Welcome to My "Little Garden of Weeden"

Last year's very little,  "Lil' Garden of Weeden"

Welcome to my little garden of weeden. I call it this, because my garden is my place of refuge. Whether I am planting, weeding and caring for the plants, harvesting, or cleaning out the garden and  readying it for the next planting, I love everything about it; every bug, every creature, every sore muscle and blister, every sunburn (I refuse to wear sun screen), every failure and every successful harvest. It's truly an amazing process: I plant the seeds and water them, and then I watch God grow them, and I get to eat what I harvest. Things couldn't get much better than that!

I am married to the greatest man I know. He's my best friend. I can tell him anything, and even though he doesn't always react how I want him to react, he always reacts how I need him to react. I choose to love him every day, and I have never regretted this choice. I don't choose to love him in spite of his quirks and annoyances, but rather BECAUSE those are parts of him that makes him the amazing man I married. We've been married for 21 years, and we have three beautiful daughters who are 20, 18 & 15. We are finally able to build our dream. When we were first married, we talked about the future often. The kind of home we wanted, how much land, whether we wanted animals and gardens or not, and what we wanted to do with the land.

This is what the land looked like before we started clearing.

My dream is to be able to grow enough fruits and veggies to be able to feed us, and sell or donate the excess. I want to share my passion with others, so whenever I donate food to the local pantry, I want to donate seeds and growing instructions, as well as, seed saving instructions. I think the words are, "Give a man a fish and he can eat for a day, but teach him to fish and he can eat for a lifetime". If I can find a place to locally accept my seed donations I will be set.  My husband's dream is to live in a mortgage free home that is 100% self sufficient, and he wants to be able to retire early. Our dream together is to raise a small farm, live a completely organic, self sufficient lifestyle and to be able to spend as much time together as possible. My best times in life have been with him, so spending more time with him will only make for more of my best times, right? ;-)  We are both gaining our individual dream AND our dream together with this one home. It will be mortgage free, solar powered (no utilities) and will feed us completely. Anything we cannot grow or raise, we can trade or sell to acquire what is needed (or wanted).
The ideal behind building a modern "homestead" is not to go without. It's to build the life that you want, within your abilities and means. It doesn't mean not working hard. Trust me, building a house, growing gardens and raising animals takes a lot of hard work, but the work is different. I am not punching a time clock each morning. I am free to schedule my time as I see fit. It's hard work: It's just working hard for myself and my family instead of working hard to make someone else wealthy, or to make their business succeed. I don't plan to go without even the slightest luxury: our home will be a smart home, with home security, wireless everything, and hopefully the latest technology (as my ability and budget allow) The thing about a homestead is being prepared for anything, so along with all the modern technology we plan within our home, we also know how to do without the luxuries, so should the unlikely happen, we can still have fresh bread without my fancy wheat grinder or bread maker (or even my kitchen oven). Or my husband can still build his machines and equipment without his fancy CNC equipment, he knows how to do these things manually as well. Before we could fly we had to learn to walk, and to us that means knowing how to do things manually in an automatic world.
Are we "preppers"? Nah, not really. We are not preparing for the collapse of society as we know it. That could, and probably will someday happen, but that is not why we are living as we do. Anything can happen: We can lose our jobs (even temporarily would cause us hardships), we could suffer a medical emergency or a natural disaster. I simply call us realists or survivalists. We are a team: It's us against the world. Are we odd, yes possibly, but I would rather be odd now, and never need my skills, than to be normal now and wish I had learned these skills later. I have not missed a thing in life by taking the time to learn this. I have a wonderful set of friends, a beautiful healthy family and a life that I created of my own will...
So far we have the driveway and garage site cleared, and there really isn't much to show, yet.....

This is our journey, so.....Until later
Have fun playing in the dirt today.