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homesteadreliance

Friend
Neighbor
Joined
Jun 26, 2022
Messages
6
Location
Burlington, Wi
New here and currently live on a 40 acres homestead with the wife. We are on grid but going off grid shortly with solar (to be independent more than anything)
We have goats (dairy), chickens, and bees. We really wanted to move to the mountains but current situations have locked us here. Luckily we are in a hilly area of Wisconsin and have hardwood to heat and a spring fed creek on the property too. We got really lucky with this property.

Hope to learn from this community.
 
Welcome from the mountains of Alaska! It sounds like you will have lots of items to share as there are many here doing just what you are doing!
 
Welcome from the "Kenai Mountains" in beautiful Alaska.
 
Welcome from Central WI. We are on 50 acres and also have solar. Many knowledgable folks here to converse with!
On grid but can turn off with a switch and for now net zero and sell back excess; battery backup for all but the 240v stove and dryer. Can heat the house (no mean feat in WI with temps way below zero and wind chills in the -35F ranges) with Lopi Liberty wood stove. But DH not up to cutting that much wood now so often use our regular heat at night and the passive solar keeps us at 70F or above during the day for the most part. Let us know how your solar goes.
 
Hello and a warm welcome from out in the woods off S.W. Oregon, we once lived at 8,100 ft. in the mountains just west of Denver, where we live now has very little snow and if it does snow, it's usually gone in a day or two, like the snow up on the mountains around us, it's great for our water supply, other wise, it's nice not to have to deal with snow and real cold weather anymore, had enough of that in Colorado and the panhandle of Texas, where we live now is paradise.
 
thanks everyone for the warm welcome!
we are currently working on the permits for the solar. Now to start reading everything I can here

we may have to switch on the grid at times as we just purchased a freeze dryer. Trying to see how much energy it uses.
We plan on freeze drying lots of goat milk, eggs, and veggies.
 
thanks everyone for the warm welcome!
we are currently working on the permits for the solar. Now to start reading everything I can here

we may have to switch on the grid at times as we just purchased a freeze dryer. Trying to see how much energy it uses.
We plan on freeze drying lots of goat milk, eggs, and veggies.
In this thread @Double R shared a lot of info including some energy costs. Check out that thread. @Amish Heart has just started with her freeze dryer and may have something to say.

Ben
 
We have friends that have been looking for a home for better than three years, it's amazing to hear him talk about some of the nightmare homes they've looked at, $300,000+ for houses that should be bulldozed. The most recent property he was considering, he called me to come and look at, it had three wells, a beautiful shop and a solar system that was designed to sell power to the power company, now that may sound good but as his wife studied the contract, it turned out to be a very bad deal, $40,000 initial cost, $60,000 by the time all the payments were complete. The thing that got me was that the solar panels were plastic, not that much different than what could be bought at Harbor Freight, I told my friend that according to the studies I have done, I would only get the Mono-crystaline panels made with tempered glass as they are the longest lasting, at those prices, that's what they should have been. My question with cooperative power company solar system is, why wouldn't you have a battery backup, no grid, no power after dark, Iv'e seen this with other homeowners that bought into solar sell back systems. This is why we ended up designing and building our own solar system, we have far too many power outages not to have a battery/inverter backup and so far it's really paid off, it's also totally paid for, we don't want to be in debt for anything any more.
 
Welcome from next door in Michigan. It sounds like you have a wonderful set up there. Enjoy!
 

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