I need to be aware of anchoring myself to specific numbers when looking at building my off-grid homestead 🐐🏡🔥

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I have lately gotten this idea of the parameters of my homestead that I’m putting together.

  • 20 acres
  • Less then 30 miles, 45 minutes to work each way
  • Total of $250k for the build
  • Up to $300k if necessarily with cost-over runs
  • $100k for land
  • $100k for house
  • $50k for infrastructure (road, leach field/septic, water well, possibly solar)

Having these parameters is fine, but in many ways I am pulling these numbers fairly arbitrarily based on some preconceived notions I have i my head that isn’t based on hard data. As a podcast on building an off-grid cabin notes, anchoring oneself to a series of numbers is dangerous because it risks you spending too much or thinking your vision is impossible.

Moreover, I’ve realized many of these numbers might as well be pulled out of thin air and my own biases. But I needed somewhere to start, and as cost and availability data come to be clearer, I will adjust my plan appropriately.

Why I prefer frozen fruit over candy and chips 🍓🍇

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The past few years, I’ve been buying a lot of frozen fruit when I go grocery shopping. I really like the bulk bags of frozen fruit you can get at a place like Walmart and some other groceries stores that have 2-4 pounds of frozen fruit in the bag. Not only is frozen fruit good on waffles and pancakes for breakfast, it makes an excellent snack, and is very economical compared to ice cream, chips, candy and cookies.

I saw an advertisement for some kind of bulk junk food supplier the other day on Facebook and had to cringe. Not only was it relatively to expensive to buy those big boxes of junk food, I just saw all the packaging and trash they entailed compared to a single lightweight plastic wrapper around the bulk frozen fruit. And I couldn’t imagine that they would last nearly as frozen fruit, which the only part that has ever gone to waste is the occasional blueberry or strawberry chip that I dropped on the floor and was stepped on or otherwise too disgusting to eat.

Fresh fruit might be slightly tastier then frozen, but it tends to be a lot more expensive and a lot more goes to waste due to spoilage. Frozen fruit never spoils. And fresh fruit tends to be a lot more packaged, meaning a lot more trash. Maybe if I lived out in the country and had hogs, chickens and acreage where I could feed or compost the waste and burn the packaging, I’d feel different, but I generally avoid fresh fruit unless I get it at a farm stand in the summer and it eat up in woods where frozen goods can’t be kept frozen.