So… This is Our Farm
This morning my son came out of his room wearing a dress shirt that had somehow wrapped itself around his neck and buttoned itself shut.
When I asked what happened, he calmly informed me the shirt had attacked him and he had no idea how it got stuck on his body.
So there he stood. Completely immobilized by formalwear. Waiting for me to rescue him from a situation that he absolutely created.
And honestly, that’s probably the best introduction I can give you around here.
We live on five acres in Florida with chickens, sheep, pigeons, goats, a garden that sometimes thrives and sometimes looks like we’ve offended it personally, and two small children who are constantly testing the boundaries of both physics and common sense.
My husband Nick and I spend most of our days trying to keep the animals alive, the house somewhat functional, and the kids from doing things like secretly picking up baby chicks when they think I’m not looking.
Most of this whole adventure started with a healthy amount of my own ignorance about how a homestead actually works.
My husband and I married and he joined me on the homestead and we’ve been doing trial by fire ever since.
Like a lot of people, we had this idea that growing food and raising animals would lead to a slower, simpler life. What we didn’t realize at the time was that homesteading mostly involves fixing things you didn’t know could break with things not generally utilized or recommended to fix those things, and discovering that your Turkey Tom will adopt your wife as his own, and your Turkey hen will try to steal your man.
For me, a lot of this life grew out of something I didn’t expect. After having another round of babies in my forties, I found myself needing a positive outlet for postpartum depression that didn’t involve sitting inside staring at four walls or calling my husband at work and crying over the phone to him, sometimes multiple times a day.
The garden helped. The animals helped. But the biggest source of therapy became sewing.
If you stick around long enough you’ll probably see book sleeves, fabric piles, and occasional handmade goods that come out of my attempt to justify an extremely large fabric stash.
Turns out there’s something incredibly grounding about growing things, caring for animals, and making things with your hands… even if the process occasionally involves yelling “STOP FIGHTING WITH EACHOTHER” across five acres, loud enough for your neighbors to hear.
So this blog is basically where I share all of that.
The good stuff.
The ridiculous stuff.
The things that worked.
And the things that absolutely did not go according to plan.
You’ll find animals, gardening, sewing projects, building projects, kids, farm chaos, and whatever else we happen to be figuring out at the moment.
Some days things go beautifully.
Other days a turkey supervises the entire operation, the geese scream about nothing, and my children push me closer and closer to involuntary and permanent commitment to an insane asylum.
Either way, it’s real life.
And if you’re the kind of person who enjoys a cup of coffee, a good laugh, and the comforting knowledge that someone else’s life is just as chaotic as yours…
you’ll probably fit in just fine around here.
If you’re new here, grab a cup of coffee and stay awhile. And if you’d like to poke around a bit more, visit our START HERE page to help you navigate our partiular brand of crazy.
Welcome to The Unfiltered Homestead.