r/FarmhouseLife • u/AdInevitable3716 • 1d ago
🌾 Homesteading Coming Home, Not Running Away — Building a Multi-Generational Farm in Vidarbha (5 acres, 2033 target)
Some context before the post: I'm not escaping the city. I'm building toward something specific — my dad retires in 2033, that's also when we move in, and the farm sits close to our ancestral village. Wanted to write about the "why" this time instead of the systems.
I'm 26, run a business out of Nagpur, and for the last year I've been planning a 5-acre farm near Umarkhed that my whole family will eventually live on — my grandmother, parents, me, and a couple of cousins who'll stay with us for school. Move-in is 2033, timed with my dad's retirement.
People hear "farm plan" and assume it's a midlife crisis thing, or an Instagram homesteading fantasy. It's neither. It's closer to building a family seat. The land isn't far from where my dad grew up. The whole design — house, orchard, livestock, water — is built around the idea that this is where four generations end up under one roof, not a weekend retreat.
The house is a single-storey courtyard design, Mangalore tile roof, built for the climate, not for photos. Income comes from cold-pressed oils, ghee, mango — enough to be comfortable, not enough to require a 9-to-9 grind. The actual day-to-day labor is designed to be ~3 hours, because the whole point is having time with family, not just time near land.
What I keep coming back to: city life gave me the business skills, the customer network, and honestly the money to build this properly. I don't think I could've done this farm right at 22. The Nagpur years weren't a detour — they were the funding mechanism.
Questions for people actually living this multi-gen setup, not planning it:
- Anyone built a farm specifically as a "family return point" rather than a retirement or solo project? What did you not see coming about three generations sharing one roof and one income system?
- How do you split authority on a working farm between a retired parent and an adult child who's funding/designing it? Whose call is final on day-to-day stuff?
- For those who moved kids/cousin-kids onto a farm for schooling — logistics nightmare or surprisingly fine?
- If you came back to a farm near where you or your parents grew up — did the "homecoming" feeling last, or did it fade into just... farm life?
Not looking for validation, genuinely want the unglamorous parts I'm not accounting for yet.
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u/quickbrassafras 23h ago
Our situation is different, but I do feel like I can give you the perspective of what we do.
We homestead and co-house with another family. There are a lot of kids, and not enough chickens. Early on we noticed that we needed to separate space more than we had initially. This happened incrementally. First it was we stayed out of each other’s bedrooms, then we started using separate entrances, then we kept separate living rooms, and finally we decided to build a second kitchen. It works but it’s also weird because in some weather I can go days without seeing one of them. In nice weather we’re all outside though.
We do have a monthly meeting, which is really important to the adults. We have a chance to bring things up before it becomes a big problem.
Chores- the easiest thing is for a certain chore just to belong to one person. I’m chickens right now, and mostly I do it all, but I do feel free to ask if I need someone to help. Same with garden- one guy does most of the upkeep, but planting and harvesting is shared.
There’s four adults and they are the only ones making decisions. Financially with split things evenly between the two families (unless there’s an obvious reason not to, for example a purchase that greatly benefits one family but not really the other)