I agree that one needs to be very careful about what one brings to a potluck or contributes to the church supper but I've found that even the non-adventurous will accept certain new recipes. They might not ask you for the recipe but you will get a few honest compliments. My husband would be willing to eat the same thing every day but I just seem to crave new tastes. Here are some examples that people have liked: - parsnip cookies - garlic scape hummus - zucchini and raisin pancakes (almost like carrot bread) There's always the chance that a new flavor will hit the big time. First the recipe gets shared and then some regional manufacturer will put it into production. I'm thinking something like red pepper jelly. I think I first tasted it in the 80s but now it's in every "country" shop. For years, I've been buying corn rather than growing it (the racoons won) at a local dairy farm. One of the young relatives grows it to earn money but the relatives have changed over the years. At first, there was a variety of corn, usually 2 different varieties each week, sometimes a third as a new one was ready for picking. Signs would be posted so you knew what kind. I loved that although I didn't always love all the varieties. About two years ago, they switched to a supersweet variety probably succession planted. At the beginning of the season, the corn is a little on the too young side and by the end of the season, well, it's almost not worth buying except it's going to be the last corn until next year. I'm going to start trying other farmstands. I don't think I've had any silver queen corn in two years and I miss it. The price of berries is a good example. I've been making blueberry muffins from berries we picked last summer and next year we better pick more. I used the last ones last weekend and it's only February. I don't buy fresh blueberries at the supermarket. The berries are available but the price is too high for my pocketbook.

I read this book: Finding & Buying Your Place in Country by Les Scher and Carol Scher which you can find on amazon. It covers a lot of your questions and then some. As far as the cost to run the electricity to your house, you can call the electric company that services that area and they can probably give you a general cost. One variable in the cost is how far away the house will be from the main line where they tap in, and wether you want the line above or below ground. As the book mentions, the ability to get power, water, phone, and septic are major factors that must be addressed before buying a piece of property. But there are a bunch of other factors like soil and drainage for siting the house that you also need to factor in. Just beacuse you have 220 acres doesn't necessarily mean that you can build a house on all 220. I have seen 100 acre lots for sale where only 1 house can be built not because of zoning restrictions but because of terrain. Also keep in mind that the further away from the main road that you build, the more cost you will add for site preparation and roadbed. Even if you can handle those costs, you have to think about the costs of clearing for getting out in the snow. You can do that yourself but that adds costs for equipment you will need once you move in. We moved from the burbs to a 5 acre lot in the mountains and it has been quite an adjustment. We used to worry about a few danelions in our small yard. Now I worry about huge trees falling into my house. The scale of problems and the time and cost to deal with them is a lot larger than I ever imagined. I laughed the first time I pulled out the push mower to cut a portion of my 2 acres of grass - it is a useless machine. Now I have a 50 inch cutting deck to get the job done. When the large trees go down, it is a day of work per tree to cut it up and stack the wood. Thank goodness I am handy because without the ability to do things myself, we would be spending a fortune to bring in help. The book helped but it didn't cover everything that we went through to build our home and what it is like to live in it now. We love the natural setting and the quiet - but there is a daily cost of our time (and sometimes money) to maintain that. Giving you costs for these items will be misleading because so much depends on the location of your property, the type of property if is (open or with trees, flat or hilly) the local economy, how far away it is from supply companies and tradespeople , etc. All I can say is that whatever you think it will cost, add at least 20% to that number to keep as a reserve fund to deal with any issues that pop up - which they will. And if you are lucky enough to not need the 20% reserve during the build, you will surely use it to buy new toys that you will need to maintain your land and home. Good luck!

I am on copper wire phone line provided dial-up also and I think that my download speed is 28.8 kbps. I think that I could have 56 if I had a more modern modem. It is a lot slower than at the library, for sure, and it takes quite a while to download a picture or graphic ... but I am willing to accept that. I downloaded AVG (about 7.[something]) I think ... and it didn't take a really long time - maybe an hour, or slightly more, if I remember correctly. Going to work every day is not part of my agenda for living, these days. I pay $9.95/mo. if I pay annually (and it's soon due) or $14.95/mo. if I want to pay monthly. I think that satellite is about $50./mo. (and don't know how much for a bundle with TV coverage ... but I don't have that). I didn't watch TV enough to feel that it justified my paying for even basic service, when I lived in the city and the cable was in the unit. ole joyful

Your deer pressure and what is successful will depend on how much other food the deer have and how many are in your area. When they get desperate enough deer will eat the plants treated with sprays. I've been gardening here for 16 years now the deer damage was minimal when we moved in. It has gotten so bad in the last few that we finally put deer fence up around the backyard and have been moving everything they eat into that area. I used every spray, hanging repellent, spent a heap of money on milorganite and spread it like crazy all the time. Late in the summer, the deer ate everything anyway. I have one bed out front that still has hosta in it as well as some yellow fairybells, the last 2 years they've eaten them to the ground each time a leaf has peeked out in the spring. This year I set up a water cannon and so far so good. If deer are hungry enough they eat things that people say they don't eat, yellow bushes, woodland poppies even lenten roses. I've still got plants to move to the back, it's a long process as the area we fenced was flat out woods and for the last 2 years we've been cleaning that out of bittersweet, dog rose and scrub trees to make it usable. My old fashioned hydrangea don't stand a chance they eat them to the ground every single year, the blue hollies planted right against the front porch are twigs and I don't think they will recover this time. I feel for the deer not having anywhere to go, but gardening with them around is expensive and frustrating!