The Story Behind the Homestead :: We bought our house with many dreams, [who doesn’t?] but our list of wants was rather complicated and well… kind of crazy. We sat down and made a list for our “perfect” house. It went something like this: land, privacy, able to have […]

Our Hillside Story

2016 Garden Tour Wow I’m behind. I have been wanting to do an update on last year’s gardens for months now. I just started planning my 2017 garden and I wanted to document my 2016 garden before I completely forget. So here goes- better late than never! [I’ll try to […]

2016 Garden Tour—Better Late Than Never!

We purchased our first goslings in the spring of 2015.  We got these babies with the plan being to raise them to adulthood and use them for our breeding stock the following year. But first, we had to raise these cute little fluff balls to adults. So this is our story about our […]

Our First Time Brooding Goslings

. If you’ve ever had a run in with a wild Canada Goose or a neighbor’s barnyard goose- odds are you didn’t have a positive experience. So when I tell people we are raising geese the first reaction is: WHY GEESE??? Great question. Glad you asked! No, we aren’t crazy. […]

Why Geese?

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How Do I Start A Garden? Three Steps to Start a Garden I’ve been asked “How Do I Start a Garden?” several times and I always seem to fumble with my answer. I’ve planted a garden every year for the last 6 years… You would think I would have a […]

How Do I Start a Garden?

Homesteading Goals 2016 [Year 3] Well, it’s over half-way through February and I’m just now getting around to sharing our homesteading goals for the year…. Woops. 🙂  This marks year three for our backyard homestead.  Several things are now in “maintenance mode” [yay!], so it’s time to start getting excited […]

2016 Homesteading Goals

Homesteading Goals 2015 [Year 2] Since we managed to get all our goals done for our 1st year homesteading– the pressure was on for our second year! We really had to fight the temptation to do more than humanly possible. Even though we had many homesteading goals to accomplish- we […]

2015 Homesteading Goals

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My husband is lazy.  But the good kind of lazy 🙂 He sees hard work and then tries to do as little of it as possible by finding the most efficient way.  When we decided to get chickens, it had to be easy to maintain them.  Thus, the Lazy Man’s […]

Lazy Man’s Chicken Coop

Chickens. No homestead seems complete without them. They’re quite trendy and all the rage these days. When we first got married, I always assumed that we would *someday* have chickens.  Funny, because at the time my husband was more interested in computer games and jiu jitsu. Oh how time [and opportunity] […]

Hatching & Brooding Chicks- In Our Spare Bathroom

The term “Fruit Forest” or “Food Forest” has become a common term for us [and our kids], but it hasn’t always been.   My husband had been listening to podcasts where he was introduced to the ideas of Permaculture and food forests. Here’s our definition of a Fruit Forest: A food or […]

Our Simple “ Fruit Forest ”

Gardening. Whether you do it in a pot or by the acre, there is something about it that fills your soul [and your tummy].  It’s nice to get the fresh air, sunshine, exercise, and in the end- food.  With about 43,000 square feet of *clear* land, you wouldn’t think it […]

First Year In Our Terraced Garden