From the Ground Up

You will often find my floor covered in Legos; all out covered to the point where the floor is no longer visible and I worry about whether or not they will all be cleaned up or if, in the dark I will “find” one with my bare feet (which is of course the equivalent of walking on hot coals I am certain). But I love the creativity of their engineering and their excitement to show me what they create, so I take the risk time and time again and even add my mama two cents too “make sure you build a wide base, and see what you can create from the ground up.”

Isn’t it amazing what we can create from nothing? What human ingenuity can cultivate? That our two hands can take our vision and turn it into reality? A painter with a brush, an actor with a script, a baker with flour, my kiddo with Legos. And me….I’m trying to join the ranks, to turn the dirt (and jungle, have you been to Texas? Holy vines!) into a living, breathing, working homestead where my kids and chickens free range (totally need to put that sign on my front gate.)

I honestly can’t remember when homesteading began to take over our thoughts and plans (by plans I really mean Pinterest boards). I do vividly remember our first family garden though, in our first family home at the end of our subdivision circle. That garden produced everything; glorious squashes, raspberries, beans and more tons more! It also brought the memories I hoped for…..my kids squished between rows of plants, picking peas and eating them right then and there just like I did in Gram’s garden. Grams herself walking through my garden picking a leaf and telling me what was eating it and if it was getting enough water (I will end up with her skill yet!). To the grand finale, the yummy part of this labor, my friends filing my kitchen to can pizza and spaghetti sauce and my kids in a wheel barrow handing out our pumpkins to their friends around the neighborhood for Halloween. This was the beginning; perhaps THE moment! I wanted THIS every year. I wanted the garden to grow, to bust out of the fence containing it, to explode all over my backyard. For the memories to grow as fast as my kids were. I had no idea what this desire would bring (sometimes I still fee like I’m only knee high in a lake I can’t wait to be head high in it) but I knew that I could make it happen anywhere! I had done just that in my little house, in my little subdivision with my first grown up garden.

I was talking with my first farmer neighbor just over a year ago as he explained the process of harvesting pigs. In the middle of the conversation he interjected, “Be sure not to follow YouTube, you can’t trust anything on YouTube.” It took physical restraint not to bust a gut laughing. That was a good part of our self education into homesteading thus far AND it had served us well! I will tell you that between our first garden and our first pig harvest we had watched our fair share of YouTube videos (I say we, but it was really Jason,) read everything we could from other homesteaders online (this was both of us) and listened to podcasts on our way (ok yes again his way) to work. The great and wonderful part of this digital age is that there is wonderful information out there (throat clear…. we hope you learn a lot from us) and that it is just the new method behind a time old tradition of people who love to grow and raise, to share what they know. See the part of this adventure for us that has continued to fuel our drive is the people that we have gotten to talk to along the way. They LOVE what they do. They want to teach others, they want you to succeed, they want to share their art (a dying one, that hopefully is coming back). That’s the real tradition, people sharing their creations. And so, we join them! WE LOVE what we do, what we have learned, what we ARE learning and growing, and hope that we too can fuel YOUR drive! Give you that push to try a new skill, to grow a little more, to add a new animal, or the desire to find something you love as much as we love this! Let’s go! We have a lot of work to do, to build something of our own, something from the ground up!