Dear Pearl,

Hello from over the rainbow!
  
We have a small 10 acre farm in Kansas with goats, pigs, chickens, ducks, rabbits, & honeybees. We have a small veggie garden and a field of corn. We also have a pasture of fescue that we sell to horse owners. Everything we have is to eat or sell as we are truly homesteading. I wanted to write two ideas to check into:

Government land: 

Call your local Corp of Engineer office. They lease land for a very small price to raise another field of produce.

Houses to move: 

Our home is actually two houses put together. In this area you can find houses for free. To move a home may cost $5,000 on up, but you have a house already built to put on your land.

We spent some money putting on nice siding and good storm windows. Add the landscaping and we have a beautiful large home with over 3,700 sq. foot!  We also have 2 hot water tanks, 2 electric boxes, and 2 heat/air units!  We are currently looking for a 3rd home to add on the backside of the houses to use as a game room/excercise area and a cover for our above ground pool ($400 at an auction).

We got all our insulation for our house at a nearby factory that makes refrigerated trucks. The silver-backed insulation is in the shape of paneling for walls, but it is light weight. This is the same stuff that they use in beer trucks to keep it cold in Texas and warm (not frozen) in Minnesota. The factory was only too glad for us to haul it away. We had so much, I even paneled my chicken house with it. I don't recommend that though, the chickens pecked at it! more later... Tracy in Kansas