I’ve been doing a bit of research on the next step in our homesteading … bringing in animals.
I figure that the animals we bring into our landscape must be at least as hardy as we are, so the focus on my research has been on cold hardy, tough, self-sufficient critters that can thrive in our cool, wet, coastal environment. I’m posting this as a rather long pdf file, but if this tweaks your interest, please read on.
So the big question is where do we go from here? Well, we’re thinking that the first big step will be getting a dog. This is an easier choice – an animal which can travel with us, and which won’t need us to find a caretaker for the homestead when we are away. A dog will also be very valuable in predator control, both as a warning to us when predators are around, and also as a deterrent for small predators, such as mink and marten (already this winter, we’ve live trapped and relocated 4 marten which were happily trying to move in under our house, and chased, but not yet caught one very stinky mink that was pulling down the subfloor insulation).
After that … maybe chickens if we can get another family in at the site.
If you are wondering what this “woodland homestead” stuff is about, I highly recommend reading The Woodland Homestead – How to Make Your Land More Productive and Live More Self-Sufficiently in the Woods by Brett McLeod, which is an excellent introduction to the type of homesteading situation that we are living in.