I could not have imagined living here a year ago. Not in my wildest dreams would I have thought of us packing up everything and moving to the South. Not in my wildest dreams, I tell you. I just set here on my porch looking out over the forest, reliving my life in my mind as I sip on sweet tea all day. Thinking. Dreaming.

Yesterday was my 11th blog anniversary. A lot of life is lived in eleven years, y’all! Farmgirl School started on a homestead in a small town on a third of an acre, to an older homestead cooking on a wood cookstove, to losing everything, then on to the fancy apartment, the urban homestead in Pueblo, the rock farm in Penrose, and now here, in Alabama. That’s a whole lot of life in eleven years, yes it is.

You know, it is not easy to have a homestead in Colorado. Vast high prairies and desert with high winds and no water add a little grit to the homesteader there. Make you a little crazy.

There is rain here. Everything grows. We are shocked at the beauty here. In awe of the rivers, of the tree canopies, of the life here. It is very much alive here. There are wild foods and medicinal plants everywhere you look.

Now friends, once you are a homesteader, it is just not possible to run away from it completely. It’s not. I was setting on the sofa, just writing in my journal, when the power went out. And it stayed out long enough for me to panic just a little. I looked around and realized in this beautiful house in town (which backs to a lovely preserve), that there was no way for me to make coffee. And I can’t find vegetables that I like. And I just started thinking, and thinking and by the time the power came back on, Farmgirl School 201 was in the works. Let’s see what an Alabama urban homestead looks like, shall we?