The look on their faces when they saw their art projects in the recycling bin outside was so sad. Little paper angels looking up, tattered and worn, and the look of rejection on my children’s faces will stay with me forever. The article promised that if I threw out and gave away most everything, I…
Category: Homestead
How to Save and Season Cast Iron
I love to cook with cast iron. If you don’t yet, I highly recommend it! Cast iron pans last forever and are comparable to the cost of other pans. They cook evenly, give a great crust to anything breaded, and are a cinch to clean. I think folks get scared off because they don’t know…
The Foxfire Series of Books
A student of mine gave me a copy of the first Foxfire book years ago. What a gift! I ended up ordering the whole series because that type of wisdom and writing could be gone in a generation. The Foxfire books were started by a teacher and his high school students in the late sixties…
View of a Simple Homestead Life
This was the moment that I felt a rush of nostalgia, clarity, and peace come over me. A remembrance of why I fell in love with the homesteading lifestyle in the first place all those years ago. This snippet sums up the sweetness of a simple life. Entering my little art studio, the bluegrass playing…
Why We Homestead (10th anniversary)
How fitting on my tenth blogging anniversary, that I would sit down with my cup of coffee to write why I am returning to homesteading with a fervency and peace I haven’t had in awhile. I entered a space of wondering why I do the things I do. I grew weary and older and wondered…
Tour of a Mountainside Homestead
My husband and I love to tour other people’s homesteads. We love to see what others are doing, be inspired, and swap ideas. We headed out to deliver medicine to a homesteading couple an hour southwest of us. The road rose to over 8000 feet. We came out of the trees and the road looked…
The Busy, Busy Summer
It has been an incredibly busy summer and here autumn is in full swing. Homesteading here is a pleasure and our first farming season was wonderful. In June, I was terribly discouraged, even considering giving up. I had started gardens six times bigger than any of our previous homesteads and was upset that I wasn’t…
Hooked on Homesteading
6:30 am: The wind howled at fifty miles an hour all night, folding pieces of the greenhouse and threatening loose objects. My wwoofer, Maycee, and I rapidly pick green tomatoes, filling two large canning pots, saving all we can. The tarp and blankets only cover 15×4 feet of tomato plants. We cover the zucchini and…
10 Rebellious Ways to Make a Huge Impact Now
Be the change you want to see in the world. Ghandi It can feel so overwhelming. A single person on the planet amongst billions of others; our lives run by big business, lobbyists, and corrupt governments. Our ecological footprints growing larger by the day, farmable land expected to be gone in a mere sixty years,…
Life on a Colorado Homestead
Colorado can be harsh and it can be breathtakingly glorious. It can be twenty below zero, a hundred and five, with a severe drought, or a wild flood. A month without rain then torrents then clear. A mere few miles to the south and also to the west of me, hail completely destroyed the gardens…
Farmgirl School 