We live what you're describing. We have ten acres with another thirty leased to graze. We have two cows-it will be three soon when the milk cow has her calf in the next couple weeks. We (well, the kids) milk by hand twice a day from fall to early summer. The other cow is a beef breed and we keep her calf to butcher or sell. We have eight horses, a goat, turkeys, ducks, chickens, rabbits, and a 2000 sq foot garden. We don't farm any of our land except when we need to work a pasture up, ie to re/plant it or harrow. We garden, hunt, can, preserve, and I cook on a wood cookstove all winter long-don't touch the electric. It's also the only form of heat we have in the house... we're busy people most of the time but to be honest I don't notice it. It's just a way of life. DH and I both grew up like this and we used to live on the 2000 acre family ranch a few years ago so we don't know what other people do with all their spare time and money if they aren't sinking it into their place and animals! LOL In fact tonight I'm housesitting in town for my brother and all I have is one dog to take care of and I feel completely at a loss! The learning curve on any one aspect of any of it is incredibly steep. But... it's life, you're interested, you have a passion for it, you learn like crazy, sometimes on the fly. Surround yourself with knowledge, dive into it. I read gardening boards, horse boards, homesteading boards, poultry boards, and I am surrounded by experienced people. I agree wholeheartedly to start small. Get a place with good dirt and water-those two things are imperative. Make sure your rights are protected, ie zoning or covenants, ect. Then get thee over to the Backyard Chickens website or Homesteading Today website and start reading. Build a chicken coop, get some chickens and learn all you can about them. Start with chickens. Realize that ducks, turkeys and chickens are all different. Don't get one of each and think it will work out longterm. (the voice of experience speaks) Then do like I did and get a free goat on impulse and realize that goats are not at all as easy to care for as you think they are! LOL Read up on goats on the homesteading today board. I love my goat-after a lifetime of being told I couldn't have a goat he's turned out to be about my most favorite critter we have. You have an idea how to garden, jump into that with both feet after doing some research. It's easy to do and pays off huge if you work at it. Find out your zone info and do a soil sample before you plant-buy heirloom seeds and go nuts. Buy a little tractor that can brushhog, plow snow and prepare your garden area. You might be able to put up hay on 10 acres but we don't even bother-we buy hay in the winter and manage the pastures as best we can to provide during the summer. It's a lot easier than haying all summer, especially for just a few animals. If you can make a go with bees it's a great thing to do-very profitable and the bees need the help. Make sure there are wild flowers and water available in your area. Get to know a good vet and start a savings account to give to the vet when the time comes. If you decide to get into horses please oh please get a very experienced horse professional to help you. Horses are a minefield of potential costs, injuries, mistakes, aggrevation and frustration. Of all the things you listed, the horse could be your worst nightmare! And people say goats are bad! Make sure you have a lot of guidance with the horse. The rest of it, do your homework and jump in. I think most people who live like this would tell you you're always learning, always. And if you're motivated and smart, you'll learn quickly. You'll make mistakes and bad things will happen-that never stops. But it's very rewarding. Or something... it seems like it's either in your blood or it isn't, whether you've grown up in the life or not. Check out the Homesteading Today message board for sure, lots of information in one location. You might suscribe to the magazine too, it's really a good resource. Good luck!

I had a vague idea of the meaning but the definition cracked me up! jenr-that is heartbreaking. Abnormally heartbreaking, IMO your mother ain't right. And you know that b/c you have a second child and you know how much you love that one...

I live near Bozeman so not too far from you, Montana-wise! I'm enjoying this board-maybe too much. I was already spending too much time on the computer! LOL So many interesting things and I'm learning a lot! Thanks everyone!

I found a little boy in the walmart parking lot today! As soon as I got out of my truck I could hear him three rows over just crying "Mom??!!" over and over and my Mom Radar went off. I went straight toward him and could see him and saw probably 15 people walk right past him. He was probably four years old, in tears, standing alone turning in circles wringing his hands calling for his mother... :crying: I ran to him and brought him into the store by the hand and his poor mother was inside at the customer service desk looking for him. She had gone to the bathroom and left her daughters watching him but he got away from them and then went OUTSIDE looking for her! :ack2: He made across the chaotic cross walk out front before he finally stopped! Poor little guy, I can't believe how many people walked right past him... To the OP I think the aunt let it go on too long but I have to admit I've done something similar when my son used to wander off too. I wouldn't have let it go that far though. I don't mean to hijack your thread but you reminded me of my story!

Sign your letters: Love, Besotted Times Five :D Except that it's not really a good condition to be in, if you look it up. I'd rather be sound of mind with five kids than besotted with one! She really uses the word besotted? I thought that word had been retired... :confused:

What a grouch! Take it as a good opportunity to practise climbing back up on the high road-be a good example and make yourself feel better about it too. He was a momentary blip on the annoyance screen. Don't let him ruin more of your day than he already has!

I found a link on this issue today and thought I'd update here: http://www.mtche.org/mchefaq.htm Exerpt: Can homeschool students participate in public school sports ? In Montana all access decisions are up to the local school districts. The exception is high school sports. The decision regarding participation in conference athletics is made by the Montana High School Association. They have ruled that only full time district students with a passing grade are allowed on the team. In regard to academics, band, art, etc, there was a MT Supreme Court decision in 1997 that ruled in favor of the school district. Even though the issue started out regarding athletics, the ruling was quite broad and stated that no school district is compelled to allow non-public students take any public school classes. If you are interested in reading the entire Supreme Court decision: http://www.mtche.org/kaptein.htm

thanks for the info that the OP is a teen-I withdraw any weapon suggestions and agree, trust your parents to keep you safe. The dog doesn't care about the walks-honest! Roughcollie, I'm glad you're ok-I can't imagine. :(

Tazer? I carry bear spray in the mountains and feel reasonably confident I could stave off a bear so I would feel confident enough to use it on a person as long as I was in a situation where I could see his approach and remain in some control of the situation. Which of course is up for grabs when you're dealing with an attacker. I would say it's imperative that you stop walking the dog and do everything you can to not be on a predictable schedule.

Your son sounds a lot like mine.... Mine is shy in groups and not a sport minded kid which in our small town didn't leave him much in common with the other kids his age. He does well with other kids when he's around them but he doesn't have any real friends his own age. Online stuff has helped him enormously-as others have said here, the Xbox live and the online communities around his interests (books) are great for him. He has a really close online friend who is a 13 year old girl so he even gets some of that silly flirty awkward pre-dating foolishness! lol I moniter everything he's on and it's torturous to read sometimes (teenspeak typed :blink: ) but it gave him a social outlet he didn't have before.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3chFhCP5mQ (Beetles: When I'm 64) (ear worm) This song came to mind in reading this thread! I have two potential plans, polar opposites. One, I return to college and become an occupational therapist and start contributing to our poor little household income. And hopefully work on our paltry retirement savings. Two, DH finally leaves the only job he's ever had, the one that has him bored stiff but is supporting all of us so securely that he doesn't dare leave it, and we buy that LQ horsetrailer/F550 that we've always wanted... throw in two riding horses and a couple pack mules and start exploring the rest of the Rocky Mountains. We live for our horses and packtrips in the summertime here and all we want to do when/if we have more time is to travel and ride, more of the same. Maybe I can do a blog of our experiences to pay for fuel; DH is a farrier... We're leaning toward option two and knowing us, that's what we'll do. When we're too old for that we'll probably settle on a small farm somewhere and commence to puttering.

A brief head shake no and change of subject should work. If not, rethink your assertiveness and/or your reason for being around these folks. If you haven't asked for their opinion you don't have to listen to it.

Hey there, I can relate to your situation with your 5th grader. That's how my son was in public school until we pulled him out after his 3rd grade year. He had completely learned to skate through tests and wouldn't complete any work, no matter what we did. The teachers wouldn't work with me and I don't think the kid went out for recess for two years and when I asked them to get me involved they would say he was the student, not me. Under their program he had straight A's on his tests and straight 0's on his work assignments for a grand average of C-'s on his entire report cards! I pulled him mostly b/c he was learning to be a lazy turd and his records were going to be a shambles and I wasn't getting any help from the school. Anyway-I spent a lot of time and tears in the whole family getting him remotivated, just not worrying about what he was learning but how he was working. I geared down to short work assignments, went heavy on work focus/completion and rewarded him with his time off in short stints. He had gotten so burned out on busy work he wouldn't do ANY work unless I was flogging him, it was awful. Allowing him to get back in touch with the concept of work and accomplishment and progress helped him immensely. Also I let him self-direct a lot of his work, he chose his topics other than the basics and I let him just read and talk about what he had read by way of work. He got excited about learning and reporting back. I had him "teach" his younger sister about what he learned and make easy tests for her and assign little project. She knows more about Egypt than she ever wanted to know! :D But then he could SEE and CONNECT with WHY we did a worksheet, what purpose the questions at the end served; in becoming a teacher he learned how to LEARN. It was really neat and both kids had fun with it... I let her teach him a little bit about horses too. From that point they have been great about learning, even when they maybe don't enjoy it always they see the reason. I'm long-winded. I guess what I would say in regard to your son is from my experience, spend this early time just getting to know him and what makes him tick, student-wise. Let him feel a little more in control than he has been. I think that wet noodle behavior is their way of exerting some control in the situation when they feel so out of control; see how you can give him back some control in his learning so that he gets interested again. Timewise-we take a lot of time. We seem to do most things seminar-style for some reason. The kids (10 and 13 now) just love to discuss, anything other than flat out math problems seems to be a group discussion and it's difficult to wrap that up quickly and still move along. I do have some tasks that I pretty much force them to not talk and just work but I'm constantly amazed at how much and how quickly they learn when we start talking about one topic and travel over to left field and over the fence and all over the map and before you know it we've done geography, science, history and math in what started out as a state capital or geography location! They never forget anything that we talk about... it's weird. :001_huh: We sit down at the table at about 10 am and with a couple breaks here and there we usually wrap up around 4:30 or so...

Hi there, I'm not sure if a formal introduction is expected on this board but it feels rude to just jump right in! My name is Amanda; I live in Montana and am teaching my two kids, DD10 and DS13. We have a small farm out in the country so that keeps us busy and on the computer a lot. :D This is my third year teaching the kids and we all enjoy it though we have our struggles which I'm sure will show up on the boards at some point! I've been lurking for a while and finally stepped out of the shadows to join in. So... HI! :seeya:

Our Kitchenaid dishwasher just died last night after a difficult 13 year tour of duty! I don't know if I would get another one or not, it was loud and I had to prewash which I absolutely hate to do. I'd rather just wash the dishes completely than wash and deal with the dishwasher. But it held up pretty well and until the last couple years did a pretty good job. I have no idea what dishwasher to get next though so I'm all ears!

I remember going through days and stages like that with my daughter at about that age. It was hard on both of us and I doubted myself so much... I opted to just put the math away for a while and then summer break came around. Then when we started school up again it was as if she had been studying the entire break-she got it all the first time, confident, forward and correct! I've noticed that with both of my kids-DS had started cursive writing in 3rd grade and was having a horrible time with it. That was his last year in PS and he had enough catching up to do that I told him I didn't care how he wrote, just write! At the end of that school year at home he decided he wanted to write in cursive and taught himself in a matter of days. Done. Sometimes I so think that they learn by leaps and bounds, when it really isn't coming along at all I've found putting it on the shelf for a while usually results in a burst of progress at a later date. Of course you can't do that indefinitely but maybe you can explore some alternatives and give her a math break for a few days while you figure it out. Hang in there-neither of you are unique in this!

I'm in Montana! It's very easy here, at least in my district-I submit attendance records on my own say so, stating that we fulfilled all the hours. We simply fill out X's on a grid calender, done. They haven't checked up on me and I've not heard of them doing that to anyone. Here's an informative link: http://www.homeschoolinginmontana.com/gettingstarted/legal/statelaws.aspx In my area there are a lot of homeschool networks and groups, not sure how it is around Polson but I imagine much the same.

Hi there, In searching for other Montana related information I saw this post. I am HSing in Montana and I believe that you're right in that the hs'ed kids can not play football, basketball, volleyball but here we have soccer/baseball leagues that are not school related so those would be ok. We also have a ton of HS sports organizations that are outside the school system so sports are not off the list for HS kids. It's up to the individual school if they allow a HS kid to attend some classes like band or upper sciences, I believe. It varies so much by each district it's difficult to keep up. I forget the justification where-in HS kids can't play the major sports... if I have a minute I'll look it up for you!