[TheForge] A few questions... opinions solicited

[Mike]

AndyV> Excellent Folks (am I laying it on too thick?)...

Nah.  We love it.

AndyV> ...my small reptilian brain racing ahead to other
AndyV> considerations for the homestead.

Right: Big workshop, lots of gear and shop infrastructure; Major
earthmoving, terraforming, erosion control; heavy equipment
maintainance; build house.

AndyV> Does this sound sane?

No.  But since when did that matter?

AndyV> opinions solicited

Okay, so, you need one of:

    A large fortune.  This is optimal.  In 5 years time, you'll be
    able top play with all those toys and eat home-grown veggies

    A small fortune.  This will work well to produce all that.  You'll
    end up broke but with a nifty homestead.

    Really great jobs for you and your SO.  Live in a cold water
    walk-up in town and spend it all on the homestead.  In ten years
    you'll have a nifty homestead and you'll be too frapped out to do
    much with it.

    Do all that stuff yourself.  No time for a job.  No regular
    income.  Live in poverty for a decade. Enormously rewarding.  In
    ten years you'll have a nifty homestead cobbled together from free
    crap.  Nothing will be or work just right but it'll be all
    yours and you won't have any debts.


While I'm OT here...

At the '82 ABANA conference in W.Va., some of the local guys fetched
in some locally made moonshine, properly delivered in a mason jar, for
the benefit of the Brits, who were all agog over this bit of American
hilbillyana.  While the jar went around one of the WVa smiths regaled
the assembly with yarns from up the holler.  At one point he turned to
me and said, "Mike, *you* know what a holler is, don't you?"  Well,
gee, was I ever flattered.  I prac'ly felt like an honorary hillbilly!
Here I was, the guy from Nova Scotia, but it must have shown through
somehow that my great-grandaddy was a hill farmer in Missouri.

So, Andy, I do know what a holler is.  It's what the Good Lord put
between the hills to keep them from bashing together and squashing the
cricks.  And if you start mucking about with the hollers, tearing up
the hills with Case earthmovers and throwing them into the cricks,
you're going to be in deep trouble.


FWIW,
- Mike

-- 
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~. 
                                                           /V\ 
mspencer at tallships.ca                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^