Skip to main content

Thoughts, Motivations, Mission and Vision

Thoughts, Motivations, Mission and Vision

This post is a little different then any of my others and maybe it should have been the post that started it all.  I am very driven, when I set my mind to something I go all in, the longer the odds the more I like it and to more people tell me I am in over my head the more determined I get to prove them wrong.   I know this endeavor will be no different.  This could not be any further out of my "comfort zone" to what I am used to doing but at the same time I find myself researching it every free moment I get and the desire to do it gets stronger and stronger the more challenges I run into.

While I would not consider myself ultra-green, I do think we should do what we can to maintain natures balance and do what we can to have as little impact as is practical.  To me this means balancing the impact to the land with the needs to provide sustenance while at the same time getting as much out of the land as it can efficiently produce and ensure it gets utilized. Now is time for a huge disclaimer, efficiently produce in this case is not used in a human or commercial sense.  Woodlands produce cover and concealment for wildlife as well as food for it, it produces firewood with naturally falling trees and a place for the hogs to be able to forage in a natural environment.  The trees help clean the air and recycle CO2, Wildflowers support bees.  In short the woodlands on the property are already at maxim efficiency as far as I am concerned!! I want my land and animals to be diverse and compliment the system and even if it is just this little bit less then 40 acres I want it to be as self sustaining as possible.  The wild game, nuts and berries only complement that goal.

I do not consider myself a prepper as the term has come to be known, however I see no issue with living a lifestyle that prepares myself and my family for what ever the future may bring.  However, I do not ever see being completely "off the grid" but I would like to see how far thin I can can make that connection!  I think it comes from my nature, I do not want to have to depend on anyone.  If something were to happen to my retirement, I want to know I can still provide for myself and my family with a little extra to help those less fortunate.

I know this will be hard work, while I have always said I do not have an issue with hard work and I am generally seen to have a very good work ethic over the last few years it has been a different kind of work, the kind that involves putting out fires and dealing with different personalities or long hours, not physical labor other then a hour or so of physical training every day.  So on this aspect it will be a different world. That being said I have never had an issue with doing the manual labor when it is for something that belongs to me, something I take pride and ownership in.  I also know, if I want to live a long healthy life, I need to be active in something I care about and something that depends on me.  If I am not I will end up 400 lbs and immobile and that is now how I want to retire and live.

The last thing that is important to me is when it is all said and done I want to be able produce enough food to support myself and my family to include my in-laws who are making all of  this possible as well as treat my extended family.  The money raised from selling heritage breed livestock or eggs will be put back in to the running of the farm.  We are not going into this with the intention of it being a profit center but it being more run as a non-profit.   A portion of what we produce will also go to food banks or homeless shelters as long as we have not been regulated out of that.  As a career military man, I have found it is helpful to develop a mission statement, to help keep us focused on what is really the reason we do what we do.  In order to help people and family understand what we are doing I decided to do one for this as well.

Mission statement of TheBar1 Homestead

The mission of TheBar1 Homestead is to produce a diversity of healthy food in a sustainable manner in as much an all natural/organic way as possible while protecting the land and encouraging wildlife to flourish in an ecosystem friendly manner.

Vision Statement of TheBar1 Homestead.
The vision Statement of TheBar1 Homestead is that the land can provide for us in all of its diversity without harming it.

Projected end-state
So by now you may be asking, where is all of this going?  Well,
where this is going is a year round project that potentially never ends to keep me active while keeping family, and friends taken care of and a less complicated way of life where I am not dealing with political correctness, or this or that issue of the day.  I want to be more at one with the land and at peace with myself.

There is really so much more I could say, I can talk about the philosophy of this for days probably but it should give the reader at least a glimpse of my thought process and help those who want to understand my choices to understand them











Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Chickens and Chicken Coop, May Leave post 2

OK at this point we needed to switch gears, so far we had lost 3 of our 50 chickens from what I understand that is not a terrible amount considering they were mail order, what we quickly evident is that the small starter brooder we made was not going to last long they were growing so fast, as we did not have coop yet and meant another intermediate brooder.  Part of the scrap wood that was left with the house when we bought it was 2 boards about 10 feet long and roughly 18 inches or so high.  The chicks very much seems to like all the extra space, and they seemed to thank us by increasing their rate of growth!  It was very quickly evident that we would need to come up with a normal coop very quickly. Out intermediate brooder when we first moved them! about 23 March The previous owners did have a small coup but it would not fit our needs at all, they only had a couple chickens (4-5) compared to our 50 (well 47 now).  Their coup also had an overabundance of nesting boxes but no r

April is Gonna Suck, Embrace the Suck!!

Well this week’s blog is more a personal update then the last few have been.  It is about 7 weeks until I start my terminal leave from the Army, I will leave the Army for home for the last time on Good Friday and get home right before Easter.  The timing is not lost on me that my next chapter will start in full on Easter.  We started doing our taxes today and part of that was figuring out how much we have already put into the farm, not including property or the truck we are over $35K in and that does not even count most of the livestock which we will not have  or purchase until this year.  That is buying mostly second-hand equipment folks and I still have some major pieces to buy, farming ain’t cheap. That being said, I am still confident this was the right move.  I ran into one of my former NCOs from when I was a detachment Sgt in Korea for lunch this week, he was one of three buck Sergeants I had, who basically made my job easy there (except they could not help me for the 2 AM p

Fall Harvesting and some farm pics

I want to start out this month’s blog by thanking all those who have reached out to me about the blog.  I am amazed at the number of people who I grew up with or served with who have reached out to me and told me I was going to be living their dream, I had no idea I shared this dream with so many of my friends.  I encourage as many as possible to follow their homesteader dreams, even if it is just a couple chickens in the back yard to get started, the reward will be worth it. October on the homestead became the month to reap what we sowed, harvest time!  I was able to make a quick weekend trip back to the homestead for the Columbus Day weekend and I am happy I did, there was just so much to do on the farm and sitting at home in DC would have just killed me.  About the first week in October the Chickens (hens) decided to start laying their eggs and once they started they really started.  The first couple of days when they first start laying, the eggs are so small, especially when y