Welcome Homesteaders! This is the journey of my small family in it's efforts to be free from Corporate America and the enslavement it entails. Enslavement may sound like a hard word, but friends, that's exactly what we've come to in these last days. We have been duped. We've given up control of our environment, our lifestyles and our food supplies to folks concerned only with making a dollar. But I digress.
The notion of Homesteading started out as a few small seeds planted in my mind after a daytrip to Ohio's Amish Country more than a year ago. I left Holmes County, Ohio coveting the Amish and their way of life. It wasn't the religious aspect, but the mere thought of being self-sufficient and independent of the rest of the world that planted itself in my heart and began to grow. Impossible, I thought to myself. It's impossible to live that freely in Modern America. The Amish are just a blip on the radar. "But what if?" I said to myself....
Fast forward 8 months to early 2008...massive recalls, tainted beef, salmonella poisoning, food riots, shortages, inflation, killer tomatoes and suddenly self-reliance isn't looking so shabby. To protect my family, I began cooking exclusively from scratch. No boxes, packages or bags. No beef. No tomatoes. Our ever present garden expanded to twice it's size. Added a few fruit trees. A couple of berry vines. Found local sources for eggs, buffalo and bulk goods. Suddenly homesteading didn't seem so impossible. What sealed the deal for me was accidentally finding "The Little Homestead in the City" site, chronicling the lives of the Dervaes family in their walk to freedom. I decided then and there, despite the naysayers, that was what my heart was longing for.
So with the support of my darling husband Jeff, and the constant comedy of my children, Isaac and Mara, this is the life we're going to live. On our 1.19 acres of former farmland, we're going to try to grow everything we can possibly grow. Naturally we won't be producing grains or dairy, and as toilet paper doesn't grow on trees, we'll be doing a bit of bulk shopping. But otherwise, we're going to harvest as many fruits and vegetables as we can to supply ourselves with healthy, chemical-free food to last us through the winter. After we have the gardening aspect down to a science, we're going to look at alternative means of heat, cooling and electricity to run our modest little home. It's going to be a long walk, but please feel free to join us.