The Black Cherry Azalea

I have heard it said many times that you can homestead anywhere you live. That is true. But if you want to go further in having livestock and a big garden, you will need land. I personally would want 5 acres. My future goal is to buy my own property.

If you have seen so far, I have goats and chickens, so I must own property. I do not. In fact I rent from family and this is where I am going to give a cautionary tale.

When I moved onto the property, I put a lot of work into making the apartment I live in livable. In fact I lived for months without any internet despite there actually being internet cables running throughout the entire building. I received the green light on everything I did. But the landlords wife has always had something against me. She is the classic make friends and then burn down the relationship but it is not her fault but the other persons.

Everything was fine the first year except for some whispering she told her husband and he told me. The second year started fine, but as soon as spring hit, it went down hill. I was inundated with texts and phone calls to make her happy. She would not talk directly to me and then mid-summer went onto my Facebook profile and groups I was on to dig up dirt on me (I had unfriended her, but she still had access on Instagram). She used all the information she could gather to inform our senior pastor how I was causing problems in hers and her husbands life. The unwillingness to talk about the nearly eight page email, despite my repeated attempts, led me to leave the church.

There was continued tension throughout the rest of the year. The peak was in November when the landlord lost his composure and verbally evicted me, giving me initially 30 days, then 60 days. Almost two months later they apologized and let me continue staying.

Now that spring has hit, it is starting up again. I requested a written request of anything the wife wanted done and received it. A week later I was reminded of the list. Days after this I went to go clean the chickens coop. The ammonia smell was horrendous because I use the deep litter method and when it thaws out, it is not pretty. Needless to say the chickens got a day to run about as I spent four hours cleaning. The wife got home and that gave her an excuse to get angry, and yet again I start receiving texts meant to make me feel guilty and ashamed.

I tried to open a line of communication with the wife. But it is like talking to a wall. Pointing out all my flaws and no personal reflection on her part. No understanding.

So my cautionary tale is to not homestead with relatives unless you can trust them implicitly. They have your back no matter what. There isn’t a tit-for-tat system. No “I have done this for you, so you should do what I say.”

If you have this kind of history with a person who disparages you behind your back and makes a habit of making you feel little. I would not do any cooperative activity with them. You will most likely be in my position of thinking how to keep the peace, not get eviction notices again; all the while looking for ridiculously expensive properties that you can move yourself and animals to.

Also, I have been paying my rent.

I would love to hear uplifting stories about how you worked out any of these kind of situations!