Our Journey Towards a Self Sustaining Homestead

In the year 2000 the Raymond-Hawkinson family was established. We bound our relationship with the purchase of land and a home. In 2003 we sacrificed what we had to try to save the lives of our beloved pets who were cruelly poisoned in their own yard by illegal area hunters. We lost our car which resulted in the loss of a job, then electricity/water and eventually our home and land.

We do not regret our decision to try to save the lives of our pets.

We discovered what our family truly wanted when we had to move out of our new house and live on the 2 acres of land we had. We learned how to build tipi's, we learned how to cook over open fire, how to use dehydrated foods, rely on the sun to warm our tipi and to heat water for bathing. We had to lug our own water so we also learned a lot about water conversation and recycling. We had no septic system to use, we had to learn safe methods of waste treatment. Had the house and land not been tied up in the same mortgage we could have let the house go without batting an eye. We had found something far more stable...but the land went with the house.

That experience while so many see it as heartbreaking really wasn't. We found that we had more when we had less.

Our family goal is to make our income count. If we could only get a piece of land and build green shelters, grow our own much healthier food and use what nature offers to us we could be doing better in life.

We have a profile on microgiving.com and our request is To purchase at least 1 acre of unrestricted land in Aiken County South Carolina.

We wish to build our shelter to compliment the abilities of our disabled family members and not be forced into paying expensive rents for adapted rentals.  Come check out our Rayhawk Family profile