Work
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Winter 2026 Personal Pursuits
For the first three months of 2026, I plan to direct my attention, time & energy towards several creative pursuits. These include (but are not limited to): What About You? What do you have planned to tackle in the coming months? Please tell me about it in the comments below or contact me privately. Maybe we can help or support one another in some way. 🙂 [Revised 1/7/26.]
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Adjusting to a New Family Dynamic
This year marks another major adjustment to our family dynamic. Our Family Dynamic Up Until Now Up until the fall of 2024, our family (of five) has been largely together 24/7. In the late summer of 2019, we bought a second home in the mountains and migrated the bulk of our daily living to up there. Then, in March of 2020, when the world all around us turned upside down, we made our way back to our homestead. With each move, we stayed together, adjusting as necessary to either the environment around us or to the effects of what was going on in the world-at-large. Then, in the summer of…
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The Prodigal Bird Returns
Look who decided to come home! Betcha didn’t know we had a peacock. Well, we did for about three days, and then we didn’t for I-don’t-know-how-many months now. The day he arrived on the homestead we locked him up in a coop to get him acclimated to his new surroundings. Then, shortly before sunset on the third day, we let him out, thinking he’d roam just a little but not too far. Well, he promptly flew off, never to be seen here again.
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Not Just Homesteading
When my husband chose to change his lawncare strategy a decade & a half ago and brought in cows to mow the front yard and goats to clear the brush in the back, we naturally started becoming homesteaders. And when we decided to do more with the dirt that surrounded our home than simply travel on it and began to sow seed & transplant starter plants, bushes & trees into it, we naturally began to become food producers and eventually gardeners. Today, those who drive by our property can see that we are a bit over-the-top in our homesteading. We have way more animals roaming the land than we really…
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Free Books at the Homestead Stand
Years ago, when we first built our Homestead Stand, I had toyed with the idea of putting a Little Free Library at the front edge of our property. (I was trying to think how we could better serve our neighborhood and get folks in the local area to come around.) But, with all the other things going on around here, that thought got put onto the back, back burner.
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Preserving Food for the Long Haul
With the gardens being put to bed, the days getting shorter and the temperatures getting colder, I’ve been turning more of my attention indoors. It is time for me to fire up the freeze dryer again. 🙂 We acquired this machine last year when we needed to free up a bunch of space in our chest freezers to make room for the next batch of cows we were having processed. And I must say, I have found that purchase to be one of our best investments ever made.
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A Quiet Revolution
Let’s face it. [Keeping It Real] Most of us were raised in an environment where our housing, utilities, food, energy, transportation, healthcare & communications were all provided for us in exchange for money. Very few of us, I think, inherited our housing. (I didn’t.) We more than likely had to acquire it with money. And then we all have to keep paying money to keep it. While some have their own well water & septic systems, most rely on municipalities for these services in exchange for money. And most buy the majority of their food and pay for electricity and/or gas/oil to power & heat their homes. And this is…
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Creating a Domain in the Real World
In recent years the Powers-That-Shouldn’t-Be in this world have been shoving us all into the virtual realm, whether we like it or not. And frankly, I don’t like it. I was already quite a bit behind the times, technologically speaking –– as I’m typing this post on a hard-wired desktop computer hooked up to a printer/copier/fax machine that’s nearly two decades old. (And my wired landline telephone is stationed just around the corner, with another extension linked to an answering machine.) While I was on the cutting edge of web-design-from-scratch and the blogosphere nearly twenty years ago, I have failed miserably at keeping up with the latest & greatest of…
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How Do I Manage It All?
Housekeeping and Raising a Family I’m grateful to have found FLYLady over twenty years ago after I moved in with my husband and became an instant stepmom. FLYLady helped me overcome the CHAOS (Can’t Have Anyone Over Syndrome) in my home and realize that taking care of it all was a demonstration of Finally Loving Yourself. While I have gleaned a lot of great things from my exposure to FLYLady’s philosophy & customizable routines, I have not always been very consistent in my efforts to stay on top of keeping house while raising a family over the years. That’s because I took on more than just managing a house &…
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Freeze Dryer Oil Pump Quandary
I’m just now finishing up my 40th batch of freeze drying with my Harvest Right freeze dryer, and I’m still loving it. 🙂 However, I have the Premier Oil Pump, which needs to have the oil changed every 20-25 uses, and I’ve been in a state of quandary as to how to manage the oil related to it.
