Our Plan
We don’t own land. Our experience with cows, pigs, chickens, and goats is limited to petting zoos. Though we both did a little gardening while growing up, we admit to being extreme novices. We must be crazy to think we can do this, right? Well, we don’t think so.
Though our plan on how to get there will change and develop with time, we’ve laid out several milestones we need to reach to get there. Here’s a rough and very incomplete overview.
Learning
Learn to Cook
The best part of a bed and breakfast is the atmosphere. The second best part is the food. We want ours to be so great, you can’t stop eating! So we had better learn to cook!
Learn to build things from wood
We want the whole place to have a rustic and handmade feel. Todd is learning woodworking. Hopefully a lot of our furniture can come straight from his workshop.
Learn to care for animals
This is a big one! We hope to have our first chickens in a couple of years. The larger livestock will come after we buy our land. That will be quite an adventure… we have to make sure we know what we’re getting into, and we’ll have to take on each new creature only when we’re sure we’re ready. We want happy animals!
Learn to garden
Getting high yields on quality organic produce is an art we’ll need to master. Luckily, gardening can be done just about anywhere, so we can start learning right away.
Earning
Build our net worth
Land is expensive, and the improvements we intend to make are not cheap either. Before we are ready to buy the land, we need to be financially secure.
Build streams of residual income
Our plan is to support the expenses of the property with passive income from investments we make over the next decade.
Buying
Buy Dream Land
We still don’t know where it might be, and we won’t be ready to buy for up to 10 years from now. When this day comes, we will be unbelievably happy! For now we think the land will be in far western Montana, in USDA hardiness zone 5.
Building
Break Ground
Sometimes we sit together with a sketch pad and draw plans for the house. And chicken coop. And barn. And cider house. And …well you get the picture. We’ll probably be building well into our nineties.