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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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Sharing What I Know About the Bible
Two & a half months ago, I shared about an adjustment we recently made in our family dynamic. And as usual, we’re always having to remain flexible. Given the harsh pre-winter weather, I ended up spending more time in the mountains in December than I had originally intended. While that put a pause on my endeavors at the homestead, it enabled me to complete two writing projects that were on my Fall To-do List. Two Bible-Related Writing Projects Messyanic.com is a website of mine that focuses on the Biblical studies I have done over the past 15 years or so. For several years that site sat dormant while I focused…
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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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Why We Do What We Do
New Website for Carrie (Not Kelly)
Finally Answering the Call
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Little Free Libraries: Human Connection Venues
A few years ago, our daughter established, built and stocked a Little Free Library at the front edge of our property, because of her personal passion for reading & circulating hard copy books. Thankfully, we’ve had many different people donate books to the little green box perched at our Homestead Stand. I’ve personally enjoyed reading some of them and donated a few of my own. Look Inside! In an attempt to draw attention to this gem in our local neighborhood, I recently took a physical inventory of its contents and published a list to distribute to those who regularly visit us and to those who live nearby. Then, I blogged…
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Officially Licensed Wall Art Decor Decals
Ty has been working hard for the past month building two websites to house all of the officially licensed wall art decor we have had available for sale up until now on Amazon. The sites are WiggleWalls.com and WiggleWallsDecals.com. They are essentially the same, using the same shopping cart service — just different webhosts. While everything is not out there yet, Ty’s made significant progress thus far. Here are just a few of the sets we carry [click set image for more details]: Check the rest of them out. And if you see a particular set that interests you, please let us know. We’ll be happy to send you something of our choosing…
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New Website for Carrie (Not Kelly)
In 2024 I started a Substack under the name CarrieNotKelly as a way for me to build an email list and communicate with those wanting to remain in touch with us via email. Over the past year, I used that platform to share some of what was going on in my personal life. I didn’t really have a publication strategy or even a marketing strategy to bring on new subscribers. I was just feeling my way through it, as I worked heavily on revamping and building out this WiggleCulture website. After taking the last several months off from writing much on-line, I came up with my new human connections plan.…
