The Homestead Desire

Men are bizarre creatures with many odd behaviors, but one trait has always stood out to me and made me shake my fist at the heavens and scream:

the want of "owning land".

It usually sounds like this, the guy, no matter where he is from or how he grew up, will always say he wants a large piece of property out in the middle of no where, where he can grow his own food, have his guns and be happy.

Ugh. 😲

I've heard some iteration of this since highschool from every single guy I ever knew or dated except my son's father, so I really don't know what that says about him or me.

My best friend's husband would talk about a ranch out in Montana.  Another friend wanted to move upstate, and yet another wanted land in the deep South.  It didn't matter the state, it just needed to be rural and theirs.

Here is the main problem I see, besides being able to purchase land and pay property taxes (you obviously need money saved, and an income to keep up).  Who the hell is going to take care of all that property?  It's work!!!!  Hard, back breaking work, which is why people don't do it anymore!  You can't just buy land and not tend to it.  The town, or city will come and issue you citations!  Trees must be pruned, weeds kept at bay, grass cut.  Why do men want to do this in this day and age?!

It honestly baffles me.

And Shadow is, much to my dismay, one of these men, and he's disabled, so he REALLY can't take care of the amount of acreage he wants.

So, let me tell everyone a story about living off the land.

Back in the 90's, I lived in Greece.  My parents have a house with a garden and outside the wall are their olive trees.  Now, I was a child, I didn't tend to the garden or collect chicken eggs or do any of the daily work that must be done except fetch water.  My cousins however did do all those things.  They lived on the island full time.

There were three different wells.  One was drinking water (really the best water, better than NYC and that's really saying something coming from me), the second was for cooking, and the third was for laundry, which had to be done all by hand, we didn't even have one of those roller machines to squeeze out the water.

My yaiya grew the garden, so we ate fresh organic veg, but it wasn't large enough to sustain year round, and we certainly weren't canning or drying anything.  In order to get groceries, back then, you had to hop on a ferry and go to a bigger island to go shopping, and then come back and maybe someone would drive you back up the mountain with their tractor.  The roads aren't big enough for cars which are considered like luxury planes over there.

One of our relatives takes care of the olive trees, they take the olives and make the oil.  That money pays to maintain our property.  I don't know the exact logistics of it, but that's the gist.

Now, I have always told all my boyfriend's about this house that's mine cause no one else wants to live there because of the work involved.  Despite their desire to own vast parcels of land in the US, no one has ever said, "Hell yeah! Let's go to Greece and see how it goes."  Except Shadow.

I told him, Greece will be your test run.  If you can manage on that tiny bit of land and be mostly self sustainable for a year, than hell, go back to America and buy a farm.  But would you really want to leave when down the mountain is a gorgeous beach?

See, out in Cali, he's miles from the beach, hours really.  In Greece, we're a few minutes walk.

Obviously we can't move there yet, (and the reality is, it might be 8 to 10 years before we can.  Right now, the idea is planted.  Why should we be disabled here, when we can be disabled in paradise?

Now to all the men who are reading this and thinking: but I want land too!  Contact some communs and see how it's done, how much work really is involved to live off the land and off grid.  If you love it, then by all means go for it, if not, then at the very least you will be exhausted and thankfully not wasted thousands on 10 acres out in Nevada.

Shadow has told me his reasoning behind the land owning scheme.  He wants something that's his, where no one can bother him, where he can do whatever he wants and grow his own food.

So men, is this your reason too?

I still can't wrap my head around it.

Let me know how you feel.

Blessed Be!
🌒🌕🌘