Hello everyone! I am back after a long break from blogging. We have had a very eventful year that led to blogging going on the back burner. Now that we are in the colder months, things seem to slow down a lot on the farm, which gives me a little more free time. I want to share with you our journey to becoming farmers/homesteaders, so grab a cup of coffee and get ready for a long, but entertaining story 😉

My husband, Josh, and I met in May of 2013. He owned an outdoor and survival store next to the sub shop I was working at while finishing school for Cosmetology. We hit it off immediately and started dating soon after. My son was almost a year old at the time, and he had a daughter that was seven.

A while later, we moved in together. Our landlord at the time allowed us to have a small garden. We grew typical summer crops like squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, and peppers. We didn’t have plans on growing to preserve, but more just to have fresh food in the summer time. This was my first experience as an adult with gardening, so I had a lot to learn. Josh had grown things as an adult, and helped a lot with his grandparents when he was younger.

The landlord ended up selling the house without notice to us, so we moved into a duplex that was a little too small for our family. We had intentions of buying a house quickly. We close to elope over having a big wedding to save money for a down payment on the house. With Josh owning his own business, and me working for myself as a hairdresser, it made it difficult to get a home loan. We spent the next couple years building our credit, getting as close to debt free as possible, and envisioning what we wanted in a house.

During this time, Josh was diagnosed with Chronic Lyme’s disease and we were going to many doctors trying to get answers. Hold tight, I will explain in a minute why this detail in important 🙂

We always knew that we wanted a small garden for summer vegetables, a few chickens to have our own eggs, and a big yard for our children to play in. We always trusted our gut with things and knew if there were too many obstacles in front of something, it usually wasn’t meant to be. There were a couple times we had friends that were selling their houses and we went and looked at them, but none felt right.

Josh had a good customer that was going to put his house on the market but let us come take a tour before he talked to a realtor. He mentioned that if we were interested, he would to a rent to own contract until we got everything worked out. It was a beautiful house and had about everything we could’ve wanted. It had a small fenced in area in the backyard with a small barn. Josh said, “We could get a cow and raise it to have our own beef!”. In that moment, I KNEW he had lost his mind. There was no way I could feed something then eat it when I could buy meat at the grocery store! The house ended up not being ideal for us, so we kept on waiting for everything to fall into place.

We were able to find a doctor that was able to treat the Lyme’s Disease in February of 2018. She is an integrative medicine doctor, so she uses many natural remedies and food to treat illness as well as conventional medicine. One of the important things she suggested was to eat as organically as possible, and avoid processed food as much as we could. We started making changes to our diet and became enlightened on how broken our food system is.

In March of 2018, our dreams came true. We finally had our ducks in a row and were pre-approved for a reasonable mortgage through our bank. We contacted a realtor, whom I knew from work, and let her know everything we were wanting in a home. She began to send me homes, we found a few on our own, and we set up appointments to take tours. The first couple we looked at were complete duds, as pictures on the internet can be deceiving.

We toured two houses and loved both of them. House #1 was in a nice, quiet neighborhood, had a good amount of room, and beautiful rock work all around the house. It had many down falls as well. There were lots of half finished projects that would’ve taken us months to finish. It only had about an acre of land. The back yard had been filled with many feet of mulch, making it impossible to grow a garden.

The second house was much smaller, but still sufficient. It came with seven acres of land, a HUGE front and back yard, about an acre fenced in pasture with a small barn and mature apple trees, woods around most of the property, and a finished detached garage. I didn’t pay much attention to the pasture when we first viewed the house, because at the time we had no need for it!

We went home and started to weigh out the pros and cons of each house. The second house prevailed and we sent an offer to our realtor. They accepted our offer and we signed our contract. We were completely over the moon!

Josh come across an article about the healing powers of raw cows milk. He silently done his research, then decided to tell me he wanted to get a dairy cow to go in the pasture. I about fell out of my seat! We weren’t farmers, and didn’t know the first thing about how to milk a cow! He eventually talked me into it and two days after we signed the papers on our house, Clarabelle was delivered to the farm. (To read the full story on Clarabelle, check out my post on How to Milk a Cow).

The day after we signed on the house, we went and bought a tractor to be able to till our garden. Still to this day, it is by far the best investment we have ever made! It makes out lives so much easier and completes tasks for us that would be impossible by hand.

Since we moved onto our homestead in April of 2018, we have been able to raise 100% of our own meat from raising beef cows, pigs, chickens, and turkeys. It is not an easy task by any means, but we care for and appreciate the source of the meat much more than we did when we bought it in a plastic package from the grocery store.

We make many of our own dairy products, preserve a good bit of our garden to be able to use it in the winter, and we eat a lot of the fresh fruits and vegetables as they are in season.

We now have our milk cow, Clarabelle, and a highland cow, Anya, as a companion for Clarabelle. We are moving towards raising only heritage breeds on our farm. We have a few pigs that are a heritage breed cross. We have about 7 honey beehives for our own honey. We have more chickens than I can count, a few Nigerian Dwarf goats with BIG personalities, some heritage breed turkeys, and a few guineas for tick and snake control.

What we do on a daily basis is VERY hard work. We do not get days off or sick days. We can’t take rain checks or get to sleep in. We wake up at 5am everyday to milk the cow, feed the animals, get our children ready for school, and go to our full time jobs. We come home, tend to all the animals, and milk again. It seems like our work is never done. There are days where we just need a break, but we continue to push forward.

I wouldn’t change this way of life for anything in the world. It is the most rewarding experience I have ever had the privilege of being a part of. To cook dinner and see that everything on the plate we raised or grew, is a feeling like no other.

Our eyes were opened to the terrible things happening in our food system, and to take back a bit of control to ensure that our children have the best food possible is worth every day of hard work.

I encourage anyone that wants to grow their own food, start ASAP! Even if it is just a tomato plant in a container on your balcony, start somewhere. You won’t regret it!

If you made it all the way through, Thank you!

Until next time, Ashley.