect Homestead

Every bit our land should be used advantageously.

Our vegetable gardens should run north and south for equal sunlight. The vegetable garden should be close to the kitchen. I absolutely love having an herb garden within walking distance to the kitchen.

Inside the house there should be adequate storage and closet space. I’m going to hate to leave my current pantry, but would like to have my next pantry closer to the kitchen! I definitely need a cold storage room for vegetables and canned goods.

There should also be space for a home freezer, laundry and fireplace wood.

Housing for our garden tools, wheelbarrows, lawnmower and a small tractor would also be nice as well as space for a home workshop.

In a way I am glad that our house is not selling as quickly as we thought it would. This gives us plenty of time to figure our what we want in our perfect homestead.