Life on an american homestead
We are a homesteading family. We home school our children and they enjoy spending time with us year round. Learning not only reading and writing but cooking, gardening, building and animal husbandry. We raise all of our own meat . We produce milk and make wonderful cheeses and ice cream with it. We garden and can. We know that how we treat the soil, and the animals that provide for our family and many of our friends families directly affects the health of our families. There are a lot of people who are disconnected from their food. Sometimes people are bothered by the process of how their food gets to the store. We aim to stay connected to what we eat, and make sure that it had a amazing life before providing us with nourishment.
Family - Sustainability
Although I am the great-grand-daughter of Illinois farmers my family has not farmed in 2 generations. My husband and I both grew up just miles from Disneyland. So how did we get where we are today? And where do we plan to go from here? I'll tell you!
It started as a quite whisper. A small Garden on the patio of our one bedroom apartment seamed to satisfy the call. The tomatoes and baisel were amazing. Having been nourished by the small compost pile we had in the corner of the yard. Still I needed more. 5 small chicks soon joined us a short time after the birth of our first little cow boy. Logan started crawling about the same time that our chickens started learning how to use their wings. He was drawn to them. Never afraid. The earth stained the knees of his jeans as he crawled and toddled around the yard as I picked weeds. A bright blue plastic shovel in his hands he was ready to help his daddy turn the earth. One year later Logan helped split apricots while baby Emmett slept in the sling and the first batch of jam finished a water bath. Canned ham and corned beef lined the kitchen table. Cloth diapers hung from a cloths line drying in the warm California sun. Urban gardening is going alright but space is limited. My neighbors and family are not sure about some of the stuff we do. My mother wonders when I became such a "hippy."
Two years pass. A daughter joins our little family. Our five year plan has not played out exactly as we planned but we are happy. Movies like Food Inc. and books by Joel Salatin have shaped the views we have for our future. We know where we want to be. We're not sure how we are going to get there.
In the spring of 2013 we loaded up a moving truck with all of our possessions. With the boys traveling in our old truck and camper and me and now one year old baby Sariah in the mini van we headed off to new adventures in Utah. We spent May out side of Ogden at my Mom's house with one acer. We bought some baby chickens and turkeys and a milking goat named Rainbow with a baby boy at her side. A few weeks later we sold the baby boy and started milking twice a day. Within two weeks of moving we were getting about 3 eggs a day and a half a gallon of milk.
At the end of the month Chuck got a new job in Logan. We found our own piece of land with an old 100 year old house. Our plan was to farm enough land to grow and raise food for ourselves, our family and friends but it soon grew to include people all over Utah. Our meat is free range, pasture fed. We use no corn or soy or hormones and have gotten good at treating not only our family homeopathicly but our livestock as well.
We formed a multi-farm co-op to support ourselves and other local, sustainable, family farmers in marketing our goods.
(www.intermountainfamilyfarms.com)
While farming is a passion we share as a family, we also share a passion for teaching others how to become more self sufficient. Feed a fish to a man and he is full for a day but teach a man to fish and he can feed himself for life. We not only want to farm and feed others, but I want to teach others what they are eating, how important what they are eating is, and how they can grow their own food.
The land is calling me. The farm is calling me. And I answered it!
It started as a quite whisper. A small Garden on the patio of our one bedroom apartment seamed to satisfy the call. The tomatoes and baisel were amazing. Having been nourished by the small compost pile we had in the corner of the yard. Still I needed more. 5 small chicks soon joined us a short time after the birth of our first little cow boy. Logan started crawling about the same time that our chickens started learning how to use their wings. He was drawn to them. Never afraid. The earth stained the knees of his jeans as he crawled and toddled around the yard as I picked weeds. A bright blue plastic shovel in his hands he was ready to help his daddy turn the earth. One year later Logan helped split apricots while baby Emmett slept in the sling and the first batch of jam finished a water bath. Canned ham and corned beef lined the kitchen table. Cloth diapers hung from a cloths line drying in the warm California sun. Urban gardening is going alright but space is limited. My neighbors and family are not sure about some of the stuff we do. My mother wonders when I became such a "hippy."
Two years pass. A daughter joins our little family. Our five year plan has not played out exactly as we planned but we are happy. Movies like Food Inc. and books by Joel Salatin have shaped the views we have for our future. We know where we want to be. We're not sure how we are going to get there.
In the spring of 2013 we loaded up a moving truck with all of our possessions. With the boys traveling in our old truck and camper and me and now one year old baby Sariah in the mini van we headed off to new adventures in Utah. We spent May out side of Ogden at my Mom's house with one acer. We bought some baby chickens and turkeys and a milking goat named Rainbow with a baby boy at her side. A few weeks later we sold the baby boy and started milking twice a day. Within two weeks of moving we were getting about 3 eggs a day and a half a gallon of milk.
At the end of the month Chuck got a new job in Logan. We found our own piece of land with an old 100 year old house. Our plan was to farm enough land to grow and raise food for ourselves, our family and friends but it soon grew to include people all over Utah. Our meat is free range, pasture fed. We use no corn or soy or hormones and have gotten good at treating not only our family homeopathicly but our livestock as well.
We formed a multi-farm co-op to support ourselves and other local, sustainable, family farmers in marketing our goods.
(www.intermountainfamilyfarms.com)
While farming is a passion we share as a family, we also share a passion for teaching others how to become more self sufficient. Feed a fish to a man and he is full for a day but teach a man to fish and he can feed himself for life. We not only want to farm and feed others, but I want to teach others what they are eating, how important what they are eating is, and how they can grow their own food.
The land is calling me. The farm is calling me. And I answered it!