Hi from way north California | New Member Introduction | Forums

Hello,

First, before my eye bleeding wall of text I am sure to write, I wanted to thank the operators of the board (And regular contributors), which appears to be KVR. I have been researching for a few months now and I have spent the last 3 days on these boards, what a wealth of information!

My wife and I have been interested in homesteading for the last few years, we started getting serious about it within the last few months or so. We want to live rent/mortgage free and supply our own high quality food. Our grocery bill (Just food) is $700/month for the two of us. This is organic/grass-fed of course, but we want our children to eat better than we did as children and staring at that figure which will undoubtedly go up with children and time/inflation is not encouraging.

Our area has much of the cost of living in California (Maybe slightly less on average) but very low wages/economic opportunities. Much of our out-of-control property prices are due to bay area investors in the last 15 years and pot growers paying cash for everything. Our native industries (other than pot) are on life support (Fishing/logging). Looking at housing is depressing. $200k for a run down 70 year old home in a bad location on a small parcel <1/4 acre is pretty common. 3-5 acres of land will run $150k-$200k and that might be a decent start, but then you have all the costs and hassles of building in California (My buddy was forced to put side walks around his storage building which was not even connected to the street). A nice newer home on decent property (3-5 acres) could easily exceed $400k-$500k.

My wife and I are college educated business people and I make a decent salary for our area as an manager for an IT company and she is a very capable bookkeeper/office manager.

I have experience as a backhoe operator, labourer, big rig tow truck driver, chain saw operator, network administrator, business owner and manager/sales.

We should be out of debt the end of this year and I am formulating a 5 year plan to get out of here. I was looking at several areas and narrowed my search to Idaho and Tennessee. Tennessee has great things going for it, but for various reasons it did not keep up with northern Idaho.

The wife and I love the outdoors, especially fishing, hunting and physical activity. Starting a home/internet based business should be easy (We have the business and tech part down at least), looking at food production, either meat or honey.

I could go on forever, but I'll ask my specific questions in relevant threads.

Any info/suggestions are highly welcome, we are serious about taking control of our lives.