Homesteading

I'm admitting it now for EVERYONE to hear, well read... I dream of owning a homestead.  By homestead, I don't mean a big house that our family for generations will call the "family home", although that's a part of my dream.  I dream of having acreage enough to raise all our own food.  A garden, livestock, horses to work the livestock, chickens for eggs and meat, hogs for meat, goats for milk... I hear it's great!, and being as much "off the grid" as we can be.  I know, those of you who have known me forever, and a few that have recently become friends think I"m crazy.  Well, I've never been accused of being sane!
  My dream really wouldn't require THAT much land... unless of course we bought enough that our children could eventually build their own houses on the outlying edges of the land and really turn it into a "family home".  I don't want a full blown farm, well, I do, but just enough of one to sustain us, not the entire town!
It's funny though, as I think about a Burch Farm... I think, well, besides the food thing, we're not that far away from it!  The people I've admitted this dream to in real life have said, "Well, you've got enough kids to work a farm" and well, that's true; and they're used to mommy's crazy chores and having to help with the family matters, not just their own.  As for getting started on our way... we already cloth diaper... I"m working on making us not reliant on disposable products, starting, and probably ending, with normal things... like not using paper towels and napkins :-), but using reusable whenever we can... I've got a decent stockpile of clothes for the kids... and mend what I can and shop CHEAP for what I can't.  It's finally cooling off enough outside that I feel comfortable hanging clothes out to dry, and not feeling like I"m baking them dry!  I cook the majority of our food from scratch, and have a decent stockpile, but I would LOVE to go outside and pick fresh produce rather than having to run to the grocery store!
Well, I know, that was really horribly written - grammatically and trying to follow my train of thought, and for that, I am sorry... but my brain is wandering and with the way I feel right now, I'm not at all going to try to make sense.

LOL and the entire reason that I sat down to write this was the realization that I haven't purchased laundry detergent in a almost a YEAR!  At least 9 months... I realized today as I though about how low my detergent was and that I needed to make a new batch, exactly how much I've changed.  I was standing, thinking about how I feel awful, but I needed to make detergent, so I did. Instead of my old self whining and running to the store for whatever I could find on sale!  I wonder how much money I really save between detergent and diapers... I bet it's a lot...

Must go rescue the house from the one year old... she's on a terrorizing spree today!