That is kinda the point that people are making... you filed BK.... very few people on this forum has done that... so what you did was NOT a good idea as you did not survive the downturn...
My 'mistake' was leaving that apartment building. If we had stayed there it would have continued to provide my family a home, with an income. We would have been okay.
Instead I converted its equity to cash and used that cash to establish a farm in Maine. We assumed that the apartments would continue to be a cash-cow for many decades. When that recession hit, we were living in Maine and focusing on farming.
In hindsight, I should have cashed out the equity, and then sold the property, before moving to Maine.
... Now, you seem to have recovered.... not sure how... but you do have a pension... most people here do not have a pension, so if they filed for BK they are not going to stay retired....
I would be interested in hearing how you did recover? IOW, if you were truly BK then how did you get money to buy a new place? Also, how much income is the farm providing? Last, how much time and effort are you putting into the farm and apt bldg? I do not see you being retired, but that is a discussion that goes nowhere with people who still work for income and say they are retired....
Nearly ten years have gone by. We spend less than what we bring in.
There is a big learning curve to subsistence farming. We have tried many things. Most things have not worked well. But some things have.
After years of raising chickens, for meat and eggs. We finally have gotten into meat birds. They take 10 weeks to go from day-old chicks to being processed. 50 birds are enough to provide us with 2-years worth of poultry in our freezers. So we are only dealing with raising birds for 10-weeks every other year. We are doing it now. Next to my desk are three brooders loaded with chicks. As the weather warms, they will move outside to coops, and the kennels they are in now will fold-up and go back into storage.
We are active in Farmer's Markets. We have been marketing honey [I am a beekeeper], maple, fiddleheads, pork and herbs.
Bees need to be looked at maybe once a week, but for much of the year, I can easily go months at a time without bothering them. Harvesting honey can be a full day process. Once a year.
In 2007 I planted an apple orchard. Now our trees are beginning to come into production. Last year we got 20 gallons of hard cider. We host a tree pruning workshop every March, people show up and we walk through the orchard to prune. Then in the Fall, we host a cider-pressing event. Everyone who helps goes home with a jug of fresh pressed cider. So it boils down to 2 days of activity a year.
My wife took a course on butchering, it turns out that she LOVES butchering a carcass. Some of our woodlot is fenced in and we have had a boar with 4 sows, if everything goes 'right' each sow can give 2 litters a year. 10 to 12 piglets per litter. We sell most piglets at 8 weeks of age. On a good year we can produce
80 to 90 piglets. For 9 months/year they feed themselves by foraging in the forest. They only need supplemental feed when the ground is frozen and covered by 2 foot of snow.
We have 90 high-bush blueberry shrubs, I need to prune them once a year, it takes about an hour. When they produce, we fill 5 or 6 5-gallon buckets for ourselves. Then we invite all our friends to come over and pick all they want. Those pickings have to be spread out, a person can go through and pick every ripe berry, maybe once a week. It goes on and on for 2 months before it is finally over. We get what we want, and then we invite others to come and pick how much they want.
It is the lifestyle that we wanted. I do not commute to work anywhere. I don't think I could ever just stop doing anything. The things I do, most go toward lowering our COL. Like our solar-power system, the batteries need to be checked and given water once a month. I have it down now to a routine that takes about 40-minutes, and that keeps us from having to pay an electric bill.
