Anonymous wrote:People need to get a grip, the guy wants a couple of acres and chickens, not to turn into a farmer. I would happily do that. 2-3 acres isn’t much land, you can find that in Falls Church.

+1. We live in VA on a little more than .50 acre and grow a good amount of our own food. We grow a variety of foods. It doesn’t take that much work once you got it down and know what you’re doing. It’s probably smart given inflation and the rise in food prices. This guy wants a vegetable garden and maybe some chickens, not a farm.

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/

My husband does this on a small scale in Bethesda, of all places. He has enough of a veggie garden that he can barely manage it and work full time. He tries to grow things we can't get in stores, for example, like Black Krim heirloom tomatoes, and French Charentais melons, which taste divinely. I wish he could grow my favorite fruit like apricots and peaches, but in this area it's hard to keep healthy stone fruit trees. We can't have hens because our property is too small for it to be legal (25ft setback on all sides for a coop), but we've rented chicks and hatched eggs and enjoyed looking after them.

You don't need a lot of land to do all this, OP. You DO need to go to an agricultural area to have livestock such as sheep, goats, horses or cattle, because no matter what land you have close to the city, it's not legal to keep larger livestock here. I dream of having sheep and getting dairy products. Total Heidi fantasy.

The biggest problem with this, personally, is travel. You need to install drip irrigation for your crops if you leave during the growing season, and it's prone to blockage and leaks, and you can't protect your crops from weather if you're not there. If you have animals, you need someone to tend to them while you're away. It's just a lot of hassle. We travel regularly because our families are spread out across the globe, so a farm is not in our future. I do hanker after those little lambs, though...

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.

People need to get a grip, the guy wants a couple of acres and chickens, not to turn into a farmer. I would happily do that. 2-3 acres isn’t much land, you can find that in Falls Church.

Anonymous wrote:He who farms for himself has a fool for a farmer.

+100. And I grew up on a farm

Anonymous wrote:There's too many drugs addicts, Trumpers and gun nuts in the sticks. If my man went country on me, I would kick him to the curb (or dirt road).

Yeah because we don’t have drug addicts one be city. Democrat cities are overcrowded with homeless drug addicts.

There is nothing wrong with having guns. Violence is on the rise and doesn’t look like it will be slowing down.

If it could work for you, look at someplace like Fairfax Station. It’s not that far out, but there are properties with big lots. I know people out there with horses, so I imagine chickens and such would be permitted as well. You don’t have to go that far out to have enough land for some gardening or chickens.

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.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband has this wild idea about us moving to the country and living off the land. We have always been city people and planned to move to the suburbs when our kids are older, but he has been talking about it the last couple of weeks. He wants to move to an area - even out-of-state where we can get 2-3 acres of land. He wants to grow our own food and maybe have some chickens. He is a great cook and has really been getting into cooking things from scratch, growing your own food, and living off the land. I thought it was just a wild idea but it’s becoming an almost daily conversation. I’m not even sure how I feel about it.

He's an idiot. I could understand it if he grew up on a farm, but he clearly has no idea what he's talking about. To start with, you are not going to be able to have a viable farm on 2-3 acres- even a real hobby farm is going to be 10 times that big. Farming is miserable back breaking work and he wants to do it on a subsistence scale likely ruling out anything tool designed to make it less miserable. Do you plan on working to buy food when he inevitable produces far less than you need (not to mention money for utilities, clothing, transportation...)? The further out you go the less access you will have to good jobs and jobs in general if you go rural enough. You also are likely to have trouble getting an internet connection good enough to work remotely on if you are too rural (Hughes is miserable and unworkable and standard in rural America).

I think OP means that he wants enough space for a vegetable garden. That can easily be done on 2-3 acres.

My aunt lives in FL on 1 acre. She has a big vegetable garden and grows produce year round.

My auntie in FL puts a couple of gators up in the freezer for the winter.

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)

There's too many drugs addicts, Trumpers and gun nuts in the sticks. If my man went country on me, I would kick him to the curb (or dirt road).

This would be my response: "Have fun! Bye."

Um, just no...I would not move. If he wants to, just divorce.

You really don't save any money by farming on this scale. The inputs are just too costly and crop failure is too common. If it's a fun hobby that he doesn't mind spending money on, that's fine.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My husband has this wild idea about us moving to the country and living off the land. We have always been city people and planned to move to the suburbs when our kids are older, but he has been talking about it the last couple of weeks. He wants to move to an area - even out-of-state where we can get 2-3 acres of land. He wants to grow our own food and maybe have some chickens. He is a great cook and has really been getting into cooking things from scratch, growing your own food, and living off the land. I thought it was just a wild idea but it’s becoming an almost daily conversation. I’m not even sure how I feel about it.

He's an idiot. I could understand it if he grew up on a farm, but he clearly has no idea what he's talking about. To start with, you are not going to be able to have a viable farm on 2-3 acres- even a real hobby farm is going to be 10 times that big. Farming is miserable back breaking work and he wants to do it on a subsistence scale likely ruling out anything tool designed to make it less miserable. Do you plan on working to buy food when he inevitable produces far less than you need (not to mention money for utilities, clothing, transportation...)? The further out you go the less access you will have to good jobs and jobs in general if you go rural enough. You also are likely to have trouble getting an internet connection good enough to work remotely on if you are too rural (Hughes is miserable and unworkable and standard in rural America).

I think OP means that he wants enough space for a vegetable garden. That can easily be done on 2-3 acres.

My aunt lives in FL on 1 acre. She has a big vegetable garden and grows produce year round.