Different Lives
My husband and I have vastly different backgrounds. He was raised in a small
town in Texas, while I was raised in Detroit and its suburbs. His grandparents
were primarily farmers while my grandparents primarily worked in offices. My
grandfather did have a degree in agriculture and traded cattle for most of his
career. However, when I visited his work, I mostly remember the stink of the
auction house, stray barn cats who lived in the rafters, and having allergy
attacks. It wasn’t until years later that I wish I had paid attention when he
described different breeds of cattle or what made a good dairy cow vs. what
made a good beef cow.
For the most part, I was a city girl. I’d never been hunting, used a
chainsaw, or taken care of livestock. I’d never grown anything other than the
most basic of houseplants. I did, however, have a fascination with pioneer
life. I fostered hobbies like needlework, wool spinning, sewing and crochet.
I’ve tried my hand at soap & candle making, and during my time in the Army,
I picked up some basic carpentry skills. Once we got married, I became obsessed
with bread baking and cooking from scratch. I learned to dehydrate and can food
for long-term preservation.
My husband, on the other hand, remembers bird hunting and fishing regularly
as a child. He kept rabbits for meat. His grandfather actively farmed in the
panhandle of Texas. The way his family tells it, the farm was a sprawling row
crop farm. They had some animals and a garden for their own family’s use, but
mostly the farm existed as a monoculture of wheat, milo or soybeans.
Becoming Country
So now the city girl and the country boy are married. As I said, I became
obsessed with cooking from scratch, and that naturally led to a fascination
with home gardening. While we lived in the city, we practiced many urban garden
methods and enjoyed supplementing our diet with foods we grew ourselves. We
came to want a farm to build ourselves, from the ground up. But sadly, acreage
in our part of the world was beyond our means. So, we packed up our entire
family – at that time two children and his mother – pets and possessions and
moved halfway across the country to southeast Missouri.
We moved to what could loosely be termed a “farm” in the middle of the Mark
Twain National Forest. We’re near the Missouri “Gateway to the Ozarks,” Lake
Wappapello, and the Missouri portion of the Trail of Tears. Our farm is 25 acres
of half woodlot and half pasture. There’s a wet-weather creek running through
the middle that stays full of water about half the year. When we moved here, the
only structurally sound building was the house itself. The property came with a
broken tractor and 3 Black Angus heifers (girl cows who haven’t had any babies
yet). We now had a well house, barn, outbuilding, and fences that were all in
various stages of falling down. We had no experience taking care of cows and it
was nearly winter. For some reason I thought that getting five chickens that
first fall was a great idea, so then we got a crash course in raising them as
well.
To say that our first winter snuck up on us is an understatement. Our well
froze on the first wintry night in November that year and we had to spend a
weekend framing up and insulating a new well house. That was my first
experience in this country not having hot running water in my house, and it
completely changed my outlook on life here. We built a hasty wall, cut a hole
in the side of a shed, put up some fencing and called it a chicken coop. My
husband, who still had a full-time job working from home, spent the first several
Saturdays locating – and reinstalling – the pieces of the barn that had fallen
off and blown around in the wind. We spent most of that winter figuring out how
to feed and water animals with a frozen well pump, fixing buildings, unpacking,
and dreaming about how great our farm was going to be someday.
The Dream Begins
Finally winter broke, and after several frustrating months chasing cows around
the countryside – usually in the dark – my husband devoted some time to
rerunning all the barbed wire fences. This was also in anticipation of us getting
a small herd of registered Dexter cattle which included 2 cows and a bull. That
second year, I built two mobile chicken coops that were WAY too heavy to be
mobile. We tried our hand at raising guineas and had our first wild-dog encounter.
We got a small flock of what we intended to be meat chickens. They almost all ended
up in the freezer, but we learned a lot about chicken breed descriptions that
year. We repaired and fixed up the chicken coop a little more, we witnessed our
first live cow birth, and expanded the dream even more.
The New Dream
After that we were all in. We had a brief year where I tried to open a brick
and mortar business “in-town” but COVID stopped that short and it was back to catch
up on all the projects that had been put on hold. Since moving here we’ve had
the opportunity to learn a lot. We’ve met some of the local farmers and
participated in Farmer’s Markets. We’ve learned about the local growing zone, and
especially observed our own land through several turns of the calendar. In
doing that the dream has become a vision.
We’ve decided that this little farm will be our Homestead. It’s where we’ve
settled. We’ve come to love our land and are intent on improving its health and
vitality so that we can hand over a wonderful legacy to our girls. I’ve decided
to publicly share the journey rather than keep a personal journal to help share
our lessons with other new homesteaders.
I expect to write on topics related to our unique Homestead and the
processes used to develop it. That will probably mostly be related to our agricultural
pursuits and land development techniques, but I may also include traditional
homesteading, survival and/or bush-craft skills as the whim or opportunities
present themselves.
I would love to connect with all manner of people through this blog. Experienced
homesteaders, new homesteaders, aspiring homesteaders, city dwellers who just
want to learn some new gardening methods, or anyone who is interested in the
unique ways that we can blend old wisdom with new methods can find value here.
If I make it through my first year, I expect to have at least 50-100 separate
posts related to the homestead. I also plan to include an associated online
course called Homesteading for Beginners as well as the framework of a book
series by the same name.
I’d love to hear from you. Please leave your comments down below. If you want to hear more from me, subscribe with your email address to get them right in your inbox.
Rocks and Roses 