Work
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Making My Own Sourdough Starter
This past week I started making my own sourdough starter from scratch, using freshly ground whole wheat flour and well water. And I’m so excited to see that it’s maturing beautifully. In the past, my daughter maintained a sourdough starter that she/we inherited from our neighbor, who led a class on sourdough breadmaking in our barn a few years ago. While I made bread with that starter a time or two, it was my daughter who typically cared for it and baked/made all sorts of goodies with it — along with bread. And now she’s living up in the mountains full time. This year, since I’m back on the homestead,…
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I Started by Shining My Sink
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Barley Fodder — for Cows?
The severe drought in central Virginia this year has wreaked havoc on farmers throughout the area. And those of us needing grass (& hay) to feed our livestock have been faced with tough decisions on how to proceed. With 22 head of cattle on our 16+ acre homestead, we seriously considered downsizing our herd. We didn’t know how we could possibly afford to feed all of them through the winter, or if we would even be able to get the hay we needed. But then I remembered, years ago we experimented with growing barley fodder in 5-gallon buckets to supplement our birds’ diet after learning about it through Jack Spirko.…
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I Started by Shining My Sink
I started getting my physical house in order on the homestead last week by shining my sink. A few years ago, I shared how my way of life evolved into something rather unique over a decade and a half. And I revealed a valuable guide that helped me manage it all along the way: The FLYLady. One of My Favorite Guides Marla Cilley, aka the FLYLady, published a book in 2002 called Sink Reflections, where she revealed her home management system. Discovering her work nearly 25 years ago and implementing what she taught helped me to overcome the CHAOS (Can’t Have Anyone Over Syndrome) in my previous home and played…
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Making My Own Sourdough Starter
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Working Towards a Better Way of Life
Would you like to know what I’m doing on our homestead as we work towards a better way of life? Two years ago, I personally took a detour from our homestead living to help my youngest son pursue a new path for his betterment in our mountain home location. Last year, while I hoped to be more present on the homestead, circumstances dictated a different course for me. This year, I expect to be back on the homestead on a more full-time basis, and I’m looking forward to it. My husband has been holding down the fort here, so to speak, solo, for the better part of this past year.…
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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.
