Husband Wants To Move To The Country

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I do get where your husband is coming from (I too dream of bees and chickens) but as PPs have pointed out, growing your own food can be really hard. Can you guys take some small steps to see if you actually like/are good at these things before committing to a move? Either in your city apartment (get planters and/or window boxes and start with herbs; if that goes well, get a plot at a community garden and move up to tomatoes/peppers/potatoes/etc) or in the suburbs. If both of you like it, great! Maybe think about turning your suburban yard into vegetables or starting to plan for the 2-3 acres. If not, maybe redirect his urge to cook locally sourced seasonal food to making friends with local farmers/getting "seconds" fruits and veg cheaply or joining a CSA.

OP here. He has been growing some produce and greens on our balcony for the last two years. He now wants more space to grow more food. He has been able to grow tomatoes, green peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, squash, strawberries, and greens.

And what about you, OP? Do you like growing things? You mentioned in the OP that you were both thinking of moving to the suburbs -- could you compromise on somewhere like the MD counties with a "right to farm" provision where he can experiment with chickens, etc.? It's less space but could still work for what he's looking for.

[Anonymous]

You can compromise and live in the country right here in Maryland or Virginia.

I live in Laytonsville (between Olney and Damascus). All homes have a least 1/2 acre lot. If you go outside of town limits, we are surrounded by small farms. There are plenty of people who work from home, or are only commuting to DC or Baltimore a few times per week or month. Still liberal (or mixed Rep/Dem), but nothing like the red state I came from. Chickens, ducks, turkeys and horses are the norm for small acreages. I have a large, but manageable garden. Nothing for sale, I just give excess to my neighbors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I do get where your husband is coming from (I too dream of bees and chickens) but as PPs have pointed out, growing your own food can be really hard. Can you guys take some small steps to see if you actually like/are good at these things before committing to a move? Either in your city apartment (get planters and/or window boxes and start with herbs; if that goes well, get a plot at a community garden and move up to tomatoes/peppers/potatoes/etc) or in the suburbs. If both of you like it, great! Maybe think about turning your suburban yard into vegetables or starting to plan for the 2-3 acres. If not, maybe redirect his urge to cook locally sourced seasonal food to making friends with local farmers/getting "seconds" fruits and veg cheaply or joining a CSA.

OP here. He has been growing some produce and greens on our balcony for the last two years. He now wants more space to grow more food. He has been able to grow tomatoes, green peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, squash, strawberries, and greens.

Buy him this for Christmas - it will help: https://www.lettucegrow.com/

I was going to suggest hydroponics too. You can grow a lot more in a small space than with traditional dirt gardening.

[Anonymous]

We have a five acre property with a three bed two full bath house in the Shenandoah. Once the kids are in college we'll be out there likely more than half the year if not 75% of the year. It's beautiful. Backyard is the Blue Ridge Mountains and the River.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. He doesn’t want to become a farmer and own animals or anything. He is talking about growing some of our food like produce and possibly getting chickens ( for eggs). He is fine with not getting chickens, but with the cost of living and inflation, he thinks it would be cool to be able to grow our own food. It wouldn’t be enough to fully live off, but we would be able to save money and grow our own food that we know is healthy.

He is not talking about living in a super rural area either. Most of the suburbs we looked at don’t offer more than .25 acres of land. He thinks moving to a place a little more rural but by the city or suburbs would be cool.

We are not wealthy but we make good money and he won’t quit his job. He works from hone and can work from anywhere most of the time.

We have around that amount of land in the city, it’s plenty for chickens and growing vegetables. If he has a full time job I don’t think he needs to farm a large area on top of that for the kind of thing you’re talking about. Even a garden of five to ten large beds is plenty for a hobby farmer to get lost in.

[Anonymous]

Your husband and I could be twins.

[Anonymous]

Get a weekend cottage or small house in the countryside. Something low maintenance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When my husband gets a wild idea, I say, "If you want, figure out what it would take. If you can make it happen, see if it's what you really want. If it is, once you've settled in, we'll think about joining you."

I would never uproot for someone's fantasy when they don't have enough/the right life experience to know reality.

Btw, he never researches enough to get far with the idea(s)

This is my DH. Once I tell him he has to plan and execute, the idea magically disappears.

[Anonymous]

I know someone who grows all kinds of stuff in his back yard in NW DC that's smaller than 1/4 acre. You don't need 2-3 acres to do that.

Does he have a garden now? If not, why not? How about you take an interim step to the suburbs with some yard space. He can learn about growing things and see if this is really what he wants.

Then tell him in 10 years you'll discuss another move, based on how the gardening has gone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'd divorce him. I'm not even kidding. I barely tolerate the suburbs when I go there and am so relieved to get back to a major city. I am crawling out of my skin in rural areas. This would be a total deal-breaker for me.

Frankly I am disappointed that this was only the sixth response. Usually "divorce him" is the first out of the gate when someone describes an issue with their DH. Get better, DCUM!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does he want to eat a lot of peaches?

What?

np. Eat a lot of peaches, and try to find Jesus. On his own.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We live on .47 acres and have chickens and a big garden that provides a surprising amount of food for us. The garden can be a real PITA though - birds eat the berries, caterpillars feast on the squash, cukes, collards, rapini, etc. And foxes have eaten our chickens.

My point is that you can do a lot to grow food on a small plot, and it could be an interim step to figure out how much you can tolerate all the work that goes along with trying to separate from the grid. But if your DH is looking for space away from neighbors that's a different thing.

Agree.
We have just over a half acre. My husband made a small fenced in garden plot for me. I love gardening, but it is a pain in the butt. We struggled with blossom end rot on tomatoes, peppers, and squash. You need to add a lot of fertilizers. We did most of it organically- for instance, the ground needs to have calcium. You can use crushed egg shells, crushed oyster shells… it needs magnesium… we compost a lot, and even then had to use bat guano and fish scales fertilizer.
Even though it’s fenced, moles and voles and mice can still get in. I only got two strawberries this year, the rodents got the rest.
By the end of the summer, I was usually getting 2 to 3 tomatoes a day. Lots of cucumbers, peppers and squash.
We managed to get a couple cantaloupes. The growing season was short for decent pumpkins. Soybeans - even though I planted early, didn’t mature until October. I also planted cauliflower and broccoli, but that heat wave at the beginning of the summer ruined them.
It is a lot of trial and error. And a lot of research. There are many vegetables you have to plant early and are only spring crops, like broccoli and cauliflower. It’s not as easy as a child’s project of planting a seed in a pot.
Before moving to the country, get a larger suburban lot and have a small garden plot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, I do get where your husband is coming from (I too dream of bees and chickens) but as PPs have pointed out, growing your own food can be really hard. Can you guys take some small steps to see if you actually like/are good at these things before committing to a move? Either in your city apartment (get planters and/or window boxes and start with herbs; if that goes well, get a plot at a community garden and move up to tomatoes/peppers/potatoes/etc) or in the suburbs. If both of you like it, great! Maybe think about turning your suburban yard into vegetables or starting to plan for the 2-3 acres. If not, maybe redirect his urge to cook locally sourced seasonal food to making friends with local farmers/getting "seconds" fruits and veg cheaply or joining a CSA.

OP here. He has been growing some produce and greens on our balcony for the last two years. He now wants more space to grow more food. He has been able to grow tomatoes, green peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, squash, strawberries, and greens.

It sounds like you all are in an apartment right now. A good compromise might be a house in DC with a big yard. There are some sizable lots in areas like Brookland that are not too expensive (by DC standards). Chickens would be hard, but not impossible given the right property. I think they need to be 100 feet from an inhabited dwelling under DC regs, so maybe look for a corner lot. We have friends with such a setup--no chickens, but they have a substantial vegetable garden and a greenhouse. We know a family in CC MD, just across the DC border that has chickens, again on a large corner lot.

[Anonymous]

By the time inflation seriously affects food prices, people will be stealing your garden food. So no don't farm or grow as a hedge against inflation. Do it because it's fun but don't delude yourself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Does he want to eat a lot of peaches?

Peaches for me.

They come from a cab from a man in a factory downtown.