No, whatever the opposite of homesteading is, that is what we did.

We even had several fruit trees (apple, peach, plum, pear) and grape vines from previous owners, but for some reason we never ate any of it. It was just something to be picked up before you cut the grass. Fruit was something that came in cans that you got at the grocery store.

Not yet, but that’s the eventual goal! We started looking at properties this past fall and hope to buy something this summer. We plan on building a small cabin and enjoying it until the kids are gone and then eventually move and make a go of it.

Complete opposite. Parents were baby boomers growing up in the Levittown type suburbia (few miles from Levittown NY actually),they followed suit raising my brothers and I.

Wasn't there someone on here a few years ago who left the whole rat race & whole lifestyle and basically started homesteading? Raising their own pigs, turkeys, crops and all?

I have great admiration for people of that era. I find their strength and determination to be inspirational.

I grew up in Michigan. We raised fruits and vegetables every year and would can or freeze them so we could eat them year round. We didn't raise any animals but would buy a cow and have it butchered each year. We made weekly trips to the grocery store and my dad worked in one of the auto plants, so it wasn't like we were living "off the land".

As a kid, I would work daily in the garden, watering plants, weeding, etc. In my spare time, I picked strawberries at a nearby farm for some spending money. Although, I'm sure I didn't work as hard as I thought.

My great-grandparents had a lifestyle similar to your great-grandparents. When my grandma was living, she would occasionally share stories about her life as a young girl. It's hard for me to imagine the poverty they lived with.

One story I think about often, is one Christmas, she and her siblings received an orange for Christmas, that was it. Getting a citrus fruit from Florida to Michigan was probably a bigger deal than I realize. Since I have had my own family, every Christmas, I get up before everyone else to sit and look at piles of presents and think about the orange and how fortunate my life has become.

Good topic Zed.

My dad's side oringially settled in Virginia, in the early 1700's, and moved out west during the fur trade years. If I remember correctly, into the western Montana/northern Idaho region. As the fur trade dwindled, my great-great grandfather married an indian woman and they settled in the Okanogan Highlands area of Washington. .

My mother's side originally settled in Dubuque, IA where they farmed. During the Great Depression, they moved out to CA and worked migratory farming jobs, as did many. Eventually they worked their way into Nevada and ultimately settled in northern ID. The had a great place off the Spokane River.

Both families worked in the logging industry. My parents, thankfully, were dumb and irresponsible high school kids, without much to do in western Montana and northern Idaho. If they were not, I would not be sitting here typing this today.

I was raised in northern Idaho, maternal grandparents had a great homestead off the Spokane River in Post Falls, way up in the hills. My grandfather hand-built a log cabin, they had a massive garden and orchard, underground cellar, and lord knows how many acres of timber. As a kid, I was in heaven. We'd just disappear all day long. Other relatives had a farm out on the prairie south or Rathdrum, ID. My father's parents settled down on the Colville Indian Reservation, living on the San Poil river. My grandfather was fully retired by then, due to injuries sustained in WWII. As they aged, they slowly began moving east finally ending back up in western Montana.

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The secret of a long life is you try not to shorten it.
-Nobody

Back when my father was doing it they just called it being poor. They lived in town but grew most of their food in the garden and had a chicken coop next to the garage. They did a lot of hunting for ducks and pheasant for additional meat. There was a well in the house to pump water that they used to fill buckets to put on the wood stove to heat up so they could take a bath in a big galvanized tub. Eventually, when my father was in high school, they hand dug a basement under the house so they could run city water and put in a regular bathroom with a real bath tub. By the way this was in the 1940's and '50's.

Yeah both my sets of grandparents (depression era) had extensive gardens, root cellars, canned, put up preserves, etc.

I think to my baby boomer parents that is what poor people did, middle class people got all of their food from the supermarket.

My wife's dad (now deceased) grew up homesteading, his parents literally were share croppers. He ended up joining the air force for a stint and then became a fire fighter and eventually fire chief. My wife has always been proud of her grandparents humble roots and it shows how far you can advance in just a couple of generations.

Aust1227

http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...=downsizing#p5175068

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

Thanks mck414 for sharing the experience from this area.

And to turtleherder, the basement for the home I grew up in was also dug by hand--wheel barrel loads at a time up a ramp. We'd hear that story whenever we'd grumble about our workload :-)

The farm my brother and I now own was deed to the family in 1823. In a safety deposit box we have the original deed and land survey grant, as well as 3 subsequent land grants. In 1973 my grandfather received metal sign signifying 150 years in the same family. In 5 years I assume we will get another one for 200 year to hang on the mailbox post.

BTW, the land survey grant says something like "from the big rock east along the north side of the stream to the elm tree, then due north for ..." for the plot designation.

From what I understand a family could be granted 100 acres every 10 years as long as they could prove that they could put it to use. Our total grant over 30 years was 400 acres. It currently sits at 3,125 acres. My brother and his family live in the second farm house built on the same location in 1888. In the basement under the original section of the house are the logs and stone work used for the foundation. Still there, still solid, although there have been a few repairs over the years.

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"...the street finds its own uses for things"

Yes, we also have the document signed by the POTUS. Pretty cool.

Quoted for posterity. I love this story.

I had the chance a few years back to visit the "house" my mom grew up in. I say "house" because it is a small french chateau. Moat, barn, and dungeon built in 1305. I left with dreams of buying it back and homesteading.

A few a my friends in college came from families that homesteaded in the 1800's in Wyoming. I had the please to go to some of their homesteads and when your driveway is several miles of dirt roads long then you know it's a big homestead. Coming from the east coast where if you had an acre or two you had a big yard to see miles of land without another person or house was a great experience. Plus, I got to learn a little bit about their family history and hear a few stories. Coming from growing up outside Philadelphia, it was another world. Great people who worked very hard and drove beat up pickups. I can understand your interest in hearing other stories of people who homesteaded. I've read a few Colorado history books and people who came West did not have an easy time trying to scratch out a living.

Us kids never, ever complained about "how bad we had it". When your father and his brother (uncle) were placed in an orphanage for a year because their father died and their mother couldn't feed all the kids so they were placed until she remarried and got them back you didn't dare bitch about anything. The orphanage was why we weren't allowed to have oatmeal in the house. That's about all he would say about the orphanage, no oatmeal.

We have friends that run a farm down the street and we join their CSA and get weekly eggs and veggies all summer. The amount of work they do making a living off a small organic farm is amazing!

Super cool. Thanks for sharing.

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD

Most definitely not a homesteader. Suburban neighborhood, to suburban neighborhood, now to suburban neighborhood. I plan on moving out this summer, to an apartment, right by my first neighborhood (:

But I think that’s awesome, I’ve been up to Eloika a few times, and passed by it even more than that. We’ve got family friends with a cabin on Diamond, and I go explore the colville national forest on a semi regular occasion.

That is a great picture. This past summer my sister and I visited all the places that Laura Ingalls Wilder lived and in the process learned a lot about the Homestead Act of 1862. We visited the National Homestead Monument in Beatrice, Nebraska which is the site of the first homestead claimed by Daniel Freeman - I highly recommend a visit. Coming from an old New England family, I didn't know much about the people, mostly Northern European immigrants, who settled the west via homesteading. We met so many people on our travels whose relatives came as homesteaders and it was fascinating to hear their stories.

My father's family moved to Coeur d'Alene in 1942, where my grandfather managed the Woolworth store until 1976. He bought the west face of Canfield Mountain and the land at the foot of it in the early 50s and farmed there, building a series of houses along Hanley Avenue that got passed along to family members as my grandmother got tired of each in turn and wanted a new house; one of my cousins still lives in the first one he built. My grandfather sold his land on Canfield to Marv Erickson in the late 90s, who built a house on the mountain and cleared pads for several more, intending to move his entire family up there.

If you ever went to the North Idaho Fair and had an elephant ear, that was my grandfather's booth, which he owned with two of his friends. They called themselves the "Over-the-Hill Gang." Grandpa had bought the recipe from a lady in Boise, I think, and the family that runs the booth today, the Lees (some of whom I'm related to) still makes them from scratch with the same "secret" ingredient of Idahoan brand potato flakes.

We spent summers at our grandparents' house--hiking Canfield or Tubbs Hill, swimming in Lake Coeur d'Alene and Honeysuckle Beach, fishing at Fernan, working at the fair, picking huckleberries in the mountains. It really was blissful.

Thanks for the information on the National Homestead Monument. That sounds fascinating to me. Hopefully I'll see it one day. My great grandfather immigrated from Scotland.

"visited all the places that Laura Ingalls Wilder lived"

What a great idea for a trip. I still remember my mom reading the series to my brothers and my myself each night.