Turning Point: The Homestead

FOR OVER A YEAR NOW, my wife and I have been planning a future in which we would buy wooded land in the satoyama where we could have forest gardens, livestock, and a farm house complete with wood burning stove. While living frugally over these past few years and scouting out wooded land often, we thought we would be there by now, but as fate would have it we’ve always been a yen short of a purchase.

For the time being, we’ve decided to settle down here on the nobi-plain at our suburban/ semi-rural homestead to be.

The acquisition from family: September of this year, 2008. Here at this blog we’ll be sharing information and ideas gleaned from living a more simple and sustainable lifestyle here in Japan; growing fruit and nut trees, herbs, vegetables, mushrooms, saving and sowing seeds, possibly raising duck, chicken and goat, sewing, cooking, kneading, broiling, canning, grinding, pickling, baking, and making what we can from scratch with our own hands - relying less on conventional energy sources and more on old-fashioned energies: namely solar energy gathered by plants. We’ll use mainly wood, with the help of a wood burning stove, to keep us warm in the cooler months. And in the warmer months, well, we’ll just adjust.

See you all in September.