But excessive drinking ended that ( I quit over 20 years ago). I was in the Navy and was planning on staying in for 20 years to retire. I had 56 acres of land with a house, barn, garage and other out buildings which was I had bought in the early 80's and had paid off the loan in four years.
My goal in my very early 20's was to purchase property and own it free and clear (which I accomplished), stay in the Navy and retire after 20 years and have a $100,000.00 in the bank by the time I retired. The retirement pay would have covered my monthly expenses and part of the savings would have allowed me to remodel the home and buy what equipment I needed. But I drank too much and that ended that.
Now I'm on full disability and live in a small 900 square foot house on a 50 X 100 lot but there's nothing stopping me from achieving my dream on a much reduced scale. Yesterday I turned over a small section of my yard for my garden next year with a shovel. A task. along with mowing the yard, that kicked my ass and I spent the rest of the day limping. Today I'm going to clean out the pantry in the basement which will be a start on converting it to a temporary root cellar to store apples in this winter while I build another one in the basement which I'll be able to use next year. The only thing stopping me from getting the indoor worm composter completed is having a vehicle to get the 5 gallon buckets needed.
There's a bedroom upstairs that gets plenty of light and i could use that for an indoor garden but my ex is using it now as a storage for some of her stuff. Maybe I could move much of that into my bedroom. I don't want to move it to the basement as it can get wet down there after heavy rains and during the spring when the snow melts.
The outside garden area is 11' X 11' and is next to the garage but by using the garage wall to support vine crops such as sugar snap peas and by using the square foot gardening method to maximize the output of the available plot, it ought to work for me.
I can still "homestead". I just have to adapt to my physical and financial limitations.
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