1. Get small animals. When people think of farms, they usually envision the iconic large farm animals like horses, cows and big fat pigs. There is nothing wrong with having these animals on your homestead, of course, and I know that I thoroughly enjoyed having them growing up. However, large animals can be intimidating to kids, be a safety concern and limits their opportunity to interact with them independently. Small animals are a great way for your kids to be able to take care of an animal, hold it, feed it and be around it safely. If a child can interact with an animal independently, the more likely they are…

Well, as you know, 2020 has been a weird year. Besides the whole virus/pandemic/quarantine situation, we’ve experienced another challenging thing. The Bad. In January, my husband Rory hurt his back. We didn’t know at the time how serious or debilitating this would end up being for him. It is now the end of April and he is still not able to function fully. He is seeing a specialist and seems to be headed in the direction of healing, but as any of you with back problems know, it can be a slow process. Some days he is in a lot of pain and not able to do much at all.…

It is no secret that our world is going through a tough time right now. You can’t even turn on your phone or tv without being flooded with news of the corona virus. I don’t want to add to any of that fear, but the reality is that some people aren’t working right now, food staple shelves are bare, people are scared. In my state, schools and businesses are shut down and we are being told to stay home and only go out for essentials. Whether it’s a virus, job loss, trauma or a natural disaster, life is subject to throwing us curve balls when we are prepared for it…

It is now the beginning of December, winter is fast approaching. Fall is almost behind us and that marks one full year for us on our new homestead. As we are about to move on to a new year, it is an excellent time to review our 2019 homestead projects and make our plans for the new year. 2019 has been a year full of challenges and changes. My kids turned 1, 5 and 4. Leon officially started homeschool kindergarten, and it feels like a new season of life for us. We experienced our first spring and summer on the new homestead. It was a year of learning and enjoying…

When many people hear the word “homesteading”, they think of the hardcore people who moved west to claim their share of Lincoln’s 1862 Homestead Act. Some of these people didn’t have any homesteading skills, yet they risked their lives to cross the continent in search of a better life. This better life wasn’t easy and often came at a steep cost. If the person could successfully live on their 160 acres of land for 5 years, they would become owners of that land. This required a lot of hard work, ingenuity and strong survival skills. Many failed. They either lost their lives to the cause or gave up and went…

Hello spring! The seasons have gotten interesting here in the Pacific Northwest in the last couple of decades. Or, maybe they have always been this weird and I just never took notice because I was too busy being a kid. The summers seem to be getting hotter. We barely have a spring anymore. This past winter we had the somewhat disappointing “snowmageddan”. It seems the only reliable season around here is good ol’ fall. I can’t help but be totally pumped about our first spring here on the homestead. I feel that we have a unique situation here. Although this is our first year in our new place, we’ve been…