Rebuilding my parents homestead 🐐

These days I often find myself walking around my parents homestead, envisioning what a stamp I could put on it should I inherit it. While I think they have a few years left in their life, and my parents assets would certainly be split evenly between me and my sister, there is a chance I will end up on their 5 acres where I grew up eventually as my sister owns a house in Saratoga and is quite content living there.

In many ways, especially in their later years, much of the homestead has been allowed to revert to woods, the buildings neglected in need of repairs. They did have their kitchen and bathroom renovated, and the garage rebuilt with tacky vinyl siding, but the grounds have reverted significantly to thicket and woods of mostly trash species, specifically black locus, though admitly that does burn well and makes excellent fence posts.

The whole neighborhood is rural residential, with homesteaders and mostly working folks around. Not a lot of the woke shit nearby, though I still would have be careful with fires and not burn anything too noxious as there are still is neighbors nearby. But certainly with goats, a chain saw, and some planning, the trash species could be cleared out, and some mowing and brush hogging, and maybe seed, the landscape made productive again. Pigs could bring in some fertility – I was thinking I could probably start a food composting collection at work and maybe also start collecting shredded paper from the data department as a source of bedding and carbon. I have no idea how much of their equipment is still working.

Certainly if I ended up with their land, one of the first things I would do is cancel to their cable and weekly trash subscriptions. I can burn burnables – within reason – compost and take the rest to the transfer station.  I could bring chickens and rabbits for eggs and meat fairly quickly on the land. Build fences, get goats cleaning up some of the brush and trash species. If I decide to stay on the land for a while, I could add solar mounted on racks to backyard, along with a grid-tied inverter with on site storage. Maybe not fully off-grid but still a way to improve sustainability.

But then again, it’s still New York State, and in that sense it still kind of sucks. It’s a residential neighborhood so you have to be careful what you burn. There really isn’t enough land or distance to do much shooting there, and you have all those New York State gun restrictions including the ammo background checks to deal with which of sucks. Grid tied solar with battery isn’t terrible, but it’s still kind of woke and unreal compared to a fully off-grid-cabin in wilderness. Where you can have fires and burn whatever, and shoot guns whenever you want. I’m not sure I want to compromise.

Maybe it just becomes a place to live and improve somewhat through retirement. Then I can sell it and buy that true off-grid property in a freer state. I don’t know, I have options though I’m not sure what is right for me. I’m not willing the quick death and disappearnce of my parents – that will leave a big gap in my heart – but I know those days will come some day in the future not that far away.